A happy end to a mother's grief

 LUKY:

YEARS ago a new family moved in next door, consisting of father, mother and a little boy.

I was not working at the time and I often felt sorry for the little boy.

His father worked in another town, left early and came home late.

His mother was a quiet, gentle woman who was always busy inside the house.

Early in the morning she'd wash and dress him neatly, give him his breakfast and put him outside to play.

He'd be outside the whole day, with breaks for his meals and his nap.

Picture story

The mother would smile at me over the fence, a pale, sweet-looking woman.

We never had much to say to each other.

She never visited me but I was in her house once.

As I came in, I gasped.

All over the walls there were pictures hanging of the most beautiful little girl, there must have been about forty different photographs of the same little girl.

The lady saw me looking at the photographs and told me that this was her little daughter who had died a month before they had moved - knocked over by a car and killed instantly.

The mother had gone into a decline.
Whereas her body performed all the motions of caring for her little son, her heart simply wasn't in it.

Every moment of the day when she wasn't cleaning she must have been mourning, looking at all those pictures.

Strangely enough there were only a couple of pictures of her little boy on the walls and on one of these he appeared with his sister.

Happy ending

The story has quite a happy ending because the woman had another little son and became more lively and engaged with life again.

I think the difficulties of another pregnancy and confinement, coupled as they were with a severe case of varicose veins, together with the time she had spent in the grieving process helped her to face life again.

Miscarried

A few years later I was lying in hospital after a miscarriage.

The baby, perfectly formed at three months old, was taken away from me after I had baptised it.

"You cannot bury a foetus which is younger than six months", the doctor told me, rather bluntly, I felt.

"It will be incinerated."

All night I had lain awake, wondering if the baby was dead when I baptised it, if it hurt when it was incinerated, if perhaps they hadn't incinerated it at all but preserved it in a jar for teaching purposes.

My heart was heavy.

Beautiful

That night my campaign against abortion was born.

Having held and baptised that most innocent and beautiful little creation, I realised the horror of the violation of the rights of the unborn, and I have tried to pass on this message ever since.

A friend of mine was pregnant and received offers of counselling on how to destroy her child.

I spoke to her by the hour.

She duly brought the child into the world.

But when I saw the people who once counselled the mother to abort the child now covering it with kisses and buying dolls for her for Christmas, I was thoughtful.

A cheering sight

But where does this tie up with the mother of the little girl?

Well, as I lay in that hospital bed, unable to cry but pining within myself, I though I would never be happy again, having lost the baby.

Then Sean, who had studied psychology and who helped me greatly whenever I was in distress, walked into the ward, a child on one arm, holding a toddler by the hand and another child to each side of him.

"How ungrateful I've been", I thought.

And though my heart still wept for the little incinerated one, I managed to smile at the four others.

"What riches still belong to me.

Look at all these beautiful children.

Why begrudge the other little one its peace in heaven?"

The following Sunday, after receiving Holy Communion at Mass, I suddenly felt that someone was saying to me:

"Jouw kind is bij mij" (your child is with me).

From then on I stopped fretting.

Catherine Nicolette

My mother was having tea in the garden with a friend when she started miscarrying our little brother.

Suddenly she gasped and collapsed.

The next few hours were a whirl of activity, and at about nine years old, I was left behind in the garden terrified my mother was dying.

I was not too sure what to do after that, but I knew enough to know that we were losing the eagerly awaited new arrival to our family.

After a few moments in prayer, I made a little sacred area in the garden with a twig cross.

Years later

Years later I visited the house, long after we had left.

The current lady of the house allowed me to wander around the garden.

I stopped to pray at the little memorial to my brother, twigs long gone but memory never faded.

It's an amazing thing, but whenever I am in physical danger or troubled about a decision to be make, I pray to my little brother for protection and guidance.

And I always get it . . .