Abi’s Dots: How Colour, Memory and Community Helped Us Grieve
In those first mad days after the girls’ death, I knew I couldn’t even contemplate Abi’s coffin. No mother should ever have to choose her daughter’s coffin. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. My husband, Trevor, and Abi’s godmother, Lexi, took that role on.
They found a plain, sustainably sourced wooden casket—free from any terrible Gothic flourishes—and I asked Lexi to make it beautiful. “Do something Abi would have loved,” was all I could manage.
Abi adored Lexi. She loved her exuberant, eclectic style, her obsession with accessories and colour. Otherwise known as Alex Fulton—Dulux Colour Ambassador, guest judge on The Block, Abi’s favourite home-decorating show, and a design guru in every sense—Lexi, her husband Jeff, and their daughters Isla and Violet have always brought colour and much silliness into our lives.
And now, thanks to Lexi’s choice to paint Abi’s coffin white and cover it with hundreds of brightly coloured dot stickers, that love of colour has started quietly spreading. People began sticking what we now call Abi’s Dots throughout their own lives.
It began when Glen, the owner of our local coffee shop, ordered three packs from Lexi and covered the walls—and even his coffee machine. Next, Brooke enlisted Abi and Ella’s friends to dot the walls of the youth club.
Since then, these small discs of colour have turned up everywhere—on clothes, phones, plant pots, surfboards, ski helmets, chairlifts, tables, benches, railings, skis, boats, rugby clubs and guitars. A few weeks ago, I got photos from one of Abi’s friends, now living in London, who’d placed her dots at the Louvre, beside the Eiffel Tower, and on the mast of a yacht sailing around Croatia.
Lexi's sold 409 packs of dots already. At 90 dots per pack, that’s 36,801 dots out there in the world. Little dots of colour spreading like wildfire to give us all something to hold on to during these dark days.
They’ve cropped up in Bali, Fiji, England, France, Croatia, New York, LA, Singapore, allowing Lexi to donate $4,908 to Make-A-Wish.
I sat in the coffee shop the other day, laptop open but head and heart elsewhere, thinking of Abi. I looked up and told myself to focus on the dots. And for a moment, I imagined each one as a symbol of love—of the people, near and far, who have carried us these past five months. People who have wrapped us in their love and empathy, and are walking this strange road with us.
I'm so grateful for these dots, which have somehow become a colourful reminder of our girls, but also the collective spirit of humanity to care and support in tough times. She's not here, but her spirit and life force seems to live on.