Losing Bunny broke my little girl’s heart - and mine too!
When her daughter’s beloved toy went missing, Lisa Brady was in no way prepared for her child’s sadness — or other people’s surprising reactions...
IT’S 5am when I hear our three-year-old’s heart-wrenching cries, for the second morning in a row. ‘Mama!’ she calls, as she runs into our bedroom, her little body racked with sobs. ‘Where IS he? What has happened to him?’ she wails in desperation, before another crying fit takes over.
I stroke her hair and try to console her. ‘Don’t worry darling, we’ll find him,’ I say, hoping I sound convincing, as a few tears escape from the corners of my own eyes.
The ‘him’ in question is a bunny rabbit. But it’s not just any bunny rabbit. It’s Lana Rose’s toy bunny, or Bunny, to use his full name. And last Sunday, Bunny, her best friend and most cherished possession, went missing while we were out walking — and our tiny daughter’s world fell apart.
The drama unfolded just before bedtime on Sunday evening, when Lana-Rose was being tucked in to sleep. Her night-time bottle was in my hand, but where was that soft toy? A quick search evolved into full-on house ransacking, which led a quick drive around the route we had taken on our walk in Greystones, Wicklow, trying to find Bunny before darkness set in. Then 9pm came and went, and there was still no sign of Bunny — and no sign of Lana-Rose going to sleep. A further search — in the dark, with Granny in tow, shining torches into ditches — yielded no clues as to his whereabouts. This was not good. Returning home deflated, I posted about our plight on Facebook and Twitter, alongside a picture of poor Bunny. ‘Lost bunny — three-year-old heartbroken. Please retweet.’ Within seconds of posting, the retweets started to mount up — much to my surprise, as I’ve never really got the hang of the whole Twitter thing. By the next morning the post had been retweeted a few hundred times. My observations on life and social commentary had been largely ignored by the Twitterati so how had this solitary post on a little girl’s lost toy gained more traction than all of my previous posts put together? Interesting.
OF course, my husband and I were desperate to make Lana-Rose feel better. We produced a new toy that we had as a spare — an exact replica of Bunny — albeit with a snowwhite face and unblemished silky body. This was hurled across the room at force. ‘That’s not MY bunny!’ she howled, before the tears came again.
Her eldest cousin’s bunny — again of the same breed — fared slightly better. Lana-Rose promised to give it back to Grace when her own Bunny was found. This bunny was slightly worn, the fur a little matted, and as she cuddled it carefully, I wondered if it had done the trick.
But then she stopped, and looked at me with sadness, bravely determined not to cry. That night, I heard her desperately scratching at the head of the toy as she lay tearfully in the dark, trying to find the same threadbare patch that she used to stroke; searching for her Bunny’s silky label that was falling from its seams.
Lovely as he was, you see, Cousin Bunny was no replacement. Neither was the toy sloth I brought home the following day, who could wrap his legs and arms around his owner — seemingly the perfect cuddling companion.
Nice try — but Bunny could not be replaced (although he actually WAS Bunny number two — the one she had as a small baby is hopefully living his best life somewhere in Tenerife).
As parents, we aren’t always there to comfort our children. They can’t carry us around in their pockets, or bring us into their cots with them.
For over half of Lana Rose’s life, however, Bunny was always there for our daughter. And that’s why she didn’t want a shiny new replica, or even the loan of another toy. I felt helpless. I’ve always soothed her pain, allayed her fears. I’d protected her from the harsh reality of life — that sometimes, bad things happen. And sometimes, a kiss on the forehead from Mama isn’t enough to make things better.
They did everything together. They slept together, ate together (yes, he often ended up in a bowl of bolognese), went on holidays together, and played together.
Who was with Lana-Rose while I was in hospital having her sister, Layla? Bunny. And at her first day in creche, he was there again, holding her hand, although as the weeks went on, he moved to her lunch bag. And as months passed, he began to stay behind, but was always there, waiting patiently for her when Lana-Rose got home. He was always close to her heart. When Lana-Rose was sick, Bunny was there without question — and yes, he was sometimes caught in the crossfire, resulting in yet another tumble in the washing machine. When she was upset, he literally dried her tears.
Bunny smelt of sour milk, no matter how much we washed him, and Lana-Rose couldn’t haved loved him more.
And for that reason, we did too. We often joked about how he was like the third child, and what would happen if we ever lost him. There were many close calls — Dundrum Town Centre was a favourite hiding place for Bunny, and on holidays he was watched like a hawk, given his predecessor’s fate.
Now our little girl was bereft, not able to understand why Bunny had abandoned her. To onlookers, Bunny was nothing more than an inanimate stuffed toy, but to her, he was very, very real. Where was he? How could he just leave her, disappear into thin air? It was her first loss, small as it seemed.
Because my little girl was so sad, I started to worry about Bunny’s well-being too, and had to shake myself when I started to picture him, face down and dirty in a cold wet ditch, waiting for his owner to come rescue him— if that day would ever come. Such was the seriousness of my tone when speaking about missing Bunny (it was, of course, the story of the week), our lawyer observed: ‘Lisa, at this stage, a fox would surely have got to it.’
It was then I reminded him that Bunny was not a living thing, and we belly-laughed about it. But jokes aside, I had a sick feeling in my stomach. What if we never found him?
CHECKING in on Twitter, support for #bringbunnyhome was showing no signs of slowing, bolstered by social media heavyweights like Ciara Kelly and Marian Keyes. News of Bunny’s disappearance had made it as far as Canada, where a kind father posted a picture of two bunnies identical to Lana-Rose’s toy — perhaps I could tell my daughter her Bunny had gone to stay with his Canadian cousin for a while?
Hour after hour, more and more people posted messages of lost toy stories, advice, locals of Greystones helping with the search, including one colleague who gave up her evening to take to the streets.
It sounds ridiculous, right, all this fuss over a soft toy?
It even attracted the attention of Ray D’Arcy, and I spoke on national radio about Bunnygate. People were humoured by it, some probably irritated by it — why give a toss about a child’s toy when we have Brexit, genocide, Trump?
But Bunny’s disappearance had struck a chord, with parents who had gone through it, with grownups who had lost a precious plaything themselves, and with people who just wanted to see a little girl happy again.
The reaction has certainly been a revelation to me, showing a display of warmth and empathy in a territory that can be deeply cynical and negative. My original message was retweeted almost 700 times.
And then it happened. As I was leaving for work, exactly two days since that fateful walk, a picture came through on my phone. It was from my husband.
A building site, a fence, some kind of material on soil... wait, it was... Bunny! Daddy had become hero of the century by finding the precious toy in a spot I had missed on the search.
Seeing Lana-Rose’s little face light up when she caught a glimpse of her beloved toy was enough to make me melt. The toy is now even dirtier than before and I am desperately trying to get it out of her grasp to wash (I’m living in fear of Weil’s disease) — but it’s proving quite the challenge.
Last night, our daughter finally slept soundly. The time will most definitely come when she will willingly leave Bunny behind. But for now, she’s not letting go.