Catch a falling star...

A few days ago I received an invitation from a Liverpool based baby hospice to link to their web-site. I was happy to comply, not least because I am flattered when anybody wants to associate themselves with my offerings. I quickly received a letter of thanks from the webmaster, a lady called Lyn, an exuberant young woman who, without benefit of formal training, has mastered the arcane mysteries of web design and is a highly successful businesswoman. She does, of course, gives her services to the hospice voluntarily.

Lyn also mentioned that out of 200 odd enquiries only 19 site owners had answered in the affirmative, a fact that I found difficult to comprehend, until I remembered someone who once declined my offer to link to his site because it might divert traffic from his masterpiece. Yeah right, Leonardo, I understand!

I was invited to drop in and have a coffee, meet the staff and see the babies. My first impulse was to find a way to maintain my near 100% record of avoiding things I find difficult if not impossible to cope with. However, after a few days of being conscious that I was somehow dodging the column I asked Lyn if I could come over with a view to writing a piece about the work that they do. She didn't hesitate and so it was that I found myself alighting from a bus in Knotty Ash with the intention of using a familiar short cut to find my way to the hospice.

As it was I found myself staring in disbelief as all the old well known landmarks had been swallowed up by new developments. The swimming baths where I had learnt to swim with the help of my uncle Michael had vanished and in its place was a weed infested space which seemed far too small to have accommodated the huge glass and concrete palace that was my childhood summer home.

In spite of my once being so familiar with the area that I could have drawn a map of it in the dark, with invisible ink, I had to ask the way to Leyfield Triangle. My Gran’s pre-fab was gone and a Bingo hall now squatted in its place. Of course, in retrospect, my dashed expectations were all part of a piece because my visit to Zoe’s Place would quickly demolish many of my misplaced pre-conceptions.

As I walked up the drive toward the health centre which housed the hospice I noticed a young couple extricating two young children from their car. One of the children, a baby of about twelve months old had a tube attached to his nostril, while the other end was located in a portable device which, as I later found out, was a feeding pump. I couldn’t help but notice that the young mother looked drawn and tired and so I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that we all had the same destination.

While I was sitting in the reception area, an arm’s length from the young couple, waiting for Ann, the hospice manager, to collect me, I was acutely aware that I was dreading the prospect of being in the presence of those distressed babies. I asked myself what was I doing there and I was tempted to leave my small offering with the elderly receptionist, make an excuse and flee, but just then Ann came down the stairs and shook my hand.

We mounted some stairs and I soon found myself in a brightly decorated room, the ceilings of which were festooned with kites depicting such childhood favourites as Bob the Builder and the Tellytubbies. I sought refuge on one of the bright blue couches which lined the walls of the homely looking room and watched a tiny girl in a powder blue jump suit energetically propelling herself along the floor. It wasn’t until she turned to look at me that I realised she was a Down’s baby. She was so pretty and bubbly that it was almost impossible to believe that she had only a very limited life expectancy, especially as many such children live a long life.

Just as Ann brought the coffee in the young couple entered the room and while the oldest child stared fascinated at the kites they settled down opposite me and adjusted their other baby’s feeding tubes. It was then that I became aware of a young nurse hovering close by, whose demeanour betrayed her eagerness to hold the baby. The father, who had been cradling the baby, smilingly offered her to the nurse who clasped the infant to her as if he were a prize.

Ann, who had been observing the scene, said, in mock reproach,
“ You could hardly wait to pick him up could you?”
The young nurse merely smiled. To have denied the charge would have been absurd.

As the couple, who were there to arrange respite care, left to be taken round the hospice, to see if it met with their approval, Ann asked me to accompany her on my own guided tour.

Within minutes, the dread I had felt was evaporating and by the time I left Zoe’s Place I felt oddly uplifted. This barely credible transformation was the result of listening intently to a woman who was so utterly besotted by her charges that the gloom which had enveloped me all day began to lift as I became more and more absorbed by both the ethos and the atmosphere of Zoe’s Place. It is difficult to feel anything else in the presence of people who resolutely and joyfully celebrate life in defiance of death, even when the latter appears to have all the high cards.

Ann took me to the chapel where the babies are not mourned as being dead but where their lives and tiny, but nonetheless measurable, achievements are celebrated. I caught sight of a photograph of a casket, the size of which confused me into thinking that there must have been children older than five years old who had died in the hospice. I put this to her and she smilingly told me that when Zoe’s babies are buried they take with them all of their favourite objects of love, such as cuddly toys, videos, cards etc, and so the caskets were built almost twice the size of the infants.

I was reminded of the Pharaohs who were buried with all the signs of their earthly might, and I couldn’t help feeling that Zoe’s babies were far more powerful because they were interred with the symbols of the love they had inspired.

In spite of Ann’s strength of spirit the emotional strain was such that I was glad when she led me into the ‘light room’. This was where babies were taken when they were overtired or in need of relaxation. There were bubbling water filled tubes of coloured beads, and a mirror ball splashed colours on the murals while curtains of brightly glowing fibre optics hung in the door openings.

It was a glorious hybrid of Santa’s Grotto and a Disco which was a source of obvious delight to the baby who lay on the miniature water bed following the random patterns created by the slide projector. I almost shouted ‘Bo selector!’

It was during this interlude that Ann told me about the role of Mohamed Al Fayed in the maintenance of Zoe’s Place. I was astounded to learn that the millionaire owner of Harrod’s, who for years has been the object of vilification by certain members of press, was not only a benefactor to Zoe’s but also a visitor. When she told me how she had seen the expensively dressed Al Fayed down on his knees playing with the babies, his suit smeared with the chocolate he had given them, I couldn’t help thinking that he ought to desist from trying to become a British citizen because as far as Zoe’s babies are concerned he already has a passport to a better place.

The most poignant yet elevating moment of my visit came when I was looking at the photo gallery of the children, most of whom were dead. Every child was smiling, happily displaying their milk teeth and I unsuccessfully attempted to console my myself with the thought that while no tooth fairy would ever redeem them for a bright coin, neither would they suffer the pain of toothache and its attendant terrors. Then, as I looked at the smiling faces I recalled my uncle Stan telling me, as we stood in the frosted orchard all those years ago, that some of the stars we could see had died millions of years ago but the light they had emitted still shone across the universe. Amen.

In the confusion of emotions however, a thought of crystal clarity struck me. These babies, the objects of so much love, reinforced my belief in the human spirit of compassion, a belief which had been kindled years ago when I read of an archaeologist who had unearthed a grave some six thousand years old. The grave had contained two female bodies. One was a grown woman of some importance which was signified by the fact that she was shrouded in a woven blanket. The other was a teenage girl, who had spent her life in pain because her body was so malformed that it couldn’t have been otherwise. The beautiful thing was that the girl too was wrapped in an equally expensive blanket.

During the intervening millennia there have been many callous and crude attempts to deny such babies a place in life, but at Zoe’s Place there is living proof that the essential impulse of humans is a loving one and it will survive. When I listened to Ann’s irrepressible fondness for her babies I found myself looking at the dark rings around her eyes and I knew that just as we could date the age of a tree by its rings, so we could pinpoint the time when her charges passed away. However, her attitude can be summed up by the lyrics of Graham Nash’s song,
“Rejoice! Rejoice! We have no choice, but to carry on!”
Thank you Ann for the coffee, the optimism and the Teddy Bear.

It is already much loved.

John Williams