For those who don't live to breathe

You might ask well what could we do, or what should we do? The only wrong answer to that is, to do nothing.

I encouraged my sister to have a funeral for her daughter Catie, we knew Catie was a girl, she, like her brothers and sisters, was conceived with the assistance of IVF. Those that had died before her became statistics of that program but they were also deep wounds in my sister’s heart.

On the day of the funeral we all met at the cemetery, we buried Catie in a tiny little shoe box, we all cried together as we watched the windmills spin on those tiny graves marked by toys and teddy bears, people brought flowers and we remembered that she was born and died. Women cried for my sister and for themselves, secretly envious of the process, people wrote notes and brought dinners and Catie left this world in the ceremony we afford to those who live to breathe.

This ceremony is the one we use to celebrate death and it seemed most appropriate, it was beautiful, it was sad, but most of all it was healing. I am sorry I didn’t know to do the same for my son.

So I hope that times will change and as a society we will begin to recognise the need for a ritual to celebrate the life lost. We now bury those babies that survive to 20 weeks of gestation but when doctors drew the line in the sand they forgot to think of the mother: the mother whose whole world changes the day she realises she is carrying a new life.

It is important that women have choices, and have access to a ritual, a ceremony of goodbyes so they can cry and be comforted before they heal and move on in joy.

It is amazing how much love and happiness a child can bring into the world, even those who have lived for only a few weeks inside the womb. I believe that our purpose in life is to bring love to this world and hope to those we know. For those children who die before they have had a chance to live outside the womb, they have achieved their life’s purpose in a few short weeks, more so than I in more than 20 years. All of these beautiful children have died peacefully, content in the knowledge that they have achieved their purpose in life. Bennett J. Sheridan.