When it's time to let go

By Margaret Clayton LAST WEEK in our moving story about Brionni Alexander, we mentioned that when she died her parents were able to spend time with her in the Rainbow Room at Rachel House. Jean Johnstone, from Perth, contacted us to say the room sounded as if it was a very special place, and asked to hear more about it. The Rainbow Room is indeed special. It’s where parents have time to grieve if their child has just died.  That time can be as short or as long as they need it to be. The family have peace and privacy to weep, to pray, to hold their child in their arms, or just to sit quietly by the bedside. No-one interrupts, no-one hurries the grieving process. This is a timeless place, an oasis of tranquillity where families can gather their thoughts and spend those last precious moments with their child. It’s a suite of two rooms comprising a small sitting room and a bedroom which overlooks a private walled garden.  The decor is restful and calm. The bereaved parents use the sitting room as a bolthole to get away from the other seven families staying in the hospice. If they want to talk alone with the chaplain, receive counselling from staff or spend time with brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts or uncles, they can do so in this small welcoming room.  Facilities to make tea and coffee are available. Some find it a good place to sit and plan funeral arrangements.  Next door in the bedroom there’s special cooling equipment which means the room never overheats. Parents often bring the dead child’s favourite cuddly toy, their comfort blanket, posters of pop stars they enjoyed or mementoes of the football team they supported into the room to make it more personal and homely. Sometimes they talk or sing to their child. Sometimes they play music. “It’s important when someone has just died,” says a member of staff, “that the family can have time to remember and celebrate all the qualities which made their child unique.  “They say their goodbyes with all the familiar things of home around them. Some parents sit for two or three days with their beloved child.  “One mum found it particularly hard to let go. She put her baby in a pram and wheeled her around the hospice.  “Everyone understood why she needed to do this. We all grieve in our own way and that’s allowed here.” Outside in the private garden are two fountains which gently splash. There are flowers, shrubs and greenery, the buzzing of insects and the sound of birds.  The Rainbow Room and garden should be the saddest place on earth. Instead there is an atmosphere of deep peace and comfort.  A place where it’s possible for acceptance to put down its first fragile roots.

You can e-mail us at: hospice@sundaypost.com