Touching Hope, Sally

Touching Hope.
Sally.
Photograph.

:::

about the piece.
Sally describes the photograph, "This is a picture I took just a few weeks after I had Hope. Not long after she was born, I had my favourite photo of her made in to a canvas print for my wall and when it first arrived, I couldn't stop touching it. I was like that with all photos of Hope initially. I would just run my fingers over them and try to remember running my fingers over her soft, cool face. Especially my lap top screen, which I had a photo of her as my screensaver on.

"It seemed so pathetic and sad to be touching photos, touching my laptop screen, touching a canvas print to try and remember how it felt to touch her, but that was all I had and all I still have. Just one of my many, slightly crazy, grief behaviours that only other grieving mothers and fathers will ever understand. I guess it is like sniffing their clothes and blankets, trying to still drink them in when the smell has clearly already long faded.

"I guess I just thought for a website that is for and about dead babies, we don't always see a lot of the dead babies themselves. So this is my photo, Touching Hope."

about the contributor.
Sally is a mother to her lost daughter Hope, stillborn at 40 weeks and 5 days in August 2008 and her brand new son Angus, born alive and screaming in November 2009. She maintains the blog Tuesday's Hope.