Emma's Rainbow

Emma’s Rainbow

We stumbled upon this lovely symbol quite by accident and, over time, it has stuck.

While we were at Great Ormond Street we would take it in turns to sit with Emma in the evening. The Cardiac nurses used to have Magic FM playing quietly in the background to sooth the babies.

The first time I head Iz’s version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” playing was in the very early days on Cardiac Critical Care 4. I was watching one of the nurses gently comforting a baby who was attached to a Berlin Heart (an amazing mechanical heart). He was very distressed and she was quietly singing and talking to him. I remember thinking how wonderful it was that this was the way these amazing nurses treated our children when they didn’t know anyone was watching.

Over the next few weeks we both heard that song played night after night (it was very popular at the time). We never commented on it to each other but we both came to associate it with Emma.

Just after Emma died a good friend of mine rang me in tears. She said she had just been looking out of her window and thinking of Emma and she had seen the most beautiful rainbow she could remember. She said that she “would never be able to see a rainbow again without thinking of Emma”. I was deeply moved and very pleased. I love the idea that other people think of our daughter and that she is held in their memories as well as ours.

My friend wasn’t kidding either. The rainbow made the news across London. As you can see from the picture linked below it was pretty special.

Neil and I started to talk and realised that we had both begun to make the same link between Emma and rainbows. We decided to play Iz’s version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” at her funeral.

A rainbow is a lovely innocent symbol that means many things to many people around the world. For us it will always bring us a moment closer to our daughter.

Jane Braddy

The actual double rainbow, from flickr (taken at Wimbledon)