Families help with Angels

Planting seeds for healing

THIRTY-SIX years ago, a former Bendigo woman gave birth to her first child.

The baby was stillborn. Paramedics transported the then 20-year-old mother and her child to Bendigo hospital.

The woman, who asked to be quoted by her first name only, spent a week receiving treatment. 

During that time, Mary-Anne said she was discouraged about talking about her loss, especially to other mothers.

“It is a taboo subject,” she said.

Mary-Anne said she was told her daughter had been buried as she was leaving the hospital.

“Nobody told me where she was – they just told me she had been buried,” she said. 

“I wasn’t even asked.”

She discovered Sarah was laid to rest at Bendigo Cemetery, in what is now the Garden of Angels, 18 years later. 

“After my father was buried, because the undertaker happened to recognize the surname and told me where she was,” Mary-Anne said.

She said the undertaker was extremely helpful and told her where Sarah had been buried, that she had been treated with respect and was buried in a small white coffin in the Garden of Angels. 

That knowledge gave Mary-Anne a sense of closure. 

“Because up until then, I didn’t know where she was or what had happened to her and you have this thing in the back of your mind – you think she has been thrown out in the rubbish,” she said.

She rang the Bendigo Advertiser after learning the Garden of Angels was being beautified. 

Mary-Anne said it was a nice place, but was appreciative that Remembrance Parks Central Victoria was making it more so, and improving accessibility for elderly people. 

“On her 30^th birthday I sat up there with a balloon and a cupcake, by myself,” she said.

“It will be a bit nicer if I am not sitting on the rocks.”

Mary-Anne had three more children, who are now adults, but has never forgotten her firstborn. 

“It is something you don’t forget, but you learn to live with it,” she said. 

She is a member of Sands Victoria and its Older Loss Support Group, which provides peer-support services for bereaved parents.

Mary-Anne said people could contact Sands Bendigo on 0419 496 443 or the Sands National Support line on 1300 072 637.