Memories Treasured

I was so surprised to receive a text earlier from Mairead to say that the interview she filmed in Nov 2010, for her TV series Midwives on BBC Alba, was being repeated tonight and again on Friday at 10.30pm.

Watching it again I was taken right back to that month. We had lost Eilidh Beth just a month and a half before the interview and I still had jelly baby belly! But more than that it was still all so raw! We met in the room next to the scan rooms, beside ward 8. The room that Andrew and I were taken to after the 32 week scan which showed our wee lass was unexpectedly now very ill. I sat on the same part of the sofa with Fiona, the antenatal screening coordinator and my rock, sitting opposite me, off camera, to give me support and strength.

Mairead sat next to Fiona and Jane (I hope I've remembered her name correctly!) stood in the doorway with her camera. Mairead made it so easy to talk about my pregnancy and Eilidh Beth's birth and funeral! And it really warmed my heart that Eilidh Beth touched them.

It is amazing the way The Lord works as it was the experience of speaking publicly that spurred me on to explore memory boxes for Raigmore Hospital and it was within a matter if weeks that I met Sara and discovered SiMBA, Simpson's Memory Box Appeal. The rest is, as they say, history!

But I am not sure if Fiona, Mairead and Jane realise that they were so instrumental in what SiMBA is now achieving in the Highlands of Scotland. My hope is that when I am reinterviewed this week for the second series I can communicate my thankfulness at what they have encouraged me to be able to do through SiMBA, which ultimately helps me honour the memory of both our Heavenly lassies, Alex and Eilidh Beth.

The photo was taken today at the Tree of Tranquility garden at the Floral Hall and is the new bench, installed so that bereaved parents and family members can soak up the peace of the garden made to honour their babies memories.