all kinds of honouring: how to plan a baby's funeral
We realize there are parents who find Glow from their hospital rooms (Hello, and are we ever sorry you're here reading) searching for information and company. Therefore, today we add a new permanent feature to our cabin library on funeral planning in hopes that it informs your decision, helps you formulate questions, but perhaps most importantly, lets you know that you're not alone in this process and that herein (I pretty much guarantee) you will find at least one person who made the same decisions you did.
Whether cremation or burial, handled by the hospital or a home, a full-blown service or nothing at all, below are some of the actions and thoughts of Glow contributors and readers. This piece is inspired by an old interview I did with Busted Babymaker, who in her haze of grief asked the hospital to take care of the remains of her twins. Months later, when she was ready to confront the business of finding their final resting place, she discovered to her great shock that the remains were "lost" within the county system. She eventually found them, but the ordeal highlighted information that she didn't have -- that she perhaps should have asked, or should have been told without asking; information she felt important enough to share with the babyloss community. The Glow interview with links to the relevant posts on her blog, as well as reader comments, can be found here.
Our intent is not to scare you from having a hospital take care of these things; on the contrary, that may be a seamless and bureaucratically-easy option for you and your family. Instead, we want to present the range of options you have and let you know of any concerns that we -- who have already undergone these actions -- may have had.
We want to prepare you for small waits here and there, and point out that often these options are free and money plays little to no part in the decision making. Surprisingly, given the overwhelming shock and sadness, different parts of the process were remarkably moving and significant for many of us.
As always, although this piece is an amalgam of experiences by Glow contributors, the writing of our readers in the comments gives this discussion it's extra dimension and is where you are likely to find words that make you sit up and say This is me.
~ Tash
In ironic retrospect, there are so many spots on our Excellent NICU/Death Adventure that make me thankful, and grateful, and relieved. One of those things is the strange fact that my husband's uncle happens to be a funeral director in NY state. At the time, it seemed altogether appropriate in its blackness, as if the reaper had cast his cloak over not just the small huddled mass of my immediate family, but all of us, scattered about and perhaps through time. My husband called him from the hospital, and I have no idea what was said, but only that "things would be taken care of." And apparently calls were made, and suddenly a funeral home materialized that would take Maddy's remains.
We did all this before removing life support. Because as drained as we were, we knew after would be far worse, with our skin and souls bunched up in a pile around our shoes.
The hospital where we delivered offered us two choices for dealing with Lucia's remains: to put our baby in mass baby burial grave after a mass baby cremation or arrange through a funeral home to have our child privately buried. We were interested in cremating her and keeping her ashes in our home. The nurses seemed confounded by such a request, seeming to suggest that no one ever had ever asked for ashes, or arranged for private cremation. They had no resources for cremation in their baby death brochures.
I knew that was wrong. I didn't realize that funeral homes arrange these things whether you have a funeral or not. We opted not to have a funeral and to have her cremated. Those were hard phone calls to make, but after the first, I realized it was much easier to deal with people who were used to dealing with death. All those people were appropriately compassionate, but business-like. There was one local funeral home who cremates on-site, and only charges 15 dollars for babies. I was not looking for such a deal, but it was more about what he said at the time, "We choose not to make a profit on these kinds of losses." That felt right to me. Also, the funeral director came to our home each time we needed to deal with him -- to drop off her remains, her death certificate and the urn, rather than have us visit the funeral home. I would have paid him extra for that, but he offered to do that and we took him up on the offer. -- Angie
One of the first people we tried to call after we learned that A died was our rabbi. Rather, I asked my sister to call. She couldn't get through that night, but did early the next morning, while I was still being induced. The rabbi called us and asked if she could come to the hospital to see us. She was there within an hour and a half. She was great -- comfortable in the room with us, comforting without platitudes, unflinching.
After a while we asked what should we do about burying our son -- one of the most bizarre things I've ever had to ask anyone, seeing as he was still inside of me. The rabbi said that she knows just who to call, a funeral director she has worked with before, who is incredibly compassionate and thoroughly on the ball, and if we'd like, she can make the first call herself. Yes, please, we said. We never asked about price or how we would pay -- I think we both just assumed that we will get the bill at the end, pay with a credit card, and deal later. -- Julia
The morning after Maddy's death, my husband bundled up and drove off to "the home." (Isn't it strange, that places we send the elderly are "homes," and places we send dead people are "homes," and the place where my two dogs and two cats and one fish and four humans clutter and scream and laugh and occasionally vomit in inappropriate places is also a "home".)
He returned with a sheaf of papers, and said they didn't charge us anything. I didn't ask, but I assumed it was because the director knew my husband's uncle, or didn't charge for dealing with the tiniest of beings, or both.
The funeral director dealing with Lucy's remains charged us nothing -- not for the cremation or the urn. And cried with us. One of the more touching moments for me is when he told me that Lucy was beautiful. He was one of five people who saw her, so that meant so much to me. (He deserves sainthood.) -- Angie
I am grateful for the compassion, respect, and incredible humanity of the funeral director. The tenderness with which he helped us handle the casket was palpable. The only regret I have about the whole process is that I didn't think to ask whether I could come to the funeral home to help put A's funeral shroud on and get his body ready for the funeral. -- Julia
Children's performed an autopsy on Maddy, so we knew it would be a few days before "the home" would go and collect her. And I wondered how that happened exactly -- there had to be some discreet secret entrance (a tunnel accessed on a side-street, like the bat-cave I imagined) because lord knows, the last thing anyone wants to see is a hearse (or unadorned van -- and we all know what THAT means) driving up to Children's.
They called when they had her, and then said it would be another week or so. We didn't ask why. And on another cold day my husband drove out and collected a small box, wrapped much like a present -- the size of something that might contain 4-6 excellent pieces of chocolate -- enclosed in a plastic baggie. We stared at it, and put it on a shelf.
I was so shell shocked I could hardly speak, and having a service seemed like the last thing either one of us wanted right now given the appalling winter conditions which matched our states of mind. We'll have a memorial service later, when it's nicer out, we thought. But we never did.
Every time I thought about a service, I got to a point about it and broke down unable to envision how that certain point would go: Would we take Bella? (God this made me feel miserable.) What would we read? The book we read again and again in the NICU? (I couldn't fathom making it past page one without sobbing.) Where would this happen? Who on earth would we invite? (We had only lived here six months, would anyone come?) Was it appropriate to invite children and make this sort of "childlike," or was that really macabre and grim? I hated crying, could I stand to cry in front of other people? I wanted this to be private, to be ours, to be mine. There were just too many questions, too many roadblocks, and before we knew it, time had just slipped away. We did nothing.
Angel Mae was very tiny, and we are fairly private people, so we chose cremation and had no services. My sister made calls for us and found a funeral home where the director was very warm and where they do these cremations free of charge, because they can’t bear to charge for them. My only regret about this was that it took almost two weeks to receive her ashes, and I wonder if this is because, as non-paying customers, we were low on the priority list.
Waiting was excruciating for me; I became sort of frozen and could not really process my grief until her ashes came home. It was a huge comfort to receive them. We have kept her ashes with us –- we are not in a permanent home yet and in future may spread her ashes wherever we settle down -– and memorialized her through a special mailing of seed cards on her due date.
I don’t regret not having a public service, but I do regret not taking advantage of the hospital chaplaincy service, even though we are not especially religious, simply because I wish we’d done more to ritualize and create sacred space around the time we did have with her. For the same reason, I wish we had taken more pictures, or been aware of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, but at the time we were too much in shock to think clearly about any of these things. -- Jenni
I don't regret not having a service per se, although in retrospect I really think some of our relatives could have used the gravity of seeing us as we were, talking about the person that our daughter was, to help them with their attitudes towards us in the whole debacle. (As it was, some apparently thought this was about them, or it really wasn't that big of a deal -- certainly something we should be able to rise above in six months or less.)
Zoey and Gus had a funeral that was, except for the size of the caskets, much like anyone else's. I was glad enough (in a way) because I wanted others to see that these were not just babies who died, not just blank slates, not just two potentials, two futures, or two ideas, but also actual persons. When designing the gravestones, we held true to this ideal. We rejected the softer font some thought was more appropriate for children. We declined to have balloons or teddy bears or other such graphics etched into the stones. We wanted their stones to have the same gravity as those of their neighbors. We wanted people to see that in death, they were the equals of the old. We wanted Zoey and Gus to be seen not as a special class, but as people like other people. At the same time, though, when we visit, we make sure pinwheels are properly staked into the ground by the gravestones.
After all, Gus and Zoey were, and are, our children. -- Eric
At the cemetery, they asked one or both of us to come to the office to sign some paperwork. It turned out that the plot was gifted to us and all funeral expenses were paid by this fund in our city set us especially to pay for the funerals of Jewish babies (or they are donated by the participating funeral homes and the cemetery -- I am not exactly sure of the mechanics, just the outcome). I think because of all the ritual requirements associated with a Jewish burial, the thought behind the fund is to relieve the parents of the need to worry about "doing it right" and/or consider whether they could afford the unexpected considerable expense.
It is also clearly a mitzva (good deed). (It turned out later that some of our friends called the funeral home before the funeral and offered to contribute to the costs, thinking that it was going to be a sizable bill, and wanting to help us with it. They were told that there is nothing to contribute to.) -- Julia
I don't regret cremation one bit, though I do see the (usefulness) in having a place to visit, a place to meditate in, a place to caretake, just a place. We ruminate on a bench here, or distributing her ashes there, but as I type this three-plus years later, her remains still sit in a box in a baggie on my family room shelf.
Perhaps I can't let them go yet, or perhaps this is exactly where they meant to be.
tash
Reader Comments (33)
i wasn't ready to let harvey go to a home so i asked if he could stay with me until the service and tending to his little body over the next three days is the most amazing thing i have ever done, it was such a privilege and helped me understand that he had left his body. because we had chosen a cremation, we needed another dr to certify harveys death. which was done with great apology for intruding by lunchtime that same day. the next few days were spent with a houseful of loving visitors all holding harvey and loving him. we organised a celebrant, a slideshow of photos, music, a friend sang amazing grace, we wanted the funeral to be a celebration of harveys life and we got a yellow coffin and asked everyone to bring yellow flowers, i'm so glad i did this as the colour yellow was heartwarming to look at. some say at times like this you are blessed with a grace that helps you get through this time. this is exactly what happened to me. i felt a protective shield around me holding me up. although i only had 3 days to organise his service the whole community got together to help make it exactly what i wanted and i couldn't have been happier with how it went. everyone came back to my house afterwards and we continued to celebrate the life of a beautiful little boy.
i got harvey cremated, once again because i wasn't ready to let him go and i wanted him to be with me . it does comfort me to know that we are all here together still xxx anne
I didn't want to think of her dead, I just wanted to remember her alive. Sometimes I feel bad about it, but I just couldn't deal with it at the time and I didn't have anyone who could deal with it for me.
We didn't know what was normal. I would have loved to stumble across this to have a better idea of what other decisions families had made. We buried her right away because all of our family had driven up already to be with us, and it made sense to us (and still does) that we'd do it then. We'd already ruined Christmas, by making people take extra time off and didn't feel we could ask everyone to come back at a later date. It was a beautiful, little service with no officiant. Just us.
We both took the day off from work and hiked out to the beach where we first went camping together when we were dating. It was just my husband and me. All of our families were spread around the states and I just couldn't imagine anyone paying to come for a service of a baby that never lived. I also didn't want to live with the hurt if they refused to come. I'm glad it was just us though. We do things a little different and I would have been self conscious with anyone else there. We said a couple of Native American prayers (we are not Native American, we just like how they view life and death) and a few words to Aiden and sprinkled a tiny bit of his ashes in the river and on our beach. I like to think of his ashes eventually going out to sea and becoming a part of all the life out there. We took his stuffed gator with us and took pictures of it sitting in the sand. As we were hiking back to the road it started to rain. It felt like the sky was crying with us as we left part of our precious boy behind. That day went a long way towards allowing me to accept what had happened and that our son would not come back.
After Gabriel was born and while he was still with us, we made certain to get pictures. I was lucky our camera was with us - the L&D unit didn't have one. While I knew about NILMDTS, I didn't know how to contact them and neither did L&D.
If I'd known in advance, some of things I would have liked to have done would have included bathing him and dressing him. I wish I had touched him more. While he was alive, I was terrified he'd be cold and didn't want to unwrap him. I did when he was dead, to see his whole body, but I didn't really touch him. I think he felt so fragile, I was afraid. And even though I knew he was dead, I didn't want to hurt him.
They asked us about an autopsy. We could not bear the thought. I still mostly think that was the correct decision, though certainty sometimes feels like it would be nice. But that beautiful perfect body had already been through enough. I asked my husband and the pain that shot through his face at the idea of his son being cut up and dissected was enough. We declined.
They asked if we had a funeral home. Given that I'd walked in five hours earlier expecting them to stop our labor, it hadn't really been considered, no. They told me that we would be responsible for arrangements. When the social worker contacted me the next day, I found out that Texas law requires that any baby born alive that lives for any length of time is required to have proper disposition of their remains (burial or cremation).
Feeling pressured to make a decision as quickly as possible, we again went with our gut. The idea of our baby boy being shut in a box and buried underground was repulsive to us, and I had trouble breathing just contemplating it. The idea of burning his remains wasn't much better, but it didn't give us the same sense of panic and wrongness that burial did.
After the fact, when I realized we could bury his ashes, if we chose, I felt better about our decision. I often envy those who have a particular place to go and commune with their children. We didn't have a place, and still don't. Gabe's ashes sit on our mantle.
We were provided a list of funeral homes and told to call the social worker back with the name of the funeral home within 24 hours. We didn't call around, I simply chose the place across from the hospital that we drive past on our way home everyday. We were lucky, they were very kind. They gave us an enormous discount. Their normal fees for cremation were $1500. They charged us $500, plus filing fees for the death certificate. They handled everything with the hospital.
There were delays. The funeral home told us that they would retrieve Gabriel's body within 48 hours, but the hospital didn't end up releasing it for a week for reasons that were never explained (but the funeral home said it was communication problems with the social worker assigned to us not returning their calls - I didn't care, they took care of it and only apologized for the delay). It was another 2 weeks before the ashes were returned to us.
The funeral home did not try to upsell us on anything, and were quietly kind. They had someone come in especially on a Saturday to release his remains to us, and she was very kind. We left them in their plastic box inside their cardboard box until a gift arrived from my friends. There was a necklace that had been placed inside a little wooden trinket box from Morrocco that my friend had purchased years before. Gabriel's ashes fit perfectly inside and it felt right. I don't know if we'll ever scatter them or bury them - maybe when we pass away. For now, they are in the right place.
We did not have a service. At the time, it was an expense and a hassle we weren't up to. I don't think we considered it for a moment. No one else knew Gabe. Most of the family hadn't even seen me pregnant. Everyone asked, they would have attended, but I couldn't imagine what we would say or do. There was no burial, his body was waiting to be cremated. Would we sit around while Jason and I talked about how much we loved that little potential of a boy and try to explain how devastated we were? What was the point?
Again, I have to believe the gut decisions made were the right ones, but I do sometimes wonder. I wish that we had done something. Gabe wasn't and isn't real for most our family - they weren't around me while I was pregnant, they didn't hear his heartbeat, they didn't see his ultrasounds, they didn't see his picture. He was a concept. I wonder sometimes if a service would have made him more concrete and real to them.
Now I try to focus on finding ways to honor him. Donations to March of Dimes, acts of kindness at random - things I call our love letters to him.
There was something of a gap between his death and the cremation; we were so physically exhausted and had our other children to consider, plus I wanted to avoid the dates that I hold dear to another baby, which fell between the two times. So there was a gap between death and service which was a frozen time and very hard. I broke my heart about him being cold and alone and dead in the hospital. In that time, I did more or less come to terms with the idea of cremating him and my only regret is that we didn't manage to explain that part to the children.
We chose to have no one at the service; we needed to grieve openly and as ourselves and didn't feel having our girls there would allow that and if they were not there, it didn't seem right to have other family. We asked for any flowers to be converted to donations to a memorial fund. Then some of the SCBU nurses asked if they could come and so we asked for them, his doctor, my consultant and our midwife plus one friend who was also part of the medical team to stand as a witness in case I ever wanted to remember the event with someone.
Those people were perfect and despite offending some family (I suspect) I don't regret the decision. I wept, my husband carried in the coffin as was his wish and we were able to say what we wanted.
We asked the vicar to read my words, a letter and Max read his own. We asked the vicar to keep religious remarks to a minimum and had a song just at the beginning and the end and just flowers from ourselves. We only wrote our words a day or two before; I found it incredibly difficult and had to lock myself away and play the funeral song over and over till I could make what I wanted to say come. I also scoured the web for a poem and eventually found one I modified.
The funeral felt private and appropriate and as if it was attended just by those people from his world. I felt that anything bigger would have been somehow crass for me, despite normally liking big gestures.
We've yet to bury his ashes. We have a place planned, somewhere I cannot visit too often and that is meaningful to our family, in a graveyard that has other family members, in a loved place we plan to move to one day. We've chosen an airy part of it, open to the sky and the fields and close to the sound of the playground. Just yet though I can't. I still need him near me.
There is a full description of the funeral here
http://www.patchofpuddles.co.uk/archives/3155/freddies-day
We were far from home so that we could be at a hospital with a NICU equipped to work with babies with CDH. We'd been planning (and hoping, fiercely) that I'd stay in the city with our baby while he gained strength and had necessary surgeries and recovered while my husband started his new job at home. When our son died, all the fight went out of me. The hospital chaplain shared information about funeral homes with us, and my father-in-law called and found one to work with us, that could do a quick cremation so we could head home soon after I was released from the hospital. I'm still grateful for that; I think calling funeral homes at that point was beyond what either of us was capable of.
I expected the funeral home paperwork, but there was some difficulty getting the right signatures from the hospital to release Teddy's body, which was stressful, because we really wanted to head home. I wish someone had warned me about how few ashes there are, how tiny the urn would be, and I wish I'd known ahead of time that the clothes I dressed him in before the funeral home took him would be returned to us and not cremated with him.
After we made it home we didn't do any kind of burial or memorial service, for lots of reasons - we lived a good way away from both of our families, we were tired and shell-shocked and very protective and private about our grief. I sometimes now wish we had gathered family and friends together to give them the chance to grieve with us, to make sure everyone we loved knew his name and had a chance to say goodbye, but my husband feels pretty much the opposite way, and certainly at the time it just wasn't the right decision for us.
We keep Teddy's ashes with us. One day we're hoping to get our own garden, to plant a tree in a corner of it and make that corner his.
In the UK funeral directors are required by their regulatory body to provide their services free because there are ethical guidelines about exploiting parents grieving the loss of their child.
On her anniversary this year we scattered a tiny amount of her ashes by her tree, but the rest we keep here in the small plastic urn they gave us. I'm hoping to have a box made for them at some point.
We called our UU minister from the hospital and she had answers and resources and came to the hospital and called the funeral home and protected us from many of the details. I suspect she would have done so for anyone, not just church members, so I'd highly suggest people look to local ministers or rabbis just for information if nothing else.
At her suggestion, we buried Micah in the baby garden section of a cemetery near our home 5 days after his birth. The coffin was tiny and white and broke my heart all over again. She did a beautiful graveside naming and burial service with just my husband and I - having a funeral doesn't mean you have to host a big crowd. It was incredibly hard, but it is now one of the memories I hold closest to my heart. I go to the cemetery sometimes now, and I read his name and the names of the other babies and I leave a polished stone or a flower and I'm grateful to have a place to do that.
My only regret: the choice of music - wish I had paid more attention to that little detail. I was horrified to hear creepy children's lullabies playing. The funeral home suggested it and I was strangely compliant at the time.
Otherwise, I was very glad I went with a service so that friends and family could come and acknowledge our loss. I was fortunate in that my father took care of all the planning (except for the music - not his fault) and would come to confirm any decisions with us in person. I am very grateful for his support and guidance when neither myself or my husband were capable of making any decisions (hence the poor choice in music).
It got worse from there. The funeral home called us later that weekend to tell us that the hospital had LOST "el dead baby", which turned out, eventually not to be the case. We found out Kai's sex, which we had been too stunned to ask about at the hospital, because the ashes came in a box that said "Baby Boy." The funeral home then tried to tell us that they "had to put down something, so they made it up." It took weeks to get our baby's sex confirmed and find that he was, in fact, a boy.
In all the chaos, we decided that we couldn't take a funeral with our families present, largely out of fear that having them there would make it worse. We decided to scatter Kai's ashes in the water so that in some way he would be a part of nature. We drove upstate, just the two of us and our baby's ashes, and scattered the ashes in the Hudson River in a place that we could easily find again and return to (which we have several times since.). We each said a few words, which I later recorded in my journal, and put our baby to sleep in the water. When we got home, Alan played me a song he wrote after we got home from the hospital- it was the only time I ever heard him sing it, and, although it is now recorded and on my computer, I have only heard it once since.
I don't believe that our baby is in heaven or in any sort of a better place. But sometimes, during the first snow of the year when the flakes are huge and white, I believe that he helped to create them by being part of the water and the cycle of nature. Some days that's enough to make me smile.
She was born the following day, and during the day I had the hospital chaplain come to visit a few times. We were given brochures and suggestions of places to call once she was born. She was born later that day, and we held, dressed, bathed and showered her with love and kept her body with us until the next day.
My family came back to the hospital and my brother told us he had a friend who ran a funeral home, so he made the first call. There were still going to be costs involved (I think the entire funeral still cost $6000 here in Australia) but thanfully our families passed the hat around and we didn't pay a cent for any of it, which to this day I am so grateful for.
My husband is catholic, so we decided on a burial. I couldn't come at the idea of cremation for a baby anyway, but come to think of it, neither option is very pleasant. I just saw burial as the lesser of two evils.
Before we left the hospital we had her blessed in a very short and simple ceremony organised by the hospital chaplain and attended by our family and midwives who had overseen her birth.
I left her body lying in a small blue basket in the hospital chapel, never to see her again. I was told she would not be left alone, and that soon the morgue would come to pick her up to keep her for her autopsy the following day.
After the autopsy, which we didn't really think twice about, as after an incredibly healthy full term pregnancy, we just desperately needed answers, the funeral home collected her body. I was assured after her autopsy, she was re-dressed in the clothes we had dressed her in after she was born, but in the days that followed, the funeral home kept ringing and asking if we had a "special" outfit. We didn't, we just wanted her left as we'd dressed her, regardless of whether those clothes had become soiled or spoiled during her autopsy.
But my mum finally gave in to their requests, and went out and bought her a fresh outfit (same as what we had dressed her in) and told the funeral home that IF she really needed to be redressed, that we would like the clothes she had been wearing. Sadly, that never happened. We were told that yes, they did in fact use the fresh outfit but when I asked of the whereabouts of the clothes she had been wearing, we were told that they didn't know what to do with them, despite us leaving very clear instructions, so they were neatly folded nad placed in the casket with her. Too this day I am livid about that, but there is not a great deal I can do about it. Our anger was later conveyed to the funeral home and they were deeply apologetic.
Initially we wanted to keep her funeral very small and simple. Family only. But in the dyas after she was born friends kept ringing and emailing and asking what they could do to help so it became clear we had to make it open to everyone. They could help by coming to support us and get us through the day. I made it very clear though - no wake. After the funeral, we would be going home to grieve very privately, and that I did for many, many months to come.
At this point, we also had to decide where we wanted Hope buried. Our first choice of cemetery was full, but after some looking around, we found one we liked much better anyway and much closer to home. Sadly, the children's section was full, which I found all too depressing, but we settled on another small part of lawn surrounded by trees and a beautiful lake. If we were to chose a spot to bury her, this was as close to perfect as we could find. Two or three days after she was born, we drove there to have a look. I didn't need to spend long out of the car to know this was the right place. Her plot is also now reserved for three, so at the ages of 29 and 28 respectively, Simon and I found out where our final resting place would be - in the same piece of earth our first born daughter lies in.
The days in between her birth I kept asking mum, who was very busy with all of the arrangements "where is she?" I just hated knowing that her body was here on earth, and as her mother, just a few days post partum, I had absolutely no idea where she was. Later I learned I could have visited her at any time I wanted, but I'm not sure had I of known that then, whether or not I would have anyway. Her body wouldn't have looked the same after the autopsy, and I'm comfortable enough with how I saw her when I left her in the hospital. She looked peaceful. Obviously dead and not the same as she looked the day before when she was born, but peaceful.
The funeral was a civil service, as she'd had her religious blessing ceremony at the hospital, to keep Simon and my in laws happy. It was six days after she was born and was held at her graveside by a celebrant. While my family took care of EVERYTHING, mum was keeping me in the loop and I made a few decisions about flowers and what music to play. I also wrote the bulk of the ceremony for the celebrant to read out and picked readings for my brother and sister to read on the day.
200 came to her funeral and looking back it was the right decision to make it open to everyone. It showed she was a real person. Not just a failed pregnancy. And it showed to everyone just how broken and absolutely devastated we were.
If anyone reading this wants any more information on the funeral or the decisions we made, please feel free to contact me through my blog.
After she was born, and we spent some time with her, our wonderful UU minister came and dedicated her, held her, named her. Our family was all there and got to hold her. We dressed her and cried. But when it was time to leave her there, the nurses assured me she wouldn't be alone until someone picked her up from the funeral home. We chose cremation, after an autopsy. Neither provided any relief or answers or closure. But it was what we chose.
I remember driving around the cemetery a few days later with a salesperson in the car. I vaguely remember hearing her blabber on about plots and markers and prices. We chose a cenotaph, which is a marker under which "cremains" can be placed. It's under a tree on a hill. Calla's ashes are still with us in an urn. An urn too small for even her name to be engraved upon; my sister-in-law went to a store in the mall and had a bracelet engraved with Calla's name and birthdate. It's over the urn now.
Later, maybe almost two months, we had a memorial service at our UU church. My husband and I both spoke. I read a story I wrote for Calla, and my friends in the choir sang some beautiful songs. "What A Wonderful World" and "I Carry You in My Heart," whose lyrics are from the e.e.cummings poem. There were flowers and kind words. I can vaguely recall it, but I remember it was beautiful.
We have Calla's stone at the cemetery, which gives us a physical place to go, to sit and remember. We have her ashes at home. This is about all we have. Please know how sorry I am that you're reading this, that you're here. But also know you're not alone, and any of us are here for you. Peace to you.
The rules/my diminished advocacy skills at the moment being what they were, I dont know that I could have or even would have changed anything. But from my standpoint now, I wish I had asked for a basin of warm soap and water at the hospital to wash the vernix from his skin before we left him. He was born and died unexpectedly while on vacation far from home, so we had nothing of his to wrap him in for the cremation, but I wish we had done that as well. And I wish that I had held his box and placed him in the incinerator myself. We chose not to have his ashes placed in a fancy urn--we were intending on releasing his ashes back home, just my husband and I, and then I didn't want to have to keep an empty urn in the house.
I was amazed at how quickly after his emergency c-section stillbirth we were asked about arrangements. I suppose that the hospital staff knows that the parents haven't even begun to think about the details, and they need some nudging to get the process started. My husband made all the calls. I remember forms and questions, but really most of it is a blur. There is a funeral home near our house so we used them. It cost $500 to have a 2.5 pound baby cremated. I have no idea if that was a discount or not.
Our son was delivered in December in a climate where lakes freeze in winter. For 6 months his cremains sat in a kitchen cabinet, high enough where his curious sister couldn't get at them. In July the three of us, Mother, Father and Sister, went out in a boat on a beautiful evening. My 4 year old daughter was the one to spread her brother's ashes over the lake. She said, "Good bye, Henrick. I wish I could have known you." (or something very close to that) Then she took a bite out of a cookie she brought along and threw the rest in the lake to share with her brother. I didn't say a word. It was the only thing my daughter got to do for her brother and it was perfect.
That was two years ago. We have been back to Henrick's reef twice since then. I think if we had buried him, I would have felt guilty about visiting his grave less and eventually barely visiting at all. I may only visit his final resting place once a year, but it is a happy place for us. And our daughter, now six, never fails to give him a cookie.
I don't recall anyone at the hospital where my daughter died talking to us about funerals. We left her in the arms of a midwife, assured she would not be alone, and that we would be informed each day of her wherabouts. (She had to be transferred to a larger children's hospital for the post mortem which was compulsory as she had been born at home and died unexpectedly.)
I hated not being with her, and thinking of her cold without me. I think I phoned my bereavement mw constantly asking where she was now, right this minute.
I dealt with the funeral arrangements. My husband could not make the phone calls. I remembered reading about a green undertakers locally, a quick google and I found them.
The female undertaker was wonderfully calm and compassionate.
We found ourselves over the next week visiting local cemeteries to see where we wanted Florence to be. The baby garden at our local cemetery was too depressing for words, and I just sobbed at the sight of it. My then four year old just said "We can't bury our baby here".
We also considered a woodland burial, but the closest site was a good 30 minute drive away and I felt too anxious to have her so far away.
We finally settled on a cemetery just a five minute drive away. We knew it was right as soon as we got out of the car, it has a calmness, but warmness about it, and there are hundreds of windchimes in the trees.
We had to pay , I think around £1000 (GBP) for her plot because there is no baby garden (free burials) in the cemetery we chose, but that includes space for my husband and myself.
The funeral directors only charged us for the casket (we had an eco willow basket), flowers, balloons and notecards.
My fil paid for everything.
We gave our funeral director everything we wanted Florence to wear and gifts from her siblings to go in her casket.
We (my husband and myself) were able to visit her two days before the funeral, and she looked so perfectly beautiful, like a porcelain doll.
We had initially hoped to have her at home for a few days before the funeral, but the post mortem took longer than we thought and it was over two weeks before we could bury her, and by that time she was just too delicate to have at home with four older siblings desperate to hold her again.
We had a non religious graveside service performed tenderly by our funeral director. She read some tibetan poems (that I can't remember), and we wrote tiny little notes to Florence to place in her grave before releasing balloons at the moment she was placed in the grave, this moved everyone's focus up to the sky.
Only very close family and friends attended, plus my wonderful midwife.
We had no wake.
The funeral was really very beautiful, and a lot of that was down to the funeral directors. we will always be very thankful to them for their tenderness.
The day before the service we had a viewing at the funeral home for our closest family and my best friend since only my mother had been able to see him in the hospital. Our family was pleased with this and it was another opportunity for my husband, daughter and myself to see him, which we were desperate to do. However, I wish I would have known before hand that even though they did a fantastic job preparing him he just didn't look the same as when we were in the hospital with him. That seems so obvious, but I was a bit surprised, I'm not sure why. I also wasn't crazy about all the makeup that was on him, even though I know that was necessary.
For his actual service we had him dressed in his special outfit - what would have been his coming home outfit - and had an open casket funeral. It was short but lovely. Many people sent or brought flowers and it was beautiful. Our pastor read some scripture that we had specifically picked out and gave a little synopsis of his life and then read what he had prepared for the service. He then read a letter I wrote to Micah. Then we opened the floor up to anybody to say a few words if they wished and it was very sweet to hear people talk about him and what his life and death meant to them. Our pastor then asked everyone present to gather around and pray for us which was so wonderful. We were completely encapsulated by love and support.
Although at first we had only wanted very close family there, we relented when friends asked if they could come which turned out to be the best thing. Originally we had thought we would be more comfortable with a very small service, but it was so wonderful to feel everyone's support and for it to be socially accepted to cry in front of all of them - I think it made the loss real for everyone else being able to see him and to see our devastation, too.
Our almost 3 year old daughter was present at the service and did well, but we had prepared her and she had been to the hospital to meet Micah and had been to the viewing as well. My mother got her a small stuffed lamb to hold during the service and she drew a picture for her brother and put it in the casket with him.
We received so many compliments and good comments from everyone, really, about how beautiful he was and what a lovely service, etc. I can not tell you how it warmed my heart to hear people say he was beautiful. I tear up now just thinking about it. Just that alone would have been enough for me to be glad we opened the funeral to our friends and had his casket open for everyone to see him.
For his urn, we chose a small adult style urn - it is a bit bigger than what we need but it's one we liked and is something we feel we can display in our home if we choose to.
If you're reading this, I'm assuming it's because you have the dreadful task of dealing with the death of your baby, and I'm so very, very sorry.
In the end we decided on a small grave in the lovely kid's corner at the local graveyard. No service in any way, just the two of us and "the official guy", who took the urn from The Dad when we arrived at the gravesite, lowered it into the ground, raised his hat and left.
It took 7 weeks until we could bury him. Why? I still have no idea... I guess someone simply forgot to call us. But I didn't mind, just sort of spaced out the inevitable. My dad took care of everything and I will forever be thankful for that. The gravesite had to be rented for 10 years (that was the maximum) and after that I can decide what's next. Continue on another 10-year-period... or empty out the grave and have him... I don't know... dumped somewhere? I hope by then the laws have changed and I can choose what to do with his ashes (not that I have any idea what I'd do with them). If not, I'll take the next 10 years and see what happens.
Exactly one year after his birth (and 8 months after his dad and I split), I finally saved up the money for a beautiful headstone and had an artist chisel his name into. I asked him for broken bits that would occur during the process and he gave me dozens of nice pieces. I had someone else make me an amulet of it which I wear on some days. I love feeling the weight of it on my chest.
We chose cremation because we will likely not live in this area long term. We got a beautiful tiny urn that holds her ashes; it sits next to a picture of her and is something I look to every day.
We decided to have a private family service at our church. My husband spoke and I read a book that I had special meaning to us. On the Day You Were Born was a book that I had read to Lily throughout my pregnancy and given the circumstances of her life and death now had new meaning. We also planned what music would be used, Smallest Wingless by Craig Cardiff, Held by Natalie Grant, and Hope Now by Addison Road. It was a very special service for us & meant a lot to us.
We had two memorial services for her, one in the city where we live now and one in our hometown. We did both services in a Quaker-style (we are not Quaker or religious at all, but we have loved ones from many religious traditions and found this type of ceremony most meaningful-- it was also how we got married). That meant that anyone who wanted to could share a message. My husband and I went first, followed by many of our family and friends, including the parents of many of Hudson's little friends from day care. Many people talked about Hudson. Many people talked about us. It was incredibly beautiful-- people read poems or children's books, sang songs, engaged the other attendees in song. We concluded the service with a slideshow of Hudson's life, including a few choice videos, set to three of our favorite songs with her: Iz's version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Loudon Wainwright's "Daughter," and "Seasons of Love" from Rent. This last was one of her favorite songs-- she made us repeat it over and over again in the car. And it was so amazingly appropriate for a service celebrating her life. After the service, everyone went outside, blew bubbles for her, and sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," another of Hudson's favorite songs to sing (also the song that the clowns in the PICU played for her after she was already in a coma at the hospital). From now on, we will mark the anniversary of her death the same way-- with bubbles and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."
Not only was the Quaker-style service very meaningful and special, but practically speaking, it was also a very uncomplicated way to plan a service. All we had to do was find a venue (we don't belong to a church) and plan for food, and our friends actually took care of all of those details. No one had to worry about what things should be read, what songs should be sung, who would do what. It was just a very organic-seeming process, and once everyone who felt they needed to say something had done so, we started the slideshow.
I know many people see the memorial service/funeral as something you have to get through. It was certainly that way for us to some degree, but it was also the most perfect celebration of our daughter's all-too-short life that we could ever have imagined, and we were so grateful for that.
My sister-in-law was actually visiting with and holding Addison when she died, so the hospice called us immediately. It was about 9:30pm on a Wednesday night. On our way down to the hospice, I called the funeral director to let him know she died, and to see if he would be available to meet us down there sometime the next day. He offered to meet us there that night. He was so kind and filled out all the paperwork for us, and then I carried Addison's body to his SUV, where he laid her on a pillow and strapped her in for the ride to the funeral home. He did not charge us a dime for her cremation, and even offered a small urn for no charge, if we wanted one. We drove to the funeral home almost a week later and picked up her cremains. It was the first time I had seen cremains.
We did not have a service. I suppose I imagined funeral services should be reserved for people who had an actual life to talk about. It's funny how we carry certain ideas in our heads without knowing their origins. As has been said previously, it would probably have done us good to have a service of some type, just so everyone in our life knew the actual devastation this had caused for us. We did attend a memorial service a few months later put on by the perinatal loss office of the hospital where she was delivered. We took our then-3-year-old son with us, and a poem I had written was read during the service. It was therapeutic for us, and I'm glad we did it.
Not all of Addison's cremains are in the urn (a statue of a couple holding an infant) because they wouldn't fit. We scattered some in the mountains of Colorado when we visited relatives there recently, and we scattered some at the beach in California when we visited my mom and sisters. I have a small baggie with the "leftovers" that I plan to scatter here and there. I hesitate to do it not only because it's an emotionally daunting task, but also because I know that Addison really lives in our hearts, and not wherever her cremains are.
We decided to wash him and dress him, and then cradled him and sang to him as he passed over. His remains were cremated privately and then the ashes sat in a little box in our home for three months, as we were in shock. I think I remember that we had the choice of burying them on private land or scattering them at sea- we chose the latter, as we live near the coast. A friend of my husband's was an expert sailor, so we decided to rent a sailboat and asked him to skipper it for us. I think we thought it would be beautiful.
As it turned out, it was a grey, chilly day and the waves were choppy. I felt totally nauseated the whole trip and threw up just after we got back to shore. My husband felt so ill he spent most of the time below deck. Luckily, we had wonderful family and friends' support on board, but it still felt very grim. When it came time to scatter his ashes, I didn't want to touch them- I felt very squeamish about them. We had also brought white roses though, and we scattered them on the waves afterward.
I think we did the best we could, but it felt like a miserable day. I sometimes wonder if I would have felt better, having a little grave to visit.
My heart goes out to all who will read this, and I encourage you to just do the best you can and be kind to yourselves, come what may.
Isaac died two weeks before our wedding, when I was 24 weeks pregnant. We decided almost immediately that the best way to honor him was to incorporate a memorial into the ceremony. It was a small family-and-friends event as it was, taking place in my hometown in a big beach house that we rented to host all our out of town guests. I will be forever grateful that most of the event had already been organized--the hardest part turned out to be handling my wedding dress. Again, we are lucky; my mother was making a fairly simple maternity dress out of some lovely ivory crepe, and she was able to modify it so that it didn't look too out of place.
For the ceremony, we worked with our officiant (a very close friend who was "ordained" through a website). We wrote a few words about losing our son and how it only strengthened our bond to each other. We played the song Blackbird (the version by Sarah Mclaughlin), which not only was my favorite song to sing to him while I carried him (and I sang to him when I held his tiny body) but was also lyrically appropriate. We also had a small photo album that we showed guests that wanted to see.
It was a few weeks after that when I got a letter saying the cremains were ready. I remember falling to the ground and crying, the letter hit me so hard. The hospital he was born at was 2.5 hours away, but my MIL was happy to drive up and bring him home.
Later, on his EDD, we had a private family memorial--just us, our mothers and a very close friend (and fellow babylost mama). We went to a beach that wasn't far from where I lived when my husband and I were dating, where we'd made many happy memories. We just stood in a circle and each of us said a few words--DH and I couldn't really come up with anything (mostly we just held each other) but our mothers each had things to read (my mother's edited version of the goodbye scene from The Little Prince was particularly poignant). Then we met up with my father (who is disabled and was unable to go to the beach with us) and had a nice little lunch. DH and I spent the weekend in the hotel where Isaac had been conceived, and it was lovely.
Eventually, we want to put some of his ashes in a model rocket and launch it somewhere beautiful--this being DH's tribute. We will keep a small amount as well, for which I hope to get some kind of urn or container. For now, like many others in this post, we have the plastic baggie inside the plastic box that the funeral home gave us.
That box is inside a larger box that also holds one of the blankets he was wrapped in, the tiny clothes he wore in the hospital, and a few other odds and ends that are special to him. We also have a beautiful framed picture of a blackbird that a friend (the same one who came to his memorial) gave us, as we don't want to display pictures (primarily because DH finds them too painful to look at). I have a scrapbook that I am working on from time to time. And my mother used one of the blankets he was wrapped in as backing for a beautiful quilt, which is hanging in our living room.