Greed and profit have no place at a baby’s grave

Allowing grieving parents who have lost a baby to bury and remember their child in peace is not an unreasonable request. So why won’t the Brisbane City Council allow them to do so, asks Frances Whiting.

In a world that feels increasingly fractious, where warring tribes grow more vocal and the things that divide us appear to be gaining on the things that unite us, there is still some common ground we all walk upon, some news that makes us catch our collective breath, and some hurts we all feel.

The death of a child is one such instance. It sparks a universal sadness when we hear of it, and it is the deepest fear that dwells in many parents’ hearts.

The phrase “losing a child” is both widely used and wildly inaccurate. Any parent whose child has died will tell you that child is never lost to them, but with them always, from their first lusty, or weak, muted cries, to their last — and beyond that, always.

RELATED: Brisbane City Council baby memorial fee hike

It is the parents who are lost, particularly in those first, terrible days and weeks and months after a child’s death, a period a father I once spent time with following the death of his baby son described as “like being caught in one of those mazes you feel like you will never find you way out of”.

And when these parents are in the thick of it, when they literally don’t know which way to turn, it is a particularly solitary journey.

The loss of a baby is something few can understand. Picture: supplied

The death of a child is one of the loneliest things in the world, and the truth is there are no real words of comfort, no pithy “sending thoughts and prayers” phrases that ease the pain.

There is only practical help — the dropped off lasagne, the picking up of other children, the cleaning of houses and the walking of dogs, all the tiny human kindnesses we can offer each other in the face of some very big traumas.

Or, the making of the exception to the rule.

The Brisbane City Council recently announced an increase of 22 per cent a year — to $687 — in its baby memorial gardens at Hemmant and Mount Gravatt.

The fee includes a plaque and the burial of the child’s ashes, and the cost, the BCC’S Deputy Mayor Krista Adams says, is due to the outsourcing of memorial plaques to specialist stone masons, due to silica dust, and safety concerns.

RELATED: Brisbane City Council opposition vows to revise fee hike on baby burials

The 22 per cent increased price must be paid in total, and there is not an option to pay in instalments for parents who want, but can’t afford, this service upfront.

I don’t think instalments should be available for this particular service either. You know why? I think it should be free.

Rather than raise the price, why not wipe it entirely? Picture: iStock

I think that — especially as Deputy Mayor Adams pointed out in her argument about the massive fee hike that the service had only been used “once in the last four months” — the council could find the odd $687 somewhere in their yearly budget to cover this service.

Perhaps, for example, the LNP council could shave off a few thousand dollars from the $478,000 put aside for its advertising campaign before next year’s council election. The one that no doubt contains information about how much they care for their community.

Asked if the BCC would reconsider the price hike, Cr Adams pulled out one of the oldest get-out cards in the book. The one that parents have given children for centuries. The one that says ‘if I give you a lolly, everyone will want one,’ or ‘If I let you watch television past nine o’clock, all your brothers and sisters will want to as well.’

Cr Adams said: “The fees and charges for council are many and varied, and the reality is if we start waiving fees and charges, where do we stop?”

With respect, I’ll tell you where I think we could do just that, Deputy Mayor.

I think we could stop at a tiny gravesite. I think we could stop at parents trying to work out what to say about their child on a plaque; what words they could possibly use to explain all the ways their baby was spectacular. I think we could stop at sending an invoice for $687 for the right to mark your son or daughter’s life. To say that he was here, or she was here, and that they mattered.

I think we could stop there, Councillor.

Frances Whiting is a columnist for The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Mail.