For her funeral, Baby Jazlene had been dressed in a white organza dress.

It had ribbons and tiny roses, that was made by Allison’s Angel Gowns, a charity which sews funeral clothes for young children.

Catholic Cemeteries donated a plot at All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines. Funeral director John Glueckert supplied the casket, labor and hearse. Bevel Granite has agreed to provide a headstone.

The funeral had been organized by a nonprofit group called Rest in His Arms that has arranged Christian services for 33 babies who were abandoned or whose bodies went unclaimed by family.

About 75 mourners attended the service, and all of them strangers.

Jazlene’s mother, Brianne Branham, wasn’t present there. But it wasn’t because she didn’t love her baby, rather she said. “If I’d have known this was happening, I would have been there”.

Branham, 31years old, seemed to crumple when she learned of the funeral from a reporter who knocked on the door of her home on the South Side later that day, saying, “This is, like, a complete shock,” and wiping away tears.

She thought she had planned to donate her baby’s body to science.

Branham said that she’s a single mother with five other children ranging in age from 6 to 14, all of them well cared for by relatives.

She grew up near Irving Park Road and Central Avenue on the Northwest Side, where she attended Schurz High School and loved going to the Portage Park pool.

Branham said that it hasn’t been an easy life. She’s worked at a Hyde Park liquor store and also had jobs as a receptionist and certified nursing assistant but says she’s struggled with drinking and holding onto jobs.

When she unexpectedly found herself pregnant for a sixth time, she said that she considered terminating the pregnancy. She added,“I didn’t really have nobody to help me. I tried to get an abortion with her, and I was too far along. Of course, I felt guilty after she was born. Of the birth, I thought it was a blessing.”

Jazlene Branham’s short life began on April 3. Despite giving birth only about 23 weeks into her pregnancy, her mother says the baby seemed to be doing well at the Lying-In Hospital at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

By Prakriti Neogi