We had decided to take Seoras back to Fife, where Neil is from, for his funeral and very early on we decided we also wanted to drive him back ourselves. Having spoken with the Undertaker (a family friend) we bought a Moses basket to transport him and to use in place of a coffin. We had a very plain liner made from white muslin (to replace the hideous gingham it came with). I made up the basket with the linen we had bought for his carry cot and on the morning he would have been a week old we collected him from the hospital’s chapel of rest. We put him in the basket and covered it with a slightly larger sheet. Either Neil or I sat with him in the back seat while the other drove. During the stops one of us stayed with him and when we compared notes afterwards we had both had long talks to him and read him the two books we had bought him, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Hairy McLairy from Donaldson’s Dairy.
The funeral was at Kirkcaldy Crematorium on Saturday 17th May. It was conducted by John McLean, Minister at St Margaret’s, Glenrothes, which is Neil’s parents’ local church. We drove Seoras down ourselves and carried him into the chapel together. In his basket with him he had the duck and sheep his grandparents had given him and his two books. We had exchanged the two pieces of Greenstone he had in his pocket for the two we had been wearing, and Neil took back his pendant. Seoras’s Buzzy Bee was still in his pocket. We covered the basket with a large piece of Montgomery tartan cloth. We had planned in having a christening shawl made for him, but instead had to buy cloth to be made into a shawl later. We’ll use it as a christening shawl for our other children. The Octopus sat on top of the shawl and we have kept that as well.
We had asked for family flowers only and donations in lieu to be distributed half to the National Childbirth Trust and half to be used to purchase disposable cameras for donation to the Neonatal Unit at New Cross hospital. We were astounded to receive over £300.
At the moment we still have Seoras’s remains. We’re planning on scattering them in two places. Partly at Kirkcaldy, in the baby garden in the Crematorium grounds and partly somewhere in New Zealand, as yet undecided.
