Around 9.30 Seoras suddenly took a quiet breath, rather than the usual gasp. He took one more quieter still and then stopped breathing. I carried him down to find a doctor and they came back and confirmed that his heart was still beating but that that would stop in a few minutes. Neil’s parents returned and they too said goodbye. Around 10pm the doctor came back to do the checks that confirmed he was dead. They then left us with him a few more minutes.
A nurse came and helped us bath him, then we prepared his memory book with a lock of hair, his hand and foot prints and a couple of Polaroid photos. We also bathed him - our first chance to check him out all over and laugh at what bits he got from whom (he looks like Neil, but he definitely has my toes and nose).
It was hard leaving him. Very very hard. We contemplated staying at the hospital that night but decided in the end to go home. Partly I knew we couldn’t put off returning to where he was born, partly it was for the comfort of our own things about us. The staff let us put him in a quiet room, looking for all the world like he was asleep in a crib.
We went back to see Seoras the next day, dressed him in his ‘trendy gear’ as the nurse put it (a tie dye top I had bought him and a pair of dungarees). We also placed two pieces of Pounamu/Greenstone (NZ Jade) in his pocket, one for each of us. Maori tradition says that Greenstone has the ability to absorb part of a person’s spirit and we each wore a piece during the 9 days before Seoras’s funeral.
Then we said goodbye and left him in his crib again. On the Friday we took down an Octopus (the first toy) I bought him, a tiny Buzzy Bee toy (actually an ear-ring) as all New Zealand children must have one, together with Neil’s Greenstone pendant, to watch over him until we could collect him again.