I was only too glad to oblige. In the event I did very little talking, I just listened and felt deeply privileged to listen. I listened to a mother describing the suffering of a family, suffering to see a young child suffer. A family caring for a child who they know is dying. The mother becomes a minister of the Eucharist to bring Holy Communion to her daughter. Yet the child in some mysterious way becomes a minister ministering to her family and to the priest who visits her.

Mia came to Communion,
In faith beyond her years.
Mother brought Communion,
Mother’s joy and Mia’s.

Mia gave so many gifts
To all her family.
Mia sharing Eucharist,
Her Special Ministry.

A Bailey

Mia’s Mother shares her thoughts with us below

On our wedding day a guest congratulated us both and said “Well you’ve got married, you’re going to have another baby and move, all in the same year. If you survive that you will survive anything”. Those words have remained with me ever since.

I had always considered my family to be pretty “normal”. I had been brought up as a Catholic and although I had “strayed” as a teenager, I returned to the church of my own accord. My daughters were brought up with the Church as being an important part of their lives, they were all baptized as babies, attended church, and would say their prayers before they went to bed: but I always made sure never to force my faith on them.

Then in March ’96 my youngest daughter Mia who was just eighteen months, was diagnosed with cancer. I couldn’t understand how my baby could have such an awful disease and thought that this sort of thing only happened to someone else.

Mia went through many courses of treatment over the next year and ten months, many of which left her with permanent side effects and disabilities and during that time she relapsed three times. I would have to be honest and say that as time went on and Mia was clearly not getting any better, I found myself becoming more and more “detached” from the Church. I found myself becoming a bitter person. I hated God for doing this to Mia and our family.

Then in August last year, we were told that Mia’s condition was terminal. I hated the world and everyone that was in it.

My parish priest Canon Devane asked if we would like Mia to make her first Holy Communion. Although I thought it would be a nice idea, I also remember thinking “She’s so young, she is only three years old, she wouldn’t understand what it all meant anyway”. How wrong I was.

Mia made her first Holy Communion on 27th September 1997. On receiving the Eucharist for the first time, with hands joined, she said the loudest “Amen” that anyone could ever imagine. That “Amen” always remained just as loud from that day on every time she received Holy Communion. She was then and always remained very much in touch with God. She became ever more determined to go to church and receive Holy Communion. She made it clear on many occasions that it was not just bread she was receiving. I became a special minister of the Eucharist to bring her Holy Communion at home if she was too unwell to go to church. She was always annoyed when she couldn’t go to church.

On one occasion it had taken Gary and myself so long to get Mia comfortable in her buggy that I didn’t really want to get her out once we got to church, so our priest said that he would come down to her at communion to bring her the Eucharist, to which she replied “Oh no you won’t, I want to get it myself”, so I had to push her up to the altar in her buggy to get it for herself.

On another occasion, two days after Christmas in fact, Mia was sitting in church mumbling away. Thinking she was talking to me I said, “Sorry darling, what did you say?” To which she replied, “Mum I’m not talking to you, I’m asking God to take the pain away from my tummy”.

Mia was confirmed on 13th December 1997 at home. Our priest chose the name Josephine for her and she was very proud of her “new” name. She developed a love for our priest, that she radiated quite openly and he too for her.

Mia died peacefully on the 5th January, holding a little wooden cross that my cousin had given to her. She was happy the day she died, she asked to see various important people in her life that day and had asked to go to the park, to play in the garden and to go shopping, all things that she liked to do. She asked to go in her own bed at about 3.15pm that afternoon and died at 4.30pm with all the important people in her life around her. She was 3½ years old.

She had called me into the room two days before she died to tell me that she was going to get better. I lay beside her that night crying, thinking “She really thinks she’s going to get better”. She opened her eyes then and said to me “Mum please don’t get sads, you’ll make me sad”. ‘Sads’ was what she called tears. She pulled her sleeves over her hands and wiped all my tears away then cuddled me. Since that day I have always wondered whether her dying was really what she meant when she said she was going to get better. I wouldn’t say that Mia knew she was going to die but I certainly think that she knew something different was going to happen. She had an amazing sense of calm about her during her last few days.

Mia achieved so much in her short but complete life and many many people have been touched by Mia in some way, something they all say will remain with them forever. She always managed to touch your emotions in some way, whether it was one of her wickedly cheeky grins, or to tell you she loved you or by her many attempts to be as “normal” as everyone else. But the thing which sticks in everyone’s minds was her legacy of love for God throughout. Mia’s amazingly strong faith has certainly brought me back to God, I have continued to be a Special Minister and feel that this is Mia’s contribution to the church. My oldest daughter became an altar server three weeks after Mia died of her own accord, and my husband Gary was received into the church on Easter Sunday.

I miss my daughter tremendously every minute of every day, I am certainly not afraid of dying as I trust God will take care of me as he has with Mia. I long for the day when I will be with her again. Mia has taught me so much.

My dad wrote in a letter to me since Mia’s death “Every once in our life, someone will come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never the same”.

How true this is.