Leitir Mór’s Garden of Remembrance

Coping with the death of children is an almost impossible quest – but one Connemara village has provided a place of respite for grieving relatives on the shores of the wild Atlantic.

Leitir Mór’s Garden of Remembrance was only officially opened and blessed last May but already it has provided so many families with a little consolation in the midst of their sorrow.

BY MATT NOLAN

It’s a special place – the only place of its type anywhere in Ireland where parents, grandparents and friends of young children and babies who have died come to spend a few quiet moments of reflection beside the wild Atlantic waves.

The garden is designed around a local expression from the Irish language “Ní líonnann tú an bhearna, maisíonn tú í le Bláthannna an Chuimne” (you cannot fill the gap of loss but you can decorate it with beautiful memories) – and so it is in the remembrance garden beside Leitir Mór parish church.

Parents are helped to live with the pain of loss by way of recalling moments of happiness and joy they experienced during the short but beautiful lives of their deceased children and babies.

The garden is a place of great peace and quiet where everyone is encouraged to sit and reflect and if they wish shed a tear.

This small rock garden was constructed in Connemara granite stone by local craftsmen and masons. The outside high circular wall provides an enclosed garden with semicircular seating and a central water font which slowly oozes water over tiny footprints of children.

There is a tiny eternal light shining from the rear of the small garden recalling the short but bright lives of the children who have died.

Local poet Ciarán Ó Fátharta has just completed a poem to recall and record the children and the Garden of Remembrance.

And the floor of the garden is sprinkled with the names of children from the parish who have died.

During this month of November, the local Parish Priest Fr Michael Brennan PP encourages everyone to make a visit to this very special place.