Julie Williams’ volunteer duties include taking pictures of babies at hospitals throughout Utah. But these aren’t the traditional baby pictures of the little ones visitors come to view through the nursery windows. These are the babies who didn’t make it.
I learned how meaningful pictures of these babies can be for their parents when friends of ours lost their child shortly after his birth. Their hospital only took a couple of Polaroids, but these photos found their way into a framed collage that the parents hung on the wall of their home. For them it was a connection with this child they had lost.
And that’s where the work of Julie Williams comes in. Featured in an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, she has been told that she has a “gift…to see these babies as God sees them.” As Heather May, the author of the article, put it: “For parents forced to return home childless, Williams captures everything she can — little hands and feet, curled up legs, peaceful faces. Moms and dads saying hello and goodbye.”
Williams, a photographer by profession, takes these pictures as a volunteer through Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. The organization is a network of approximately 3000 volunteer photographers throughout the country. Williams oversees the team in Utah.
According to the article, parents in times past were not encouraged to see or name their babies, and certainly not to create any kind of lasting bond with them. But opportunities and pictures such as these validate the family’s experience with the little life that came to bless them — however briefly — and gives them something tangible they can keep with them.
“These parents, they won’t go home and have first birthdays and first steps and first smiles and giggles,” said Williams to the Tribune. “This is something that they can have.”
Her work isn’t always easy. As the requests from hospitals increased, Williams prayed for help from a higher source. “I knelt down one day and I said, Father in heaven, I will do as many of these babies as you need me to do,” Williams said to the Tribune. “You just need to give me the strength and the ability to do it.”
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons, Williams believes in the eternal nature of families. “That really helps to know these parents will have those children again,” she said to the Tribune.
Elder Robert D. Hales, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church and a modern-day witness of Christ, has explained it this way: “” (Robert D. Hales, “The Eternal Family,” Ensign, Nov 1996, 64)
The promise that our families can be together forever is one that is precious to Latter-day Saints. It’s particularly reassuring at times such as these when one of our family members has returned home to our Father in Heaven. Through His grace and our faithfulness, we can be reunited with all of our family in the eternities. For more information on this wonderful promise, visit www.mormon.org. You may also be interested in a couple of other recent blog entries at LDSBlogs.com: “Children Feel the Pain of Death” and “The Death of a Baby.”
