Talented Whangārei artist Julia Tapp explains to Jodi Bryant how and why she gives grieving parents back a unique keepsake of their lost little loved ones.
Ten years after 3-year-old Ezra drowned, his mother, Julia Tapp, still holds his little hands close. And she has been making it her mission to give grieving families the same opportunity with their lost little loved ones.
Tapp began Forget Me Not Lifecasting six years ago after two years’ training and gives her time free of charge to preserve the tiny hands and feet from miscarriages (up to 20 weeks’ gestation and making up most of Julia’s lifecastings), stillbirths and those who have lost their lives up to the age of 13.
“When Ezra passed, it was so sudden and we were in shock, we were so overwhelmed, we didn’t know what to do, but a friend referred me to a lady to do Ezra’s casts and they are so precious out of all the things.
“Knowing how precious they are to us, it made the decision to go in and do it myself worthwhile, to give someone the chance to hold a little hand.”
Ezra, or “Ezee-bear” as his family called him, was born with severe autism and, although he never spoke, to Tapp and her husband Jason, he was perfect.
One day in 2014, the free-spirited 3-year-old, who had always been attracted to water, escaped out the front gate and travelled 200m before he was found by his dad, Jason, 27 minutes later in the Ōhinemuri River.
Paramedics worked on him for half an hour but, as Julia and Jason held their son’s little body on the riverbank singing his favourite song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the news was delivered that their boy would not be coming home.
“There are no words to describe those moments or how fast it happened,” says Tapp, 41. “Everyone tried their best to save him, but he was already gone.”
Julia Tapp holding a lifecasting of Ezra's little hands with hers and Jason's.
Over the years, Tapp has found ways to capture Ezra’s memory in art; because he didn’t speak, he would stand on his mum’s feet to get her attention. Julia has Ezra’s baby footprints tattooed on her feet with a mix of ink and his ashes.
Today, the castings of his hands and feet are kept in a cupboard with his favourite toys near a portrait Julia, a multiple award-winning artist, painted of him.
Her popular Angel Portraits, which she subsequently carried out for other grieving parents, wound to an end after the wait list was washed away when her Whangārei central art centre was flooded; but these days, she is getting more satisfaction carrying out angel castings.
She has left her details with medical services, hospitals and funeral homes where Julia will travel, plus homes, to carry out the procedure.
The process is similar to having teeth moulded at the dentist, Julia says. It is carried out using an alginate product, which is powder mixed with water until it creates a liquid silicone-type texture.
The little hands or feet are placed into the liquid for several minutes, then gently removed and the mould is filled with liquid stone until it sets. She then paints them and later presents them in a box.
“It captures really high detail, like even fingerprints and tiny little nails. The average size would be around 3cm, it’s pretty mind-blowing. It’s the exact size and shape and it’s just beautiful.”
The lifecastings capture tiny details such as fingerprints and nails.
Tapp also makes a spare set of each pair of hands and feet as a back-up in case of a miscast or if a parental relationship doesn’t last, “so there’s one for mum and one for dad”.
‘Every tiny little hand counts’
In addition to the castings, Julia now cleans and dresses the babies and is training new midwives to do the same.
She explains: “In order to get to the hands and feet, I had to ask Mum or Dad to make them accessible because they’re usually dressed in a onesie. You do become very used to handling these sweet little babies so really, if I’m already dressing them back into a onesie, then I might as well dress them in some little clothes.”
She says usually, knitting donated to hospitals is for 20 weeks and over so she sources clothing from an “angel network” that sends its stock of sleep sacks (like a mitten with a hood, forming a pod, that ties up around the chin) and little nappies around the country. However, she would welcome donations of tiny knitted hats, booties and blankets.
“I really enjoy being able to provide those things for the extra tiny because every baby is a human and they all deserve a little outfit. Every tiny little hand counts.”
Presenting the box of castings goes one of two ways, Tapp says. “I always come up with the box closed and you can see they’re already fighting back tears. When I present it, they will either say thank you, smile and hug, or we go inside and they open it. They love them. There’s usually tears and I cried too when ours arrived.
“Between the time I take the casting and they dry, there’s a time in between where they forget the details. They say, ‘Gosh, were their hands really that small’? and, ‘Oh, I didn’t see that’. So they get to take a look and not through the eyes of trauma. It captures a 3D photo, it’s just amazing.”
Since Ezra’s death, Tapp has attended four castings of drowning victims and she says in some ways, it has helped her realise it wasn’t anyone’s fault.
“I think what I’ve realised is there’s a difference between being guilty and blaming yourself and taking responsibility because you made a mistake.
The little hands or feet are placed into the liquid for several minutes, then gently removed and the mould is filled with liquid stone until it sets.
“Every parent is going to feel guilty and blame themself and I think the word guilt, in particular, implies that something was intentional and that you have something to feel bad for when we know this was an accident, and I tell this to all parents.
“However, we do still have to take responsibility because there’s no denying, in that moment, when Ezra went missing,
“I was supposed to be watching him and I went to use the bathroom and thought my husband was watching him and it was a split second so, yeah, we should have been responsible. It was a mistake and he suffered the biggest consequence of that, but there was no intention behind it so when there was no intention, should we blame ourselves for something we didn’t intend to do?
“You can be responsible and have something you drop the ball on lead to absolute disastrous consequences and that is what we call an accident. That is my definition on the two and I’ve done a lot of thinking on that, it took a long time to discover. So, after spending a lot of time talking this through with parents, how can I turn around and say they’re not guilty but I am? So that has really helped me.”
Julia Tapp paints and presents the lifecastings in a box for the grieving families.
The lifecasting process takes 30 minutes to several hours depending on the size. She also occasionally carries out family group castings where they hold the cast of the member who has died before dipping their hands into a bucket.
The number of castings Tapp conducts rose from 30 the first year to 50 in the second, and 60 in the third year. However, she did only 22 in the past year.
“I’m hoping it’s dropped back because the number of miscarriages has dropped back and not because we’re not reaching people.”
Her charity work totals up to 20 hours a week but, because she’s on a restricted income due to health conditions, it fits in well around the busy mums art classes she runs from Northland Art Centre.
“Being able to clean the babies up and dress them and give the parents back a memory that is just a little bit less graphic and a bit nicer is, I think, where my rewards are these days.”
Anyone who would like to help with knitting donations can contact Julia at: j.c.quayle.customs@gmail.com. Angel knitting patterns can be found online at Tigerlily Trust. Click on “How You Can Help”.
