'Heroic' man wades into flooded Lothian baby cemetery to recover washed away items left by bereaved families

Marc Cuthbert, 40, was visiting his baby’s grave yesterday at the Glasgow Road Baby Cemetery, in Bathgate, with his fiancée, Kirsty Carr and his uncle, Paul Clinton, when they noticed extensive flooding had washed away dozens of items belonging to families who have children buried in the cemetery.

Marc borrowed his brother’s waders and along with his partner and uncle gathered up all of the items that were floating in the water and placed them safely on a memorial bench in the cemetery.

Marc told the Evening News: “It was difficult because when we were taking the items out, one of the families appeared that had a baby in the cemetery, and one of the items we retrieved belonged to them.

"I know myself since I have a baby in there, if it was my baby I wouldn’t be able to leave until I had been in and got everything out of the water.”

Thankfully, the place where Marc’s own child rests was not impacted by the flooding, but he did not want to let everyone else’s property get ruined sitting in the flood water.

He posted some images on Facebook in the hope that the people who left the items would see what had happened and retrieve what was almost lost.

He continued: “It's one of those hard situations where you think, it's somebody else's property, when it's sentimental things you don't know if you're doing right or wrong.

"But of course, rather than lose it all I just went and got it.”

The memorial bench that Marc and his family placed the items on was from the charity Held In Our Hearts.

All 12 of the baby cemeteries in West Lothian have a designated memorial bench, designed by bereaved parents to provide some comfort to those visiting their loved ones.

CEO of the Held In Our Hearts, Nicola Welsh, offered a heartfelt thank you to Marc saying: “It feels to me like Noah’s Arc, Marc is keeping everybody safe and giving them the opportunity to recover their items.

"It really does remind us in a difficult year of the kindness of others.”

She continued to talk about the importance of the items that were washed away.

She said: “You can never, ever imagine burying your child until you've done it yourself and then you realise the enormity of not only that space but also the belongings and

what you take there, it's all they have.”

Nicola said that seeing the images of the flooded cemetery could be triggering and has encouraged anyone that needs to talk to get in touch via their website.

She said "You’ll always have that feeling that you shouldn’t bury someone younger than you, it’s not the natural order of life so parents definitely feel protective of the resting place."

She added: “After what Marc did I’ve had a few messages, the families are sad obviously, but they are also incredibly grateful for his kindness.

"He didn’t just walk past, or just grab a few things, he made it his mission to recover everything and I think that’s quite heroic.”

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