Wedding dresses become burial gowns for babies
On a quiet street in a senior living development in northeast Fresno, three women in their 80s are hard at work making burial gowns for the youngest and smallest among us.
The dresses are given to Hinds Hospice, which distributes them to grieving families for children who are born premature or medically fragile and die shortly after birth, or for those who had a stillborn baby.
A lot of love is poured into these delicate creations – by the volunteer seamstresses and those donating the fabric. The burial gowns were once wedding, bridesmaid and quinceañera dresses.
Merry Derrick, Peggie Morgan and Antonia Rhodes, along with Rhodes’ daughter, Becky Rowe, have made more than 200 of these small dresses since they started their work a few months ago.
Rowe gets chills collecting donated wedding dresses.
“Tears would stream down my face,” Rowe says. “I got so emotional every time – and I still do, every time. I just felt God was calling me to do something good for someone.”
Inspired by a story about women in Texas who make infant burial gowns, the Fresno, Calif., group started doing the same without knowing who would receive their gifts. Then Morgan learned women with the Athena Philoptochos Society of St. George Greek Orthodox Church were also making these dresses and donating them to the Hinds Hospice Angel Babies program, which serves families in Fresno, Madera and Merced counties.
The women joined forces and, collectively, have made more than 425 infant gowns for the program. They also make cloth diapers and envelopes that can be used to hold hospital paperwork and death certificates, and knit baby blankets and caps – many just the size of a lemon or egg. Rhodes knit 250 of these hats in three weeks.
Every piece is a unique and beautiful creation. Derrick, a retired potter, likes to paint things such as teddy bears and animals on many of the dresses. Morgan recently made a boy’s gown that has a vest adorned with tiny military medals.
The first delivery to Hinds Hospice was in March. Angel Babies helps around 35 families a month, says its program director Kathy Cromwell. Since Angel Babies began in 2001, it’s helped grieving families cope with the deaths of around 3,800 babies.
Hinds Hospice stresses the importance of providing “dignity at the end of life,” Cromwell says, and the handmade burial dresses help with that. It’s important that the babies “get to wear something that’s so beautiful, because they are so beautiful.”
Elaine Sotiropulos with St. George also got the idea for making gowns from the story of the Texas volunteers.
“A wedding gown is such a symbol of beauty, and to take something that is used in one way and is beautiful and to repurpose it into another beautiful use. … The giver receives a lot of that warmth and love,” Sotiropulos says. “It’s different than just buying fabric.”
Typically, around 15 burial gowns can be made from each wedding dress, but one recently yielded enough material to make 35.
Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/living/family/article52326025.html#storylink=cpy
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