Annabel's Candlelight Fund

November is the season of Remembrance and a time in our Church year when we can pause and remember our loved ones and mark the Feast of All Souls. Nina, who has a CAFOD Candlelight Fund for her daughter, Annabel, shares how this season has taken on a new significance for her since her loss.

My darling daughter Annabel died suddenly on May 9th 2022 and our world changed forever. She was my greatest ally and kept me young and constantly challenged. Her 'why' questions started young and continued throughout her short life. Every Christmas she donated generously to her special charities for refugees and the homeless. However, she also thoroughly enjoyed life and loved bubbly. She spoke five languages and worked for a UN agency absolutely refusing to admit it was anything special. She was also a great justice warrior and helped out with my CAFOD volunteering and was better at fundraising than me when selling my marmalade outside church.

We both went down with COVID at the start of May 2022, a particularly nasty dose that sent our hearts racing. After a week or so I began to feel better but she didn't which was odd. I encouraged her to see the doctor but she told me she was fine and not to fuss and then, suddenly, in the early hours of Monday morning she died. Her heart had stopped. Emergency services couldn't manage to save her. My beautiful girl had gone.

It is so easy for a funeral service to be gloomy and depressing. But Annabel’s wasn't. It took place on a very hot day in June. Her coffin remained in church whilst people gathered in the hall for refreshments. Some brought their drinks and nibbles in to gather around Annabel. Someone put their cuppa on the coffin amidst the sunflowers. Sarah, Annabel's early babysitter and lifelong friend, had made a posy of flowers using pages from Hairy Mclary from Donaldson's Dairy, which she used to read to Annabel. Later we all walked to the cemetery nearby where the burial took place.

We have survived. Somehow we've come through it and achieved a kind of acceptance and peace; being an advocate of CAFOD has helped enormously. The Candlelight Fund run by Maggie has shed warmth and light on it. So many mothers in poorer countries lose many children to conflict, hunger and disease. Thank God for organisations like CAFOD who are attempting to right this wrong. And through Annabel’s Candlelight Fund, we want to be part of this change, in her memory.

I can now feel gratitude for Annabel’s 39 years with me and how the world benefitted from her presence. And now, on that solemn Feast of All Souls in November when the weather's dark and cold and generally wet, I remind myself that she is there with them. I suspect she's brightened it up no end. She's humanised heaven for me.