Ouida Wickramaratne

You don’t expect to say goodbye to and bury your child.

Ouida Wickramaratne is the mother of Daniel who, at the age of 17, passed in April of this year from COVID-19. Before his death, Daniel lived with brain injury and quadriplegic cerebral palsy due to complications at birth.

Caring for Daniel helped strengthen Ouida’s Christian beliefs and, over the course of his life, she saw him grow to enjoy church, music, family get-togethers, wheelchair dancing and travel. Despite not being able to speak, he was able to communicate with his eyes and vocalisations and enjoyed loving relationships with his family, teachers (particularly his music teacher and class teacher), nurses, carers, school friends, godfather and close family friends. Ouida discusses how, amid their tragic loss, her and her family were able to find solace in their Christian faith, family and best friends.

There’s a lot of fear about death, people don’t want to talk about the end but for me, as a Christian, death is actually the next step of my journey so I’m actually quite excited about it.