Saturday, April 28, 2012

Build-a-Bear with angel wings

The first Christmas, we went to a Build-a-Bear Workshop and created a bear in Isabelle's memory. The idea came from Suzanne, one of the girls in our support group, and she suggested that it was helpful for her family to have the bear in family photos and at family functions to remind people that there is another member of the family - even if they don't see her. We also selected a white dress and angel wings for the bear.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Remembrance buttons

My family and friends wear these remembrance buttons I made for them each year at the Baby Angels Foundation Walk to Remember in June.

These buttons are inexpensive to make with a total cost of about $3 for the large ones and $2 for the small ones. The plastic buttons are available at craft stores (Michael's, JoAnn Fabrics) and the backs pop off, making it easy to create the image and wording that you want for each button.

Happy Button Making!

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

'Gone From My Sight'

This is one of my favorite poems: "Gone From My Sight" by Henry Van Dyke. My mother gave a copy to me and I have since passed it on to others, and read the words at memorial celebrations.

Photo by Amy Lyon
Gone From My Sight
 
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, 
"There, she is gone"

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, 
"There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

A simple addition

It's such a simple addition, but Mom loves the angel decoration she added to her mini-palm plant in her granddaughter's memory.

The palm plant has grown tremendously over the last four-and-a-half years; it was a tiny thing - maybe six inches tall - when it arrived in a sympathy basket the day after Isabelle's funeral, mixed in with a variety of other plants.

Spring is the time when many retailers and garden centers receive their new shipments of garden ornaments like this one.