Ceremony at plot remembers stillborn babies

IF anyone wondered what the smiles of 50,000 angels looked like, they had only to stare up at the sky, President Mary McAleese declared yesterday.

The wonderful summer day was as close as anyone could get to realising how pleased the babies buried at the Old Angels Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery now felt at being remembered in such a very special way, she said.

The President was addressing the hundreds of parents, relatives and friends who had gathered for the inauguration and blessing of the newly restored plot in the Dublin cemetery where babies were laid to rest until the 1970s.

The cemetery was also one of the few cemeteries that allowed stillborn babies to be buried in consecrated ground. Up to 60 babies are buried in each grave.

President McAleese said they were now celebrating a day when everyone - mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and grandparents could feel free in such a lovingly tended space to open up their hearts where the stories of their dead children were kept hidden.

They could now feel that their stories were deeply understood and sensitively respected.

President McAleese recalled her grandmother who gave birth to 11 grandchildren. Among them was little Bernadette who died very shortly after her birth.

“50 years after Bernadette’s death, she was still spoken of by my grandmother with great passion and great sadness, not in a maudlin way, but to make sure that she was never forgotten.”

Remembering was not easy but it was so very, very important, she said.

“It brings us to this beautiful, sacred place to honour those gorgeous little lives, so loved still, so missed still and so entitled to the dignity, respect and the love that this place draws from us.”

And, she said, the newly restored plot was also part of the healing process. “It will change with the seasons. We are here on a spectacularly beautiful day but people will visit in different moods and circumstances. Some days their heart will be breaking and some days they will surprise themselves with how they found the courage to cope, just to get through, to let joy enter in again and to truly love life,” she said.

“What better way to vindicate the memory of those little angels than for those who have breath in their body to live it to the full,” she said.

A new statue of a child and dove, placed at the entrance to the plot, was donated by the Irish Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society (ISANDS) who spent in the region of €50,000 on the restoration work.

The Parents of Coronation Street star Keith Duffy, Patricia and Sean, whose child Maria Patricia is one of the stillborn babies buried in the plot, laid a wreath for all the babies during the ceremony.

Ms Duffy said ISANDS had helped her bring closure to her daughter’s death 34 years ago.