THE grieving parents of a baby boy who died 53 minutes after he was born have been granted a faculty to install a headstone in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Catcliffe, that did not comply with the churchyard regulations.
The faculty was granted by the Consistory Court of the diocese of Sheffield.
The parents wished to express fully their love for their 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 be missed everyday by Mummy, Daddy and our family, We love you so much . . . Shine bright little star.”
On the base, it said: “I love you all the world to the moon and back forever 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 these tragically bereaved parents more powerfully” than the words proposed. The Chancellor also said that the sentiments were “consistent with the beliefs and doctrines of the Church”, and that it was not for her “to regulate matters of taste”.
The parents wished to incorporate two etched images on the headstone. One was of a toy giraffe, which the baby 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 an important symbol of remembrance for them.
The Chancellor said that the images were permitted because 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 colour images, particularly multi-coloured images and photographs. Neither a photograph nor a multicoloured image was now being proposed. The lettering and images would be in in the same colour: blue.
While her preference “would firmly be for the lettering and images to be engraved in white or gold”, the Chancellor said, she had “concluded exceptionally, given that this [was] a memorial for a baby boy”, that the lettering and etching could be in blue. The memorial would then have only two colours: the black granite of the memorial stone, and the blue of the engraved lettering and etched images. No other colours or photographed images were approved.
The Chancellor emphasised that her decision “should not be taken in any way as setting a precedent for other baby memorials either in this churchyard or elsewhere”.
The parents’ design had also included kerbstones, which were not allowed under the rules, but were prevalent in the churchyard. The main reason for the prohibition of kerbstones was that they made the maintenance of grass in churchyards difficult. Given the number of other kerbstones in this churchyard, that consideration had less weight. The Chancellor, therefore, permitted the kerbstone.
