THE grieving parents of a baby boy who died 53 minutes after he was born have been granted a school to put in a headstone within the churchyard of St Mary’s, Catcliffe, that didn’t comply with the churchyard regulations.
The faculty was granted by the Consistory Court of the diocese of Sheffield.
The parents wished to specific fully their love for his or her lost son in words on the proposed memorial headstone. Their proposal was that it should read: “In loving memory of . . . our precious baby boy, Gone from our sight but not from our hearts, You will probably be missed on a regular basis by Mummy, Daddy and our family, We love you a lot . . . Shine brilliant little star.”
On the bottom, it said: “I like you all of the world to the moon and back without end and ever,” and, on the foot kerb, “We love you son.”
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Sarah Singleton KC, said that “fewer words would convey the messages of those tragically bereaved parents more powerfully” than the words proposed. The Chancellor also said that the feelings were “consistent with the beliefs and doctrines of the Church”, and that it was not for her “to control matters of taste”.
The parents wished to include two etched images on the headstone. One was of a toy giraffe, which the child had before he died, and which was a precious reminder of him to his parents. The second was of a knitted heart, presented to the parents by the hospital to mark their bereavement. The original knitted heart was retained by them, and was a crucial symbol of remembrance for them.
The Chancellor said that the photographs were permitted since the “person to be remembered was a tiny baby who died tragically early”.
The parents also wished the engraved words, the etched giraffe, and the knitted heart, to be in blue. The Sheffield churchyard rules forbade color images, particularly multi-coloured images and pictures. Neither a photograph nor a multicoloured image was now being proposed. The lettering and pictures can be in in the identical color: blue.
While her preference “would firmly be for the lettering and pictures to be engraved in white or gold”, the Chancellor said, she had “concluded exceptionally, provided that this [was] a memorial for a baby boy”, that the lettering and etching might be in blue. The memorial would then have only two colors: the black granite of the memorial stone, and the blue of the engraved lettering and etched images. No other colors or photographed images were approved.
The Chancellor emphasised that her decision “shouldn’t be taken in any way as setting a precedent for other baby memorials either on this churchyard or elsewhere”.
The parents’ design had also included kerbstones, which weren’t allowed under the foundations, but were prevalent within the churchyard. The major reason for the prohibition of kerbstones was that they made the upkeep of grass in churchyards difficult. Given the variety of other kerbstones on this churchyard, that consideration had less weight. The Chancellor, due to this fact, permitted the kerbstone.
