Justin Bartlett from Plymouth has written a moving song about Little Bridge House which has supported his daughter Tabitha and their family for more than 17 years. Tabitha is now transitioning to adult services with the support of Children’s Hospice South West. During their last stay at the hospice Justin shared his family’s story and why he has gifted the song he has written to the charity as a way of saying ‘thank you’.
Justin shares how their journey with Little Bridge House first began: “We have an undiagnosed, severely disabled daughter who has a life-limiting condition. We were told when she was very young that we should expect that she might go at any point and so we were offered respite at Little Bridge House.”
“We’ve been coming to the hospice for around 17 years, since Tabby was ever so small. It’s very difficult to get away from the life of caring for a severely disabled child, it’s 24 hours a day, so the respite we have received here has been invaluable.”
During their final stay at the hospice Justin was keen to recreate some of the activities they had done on their first visits to Little Bridge House
including cycling through the hospice’s special Narnia themed garden.
This stay is extra special as it’s our last one. It’s such a magical place, so we are going to try and recreate some of our first memories and photos that we took when we first came here.
As Tabitha is now transitioning to adult services, Justin explains there are a lot of considerations to make as a family including legally taking on Tabitha’s decisions which she can’t make for herself;
“As well as the decision making we are also thinking about whether Tabby may be getting bored at home and maybe needs more than us; we as parents aren’t able to give Tabby 24 hour, one to one attention, either we are cooking or doing other tasks and I think she’s getting to realise this, we can see the benefits she gets from visits out and interacting with others.”
Having spoken with other parents Justin knows that one option is for Tabitha to live somewhere else which is a hard option to consider;
“That decision is a 2 pronged thing” Justin explains; “I would love to have a lot of my life back and not be so much of a 24 hour carer but there’s no way in the world that anyone can ever look after my daughter as well as us, so that’s also a massive stress, both in the legal and emotional sense. I’m grateful that the Care Team at Children’s Hospice South West are very much supporting us as a family though the transition to adult services.”
During their stays at Little Bridge House Justin has always played the
piano that sits in the hospice’s lounge and has now written a song
dedicated to the hospice, a place he holds dear and where many years of special memories have been made:
“Playing the piano has been a way for me to release some emotion. During one of our stays I started playing this tune and I really liked the way it sounded. The inspiration for ‘A Magical Place’ came when I was sat in the garden in the sun and I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to go home, it’s magical here’. From that point the lyrics just flooded out!
The song is called ‘A Magical Place’ as I truly believe it’s magical, it’s like a children’s book, it’s beautiful and it’s like a dream and I tried to get that across in the lyrics.”
The chorus of Justin’s song refers to Little Bridge House as ‘a magical place, magical time, magical memories to live in my mind, magical people, magical house, to lose all your troubles.’
The song, ‘A Magical Place’ is available to listen to on YouTube https://youtu.be/79X9zRAugsE?si=9hnHafIcCD0yuhJy