Archie’s Archives is a heart project in memory of our son, Archie. Who lived. And then died. That’s the short version.
The longer version is that Archie’s Archive is a love story about our little boy, through which a curated collection of children’s books are gifted, for free, to patients and their families in ICUs around South Africa. Directly into the hands of families who are managing life with extraordinarily sick children. All of them confined to wards where the beeping never stops and the days blur into each other and fear is palpable in the air.
Whilst stuck in the fishbowl of the CTICU, fighting for Archie’s life, we realised that reading provided us with an escape from the scary – an opportunity to block out the alarms and ignore the fluorescent lights and simply bond with our little boy.
And after he died, we knew we wanted to share the gift of reading with parents who came after us. If you want to find out more about the entire story – you can read all about Archie and his incredible, yet short, life, here: https://archiesarchive.co.za
In the blandness of so many hospital wards, you will now find a sunny little archive filled with beautiful stories of love, all waiting to provide some solace to families in scary places.
A birthday, a packing party, and 2,500 books
On 16 August we celebrated what should have been Archie’s 4th birthday. Celebrating the birthday of a child who is no longer earthside is not easy. The parenting handbook quite simply didn’t come with a chapter on ‘birthdays for dead children’. Cake feels wrong. Doing nothing feels worse.
So I have found myself making it up as I’ve gone along…
This year, we had a packing party. And it was all kinds of wholesome. Friends who are near and dear to our hearts came over to help us pack books. Lots of books. 2,500 of them, to be precise, all getting ready to go out to paediatric and neonatal ICUs around South Africa.
There was a glorious controlled chaos to the day. I loved it. It was beautiful.
The beautiful inserts, kindly printed and donated by ProPrint Durban (thank you Aunty Yvette, you are the very best), found their way into self sealing bags alongside the most beautiful books. Amongst them, hundreds of Bioderma sponsored copies of ‘Penny’s Peculiar Pelt’ – a story written by me, about one of our beautiful little girls. Copies of ‘The Early Bird’, written by Archie’s granny, and so many other lovely titles gifted by friends and family when they came over. I felt all kinds of emotional watching friends inscribe books with notes of encouragement for families to read. It was wholesome. So wholesome. We packed up a storm.
It was a beautifully connective day – which is what reading offered us in the trenches, and what this sweet little love story continued to pour out. There’s something spectacular about a room full of people gathered together with a common purpose – all who love our family, many who never met Archie – everyone saying his name without the heaviness of his illness.
Grief and joy sat together that day in reverend celebration of a little boy’s legacy.
That’s what I always want his birthday to feel like. Not heavy. Full. Loud. Surrounded. Purposeful. Celebratory.I think we got close. To every single person who came and packed: thank you. You gave up a Sunday (and your backs, probably) and you gave us a day we’ll hold on to.
As September approached, the boxes started leaving, carefully packaged and labelled for specific hositals and wards. Each of our Netcare hospitals around South Africa receiving a fresh batch of beautiful books to gift to their patients. To give as a small token of hope to some of the tiniest, bravest humans you will ever see as they fight gargantuan wars.
A book in a NICU might sound a little silly. A baby can’t read. But a parent can read to a baby. And sometimes that’s the first ‘normal’ parenting thing they get to do in weeks. This intervention matters so very much.
2,500 books, for one birthday. That’s 2,500 little moments of normal, landing in places that badly need them. I can’t think of a better present to give on his behalf.
Over 10,000 books
We have now gifted over 10,000 books in Archie’s memory. Ten. Thousand. It gives me goosies.
That means that there are more than ten thousand children (and parents, and siblings, and the odd exhausted nurse on a night shift, I’d like to think) who have held a book with Archie’s name tucked inside it. For a little boy who only lived 114 days – who I feared may be forgotten – that’s a lot of people who have been touched by his life.
Every single one of those books has gone out at no cost to the hospitals, and no cost to the patients. None. Not a cent. Because the last thing a family in a paediatric ICU needs is another bill, or another form, or another ‘just sign here’. They have enough to carry… trust me, I know.
None of that happens by magic, though. It happens because people and businesses keep turning up.
So, thank you to ProPrint, who printed every one of those 10,000 inserts, bookmarks and sticked.Never once have they made us beg – thank you for showing up in the most dignified and honouring way, we appreciate it more than words can describe.
To Bioderma, for supporting the development and subsequent printing of Penny’s Peculiar Pelt. It is beyond a drea of mine to have those books hold not just stories but special stories from Archie’s family. I still can’t quite get my head around how special this is. Thank you for backing this entire project.
To every person who has donated a book, packed a box, driven a delivery, shared a post, or just asked us how it’s going: you’re part of this too. 10,000 is not our number. It’s all of ours. Books matter…
I don’t want to overstate what a book can do. It can’t fix a diagnosis. It can’t make a scan come back clear. It can’t make the waiting shorter.
But children in those wards are going through heartbreakingly difficult things and the environment is sanitised for a reason. But in that sterility there’s a lot of depravity and disconnect.
Stories can solve that without impacting hygiene or affecting lifesaving equipment. In ‘no-touch’ spaces stories transcend boundaries – allowing a mothers voice to connect with her child.
A little respite. A little ordinary. A little bit of somewhere else.
And for the parent… sitting bedside ill with stress, a book provides something to do with their hands and their voice, other than worry.
That’s what Archie’s Archives is for. That’s what it has always been for.
So happy birthday, my boy. 10,000 books and counting.We’re not stopping.
Want to be part of the next 10,000?
Good. Because we’re not stopping, and we can’t do it alone. Every rand from book sales goes straight back into printing and placing more books. Here’s how you can get involved.
