Mother Allows Daughter to Cuddle with Sister's Corpse

Mother Allows Daughter to Cuddle with Sister's Corpse

By Ellie Cambridge, The Sun May 11, 2017 | 2:21pm | Updated

A mom has revealed how she kept her daughter’s body at home for 11 days after the 3-year-old died after collapsing on Christmas Day. Georgia Fieldsend (above left with mother and brother Joshua) died in Egypt after a brain aneurysm on Dec. 30, 2013, and was flown home to Surrey, England, a suburb of London. The little girl had been on vacation with her family in Sharm El Sheikh, a resort town in southern Egypt, when she collapsed in her mother’s arms and died five days later.
Her heartbroken mom, Ilse Fieldsend, has since said she would lie beside her daughter’s body and tell her how much she loved her.

She even told her daughter, who would have turned 7 Thursday, about her funeral arrangements. Fieldsend told the Telegraph: “I know some will think what we did was shocking, but to us it made sense.” Our daughter’s body belonged with us, not in a morgue. Having her at home helped us grieve.”

In order to have their child with them at home, Fieldsend and her husband, James, signed a transfer of care form before their daughter was brought home in a portable hospital bed. Funeral directors reportedly told the family that if they kept her bedroom door shut and her window open, she would be in fine condition. Fieldsend said Georgia’s younger brother, Joshua, then 2, saw her body and even gave her “morning cuddles.” The night before their daughter’s funeral, the couple lay either side of her and held her hands.

Georgia’s death saw six lives saved as she became an organ donor before her life support was turned off.

Reflecting on the decision to bring their daughter’s body home, Ilse said it was “a beautiful thing to be able to do.”

In memory of Georgia, her mom has asked parents to do seven things with their child and to donate $9 to the King’s College Hospital Charity on JustGiving — to mark what would have been her seventh birthday. Since her daughter’s death, the brave mom has raised over $45,000 on the fundraising site. She told GetSurrey: “Georgia would be turning 7 and as a mother, I was trying to find a way of telling her that I love her and involve others.

“I was very upset thinking about the things that I wanted to do with my daughter that I could not do as I wanted to bake a cake with Georgia for her birthday,” she continued. “The idea came from the pain and longing for her and so I wanted to reach out to friends and family to do something positive in memory of Georgia.”

To donate to Georgia’s fund, visit the JustGiving page. This week a grieving husband, who slept next to his wife’s dead body in their bedroom for six days, said he couldn’t bear to see her taken off to a mortuary in a bodybag.