Living with Cerebral Palsy 🍋🍋

Thursday 22 September 2016

A ghost of a dress..

Today I said goodbye to my wedding dress.
I didn't, as I perhaps liked to imagine on the day that I wore it, give it to my daughter. I haven't kept it for her to play dress-up with, or try on, or laugh at, or use the material for christening gowns of her own years away from now. Because I can't. My wedding dress hangs like a ghost in my wardrobe haunting me with the conversations I would never have with Elin about it and with images of her dancing around in it,  that I would never see.
 I'll never know what I would have done with it, if things had been different. If Elin had been different. But what I do know is what I will definitely never be able to do with it, which is share it with my daughter, on any level. So there it has hung, for the past 11 years silently mocking my idle daydreams from the corner of my cupboard. I've never even put it back on myself, not since Elin was born anyway. I harboured an in-built fear that it might hang there forever until I was old and demented and would be tempted to dress in it once more, gliding around a cobwebbed home like Miss Havisham. Yikes.
So, what do you do with a wedding dress you don't think you want anymore?
Well, in my case you send it to an absolutely heartbreakingly amazing charity, which I heard of a few months ago. The more I read up on their work, the more it touched my heart. I emailed them so long ago I'd almost forgotten about it and recently received an email back, saying they could finally accept my dress (this length of response time is a good thing, it happily means they have lots of donations) The charity I sent my wedding dress to is called Cherished Gowns UK.
http://www.cherishedgowns.org.uk
They take wedding dresses and using a family of volunteer dressmakers from across the UK they turn the dresses into miniature gowns for stillborn or premature babies to be buried in.
God.
The testimonials are amazing.
But how I wish nobody ever needed one of these little gowns.
I know I have never experienced this. I cannot really imagine the pain- I'm not pretending I can. But someone close to me has and so I do feel I have some of an insight, however fleeting. I will also remember the moment the midwives delivered Elin and the cry that never came for the rest of my life. It's etched on my heart. A life changing silence. But, how lucky we were. The silence was not finite. It so easily could have been and it is for so many Mummies (far too many, still, in this day and age). And I imagine those Mummies, and their dreams and their hopes and how they can drain away, along with the colour from you face and the blood from your heart and the map of your future, just as quickly as a blue line can pop up on a pregnancy test. And I think, if I was them I wouldn't want to think of anything. I definitely wouldn't want to try and find something appropriate for my sleeping baby to wear. But I would have to.. and I wouldn't want dolls clothes, or clothes I might spot another baby wearing at the supermarket. I would want something special. Perhaps it would bring me some small comfort that someone far away had donated their most treasured dress for this purpose. Perhaps the fact that they understood and cared, even from an almighty distance would help me feel I wasn't alone in my torture. I think that would mean a lot.
So, I donated my dress and packed it up yesterday and I wasn't even sad. I have no right to be sad about losing a dress when so many have lost so much more, so much that we were so close to losing, too.
It's just a dress. It's what it represents that's important and you can't give a promise away to charity. A promise lives in your heart, not your wardrobe.
Sharing it with Elin is not, in the great scheme of things, important. All that is important is that she is here with us, sharing our own special moments everyday. That is worth a thousand material possessions and more and we never, ever take it for granted.



EDIT: Since originally writing this post, one of the talented seamstress's at Cherished Gowns was kind enough to send me photographs of the tiny outfits she created form my dress. They were absolutely stunning and really brought it home to me what the charity does. If there was an ounce of uncertainty in me about what I had done, it was completely eradicated as soon as I saw the photographs. Amazing.

xxxxxxxxxxxx


Mummy Times Two
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12 comments

  1. oh my heart, what a beautiful post, I truly have a lump in my throat now. I so feel for you and your hopes and dreams, I know how that feelslike. I think what you have done is amazing, you've thought of someone else who is in pain and shared something beautiful with them. xx #postsfromtheheart

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  2. Wow - this is such a great idea but must have taken a lot for you to do. My wedding dress is in a box on top of my wardrobe and has been there ever since my wedding day. This is food for thought #postsfromtheheart

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    1. Thanks so much! It was a difficult decision at first but as soon as my mind was made up I didn't waver (thank goodness!). Since I wrote this the seamstress has sent me pictures of the little gowns she created from it and they were amazing. It really brought it all home to me what a fabulous charity it is x

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  3. Sending so much love. You are an incredible lady doing an incredible thing. It's ok to be sad about what might have been, I gave myself permission to do that long ago. It doesn't mean you care less about the pain of others. You obviously care a great deal. It just means that sometimes we all need some time to acknowledge that our lives are different that we thought they would be, thanks so much for linking up such an incredible post to #PostsFromTheHeart

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    1. Thanks so much! After I thought about it, it seemed like a no-brainer to me. A few months on since I wrote this post and I haven't regretted my decision! The seamstress was amazing and sent me pictures of the gowns she created from my dress- wow. That was a very emotional moment! Thanks so much for reading and for the feature :-)

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  4. i sounds like a wonderful reason to give your dress, and one which provide some solace to many. Such a moving post x #postsfromtheheart

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    1. Thank you! It really is an amazing charity and such a good idea I think! x

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  5. That is an amazing, generous, personal and all out wonderful thing to do. I have heard of that charity. Their work is so touching and personal. Great post. Well done you!
    #postsfromtheheart

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    1. Thanks so much! It's incredible the work that they do x

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