Day 5: Rituals
The only ‘ritual’ I can
really think of that we do is have a birthday for Lily each year. And it always involves cake from a delicious cake shop! But this happens
at different places, different times and we often do different things.
There are also many things we have done over the last 7 years to remember her, on her 5th
birthday I got my first, and only, tattoo, we have had a memory bear made in the
same outfit she was buried in (which took a lot of hunting and an incredible facebook
journey to track down!) and I have, just today, received a Huggable Heart, a
heart shaped cushion weighing the same as Lily weighed at birth. And while
there is no way I will ever forget Lily, these are things I can do in her name
I guess. I don’t need tokens to remember her, I don’t need her name on my wrist
to know she existed, but it is there as a tribute to her I guess.
1 common
theme that is hard to give up, is helium balloons. On the day of her funeral,
many loved ones got together before the funeral and with the help of a couple
of big helium tanks, inflated over 200 balloons, in a rainbow of colours. After
the funeral we released the majority of them, there is a beautiful shot of
these flying off in a (unintentional) heart shape. We took the last 30 or so
balloons to her burial and released them there. There was one sneaky little
pink balloon that refused to fly away. It hovered around for awhile and when
all the other balloons, with a bit of encouragement, it decided it was time to
go, in a completely different direction to all the other balloons, and more
beautifully, it flew up through a cloud formation shaped like a heart. So we
often incorporate balloons in our ‘rituals’. My tattoo has a balloon, her head
stone has a balloon and when I see balloons, Lily is usually my first thought.
We celebrated Lily right through our pregnancy, and we continue to do so today. Because even though she may not be with us now, her life will always be worth celebrating.
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