Life is precious writes Offaly influencer in wake of Creeslough tragedy

Some days more than others we are hit with just how fragile, vulnerable and precious life is. Our experience on this earth is fleeting and nothing is ever guaranteed. We go about our days stressing over the small things, such as the dishes in the sink, or the towel on the floor in the bathroom, or our over­whelming workload or the changeable weather. All of these things tend to consume us.

In the whirlwind of our day-to-day life, we lose track of the preciousness of life until we are confronted with the loss of someone dear to us or a tragedy like what has happened to the people of Creeslough in Co. Donegal. Suddenly, we are struck with something we all try to forget, our mortality.

Faced with just how precious and fragile life is and it changes us forever. I know myself from the experience of the tragic loss of life of my 14 year old niece Aoife who died tragically and needlessly at the hands of a careless driver using his mobile phone instead of concentrating on driving safely. 

When people die, especially when it seems too soon and it doesn’t make sense, it’s often hard to process. Even when people are older and/or have been sick for a while, it still can feel wrong, unfair, and confusing. We live in a culture that is obsessed with results, action, youth, beauty, winning, progress, and more. While these things aren’t bad in and of themselves, our obsession with them, and our tendency to forget to focus on who and what matters most, can be incredibly damaging. In moments of loss like this, whether the loss is personal or public it serves as an intense reminder for each of us and all of us to stop, reflect, refocus and take inventory of our priorities and ask the question what is life really all about?

The village of Creeslough

I have been praying so hard these last few days as has nearly everyone in our country for the 10 people who have died in the tragic event in Creeslough in Co. Donegal and also praying in a very special way for those who are seriously injured in hospital and all the families that are bereaved and praying for all who responded and who continue to respond to this accident in our emergency services and others who helped and are helping at this time. It just reminds us that while we go about our daily lives, our lives are all so fragile. Our life is fragile, vulnerable and precious.

If the last few days have been a reminder for anything to us, it should be a reminder to us of how important family, friends, colleagues and neighbours are and how important relationships are. I didn’t know any of the people who so sadly passed away in Creeslough but have had the pleasure of being in the Applegreen store with their amazing staff a number of times on my travels with work in Donegal getting a snack and a bottled water, but my heart breaks for all of them and everyone who knew and loved them and for all the people of Creeslough and Donegal.

They are all in my thoughts and prayers. I cried during a number of the many news reports and tributes, thinking about the people who passed away especially the children and everyone touched by the Creeslough tragedy, and also thinking about my niece Aoife, my grandparents, and everyone important who I’ve lost in my life, as well as all of the loss and grief we each experience as human beings.

Death can be so painful, and grief can be so very hard. And yet, it is one of the most universal experiences of being human. It reminds us of the fragility, preciousness and vulnerability of life in a body, forces us to put things in perspective, challenges us to expand our understanding of how things work, and connects us with one another in a profound way.

Not a Dress Rehearsal

When something like this happens, it makes it clear to me that we’re all in this life thing together, doing the best we can, and that there are no guarantees. Let’s be gentle with ourselves today and every day and do everything we can do to focus on love, forgiveness, mercy and the people and things that truly matter most. By remembering that life is fragile, precious and vulnerable we should make the most of it while we can and do all we can to protect it. Life is not a dress rehearsal, we only get one run at it. To go through it on autopilot, and simply exist would be a crime.

Life is a precious, fragile and vulnerable gift, we need to make the most of it because, like a china cup, it can easily fall and shatter into a thousand pieces. Life may be fragile, vulnerable and precious but if you embrace this fact and accept it as the greatest gift God has given to us, you may just make the most of it. We all lose people we’re close to if we stick around long enough ourselves. This is an inconvenient truth of life. There is a fragility to it. We need to make time for the people that matter most to us. We need to make time for ourselves and our loved ones.

Challenge of Life

Every day and every hour now due to so many wars, conflicts, droughts, famines and so many tragedies and sadnesses, we are jolted by mortality shocks and challenged by life events so wildly out of our control. Sometimes, it is distant and troubling, sometimes close and heartbreaking. We all secretly know where our strengths lie, what we do enough of, what we leave by the wayside in favour of less wholesome pursuits. But all these shocks, tragedies, all this trauma, only serves to enhance those quiet feelings we all suffer that perhaps we aren't doing enough, that we're not living right, that we can do better if we get to have a second chance. 

The exhaustion we feel right now is emotional discord: that mortality panic that we simply must live our best lives this instant because who knows when it will all end, coupled with the paralysis of these wars, conflicts and wild global climate change and viruses. It's like a single person trying to balance a seesaw by standing on one end. It's a game we cannot win. My niece Aoife during her short life with us taught me a lot of things about living, but she also taught me that you don't have to balance the seesaw on your own, if at all. 

Aoife treated every friendship like a tiny miracle and I especially saw that in her friendship with her parents, my daughters, her cousins, her school mates, and especially in her amazing friendships with her best friend Cara and her grandad Ricey.  Aoife held love and connection so gently in her palms as though they could shatter at any moment, as though she couldn't quite believe she was so lucky as to have these beautiful things in her life. Aoife has taught me that living isn't about doing more or working more or playing more or being more, it's about the connections we make and the families, friendships, colleagues and neighbours we hold dear and the people we help and those that help us.

The light of your soul

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach, the part that we come in contact with in our own daily living. After Aoife's and some other members of my family's sad passing I have realised that any small, loving, caring, compassionate, merciful, prayerful and calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.

One of the most calming, revitalising, refocusing and powerful actions you can do, to intervene in a stormy world or to make the storm within you and without, is to stand up and show your own soul.

A soul for example, is like a shining light on the deck of a ship at sea that shines brightly in dark times. The light of the soul, actually the light of your soul can throw sparks, can send up flares, build signal fires and cause proper matter to catch fire. To display the light of your soul in shadowy times like these, to be fierce and to show mercy, love, care, compassion toward others, are all acts of immense bravery, kindness, empathy and greatest necessity, especially during these worrying times.  Struggling souls like mine, at this bereft time, catch light from other souls, who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult and the fear, this is one of the strongest things you can do. There will always be times when you feel despair and some what at sea. I too, have felt discouraged, fearful, angry, lost, hurt, abandoned and afraid at times in my life but I try hard not to keep a chair for it, I try hard not to let it live rent free in my head or to give it a full time position there, I try so hard not entertain it. I try not to allow it to eat from my plate or drink from my cup.

The reason is this

In my bones I know something, as do you and if we are honest we all do at times. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: "When a great ship is in harbour and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for." This comes with much love and a prayer that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth. We will all mourn at some stage in our lives. My grief is not unique, nor is yours. It is ours, together, and we will see it through together. The normality we think we need to process our trauma may have been swept away, but rushing into the vacuum is something else.

These are the new connections, the new shoots that appear after the destruction of nature. The new friendships, the new ways of helping each other, the new ways of being, and each one is precious in helping us to build up again our most fearsome strength. In this way, seeing these precious jewels, cradling them gently, nurturing and growing them, we best honour the people we are losing and have lost, and my family in losing our beautiful Aoife and begin to share all the things they have taught us. You don't have to balance the seesaw. You don't have to write the next best seller or be the next top class sports person or the next millionaire. But try to be the reason someone believes in the goodness of people. You are not alone. Rest. Be gentle. Be kind. Get through the day. Know that you are cared for and needed. Most of all know that you are loved.

Thought for the week

As your thought for the week, always remember that life's road is sometimes extremely tough, because the time we have with our loved ones is just simply not long enough, especially when they are taken away tragically. 

Here is a reflection written just recently by poet Ronan P. Berry especially for the people of Creeslough in Donegal  called "No Words" - "And then sometimes there are no words. They who dreamed of the weekend, stopped off for a drop of diesel, the daily paper and twenty Major, a perm, a sandwich, collect their pension; a chit chat that salvaged the day from the sombre tick of a kitchen clock. In these days when applegreen on labour boughs, lift the handle of a petrol pump, scan the pages of a national paper, stand silent in a deli counter line and turn thoughts to those lives changed and lost at Creeslough. Amen."