COLUMN: Contemplating the senseless catastophe of Creeslough

I HAVE never been to Creeslough but the name entered my life at a very young age, causing me great embarrassment everytime. It happened whenever Bridie Gallagher came on the radio singing that song by fellow Roscommon man Percy French, 'The Emigrant’s Letter', better known as “Cutting the Corn in Creeslough.”

No sooner would the first strains of the tune begin than my mother would grab me to waltz with her across the kitchen floor. I would refuse adamantly, mortified at the thought, every time. It was beneath my dignity as a boy to dance, never mind waltz, and above all to dance with my mother. What would the lads in school say if it ever got out?

So, Mam would then grab our sleeping dog Ranger and, holding him by the two front paws, waltz with him around the kitchen while singing: “…and a long sort o’ sigh seemed to rise from us all/As the waves hid the last bit of Donegal./Och! it’s well to be you that is takin’ yer tay./Where they’re cuttin’ the corn in Creeshlough today.”

Ranger looked as if he wanted the ground to open, with his two ears flattened against his head hoping no one could see him. Or at least that’s how it looked to me at the time.

My mother died on the first day of June last year, just a couple of months short of her 93rd birthday. Her death was not unexpected and, as they’re saying now of the late Queen Elizabeth II, she too died of old age. We were fortunate that, though she had developed dementia, which meant she was in a nursing home for three years by then, she still recognized us up to three weeks before she took her leave.

However, it has troubled us all since how, because of Covid restrictions, we were unable to see her for most of early 2021 until she deteriorated so far we were all allowed in to her at the end of March. Within days she, who had been at death’s door, was sitting out and full of chat again. A miracle, it seemed. She just wanted us around her.

We have often wondered since whether she felt abandoned by us all in those earlier months of last year, when we were not there and there was no way of explaining to her, or that she could understand, that there was a pandemic ruling the world then. It is something we will never know. Such ignorance doesn’t help grief.

As it happened, that brief revival was just a stop gap in her downward progress to death on June 1 2021. You would imagine that after such a long life, in which she was responsible for bringing 59 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren into the world, we would be prepared to let her go. But it doesn’t work like that, even when her death was long expected before it finally happened.

Grief has nothing to do with the age of the deceased. It may even be more intense when the person has been such a part of your life for so long. Regardless, it doesn’t go away you know. Were she around today I’d be only too glad to waltz around the kitchen with her to Bridie Gallagher and `Cutting the Corn in Creeslough’. I was so much younger then, I’m older than that now.

We were well and truly forewarned and forearmed prior to Mam’s death but there was no such preparation for the people of Creeslough. Death, when it came to families of the bereaved there that afternoon, came viciously, mercilessly, ripping their hearts out. It is probable some of those families will never fully recover from this trauma. Yes, they will learn to manage it, but it will forever reside in them, like a great empty void beyond all understanding.

It may be a strange thing to say but had there been someone or something responsible or to blame even, as happened so often in Northern Ireland and the Republic too during the Troubles, it might help with the grieving process. It would, at least, put some sort of shape on their loss.

But not in Creeslough. To use the language of the Garda, it appears to have been 'a tragic incident', something random. An accident that was not and possibly could not be foreseen. An explosion that passeth all understanding. Though, I have no doubt, that in time science will explain it.

That it appears to have been such a freak event can only add to the depth of grief of affected families, many of whom will be tortured for years to come by 'if only..' questions and conjecture.

It is wholly appropriate that the whole island – even British Prime Minister Liz Truss also – has reached out to embrace and comfort this shattered little community. It is important that this protection remains after this week’s funerals and into the times to come.

It was right and proper that our political leaders have already been there too, not least Taoiseach Micheal Martin who, himself, knows what it is to lose children. Indeed, his bereavement was clearly reawakened in interviews he did from Creeslough last week where the man’s innate decency shone through again.

Another man whose leadership on Creeslough has been outstanding through all of this has been local priest Fr John Joe Duffy. Some on social media did not approve of him being given so much publicity by journalists on broadcast, print and digital media. This illustrated more prejudice than sense and indicated a total lack of appreciation of the singular role a priest can play in any local community at a time such as this, despite all the well-aired Church scandals of recent years.

It is also to place blame for those scandals in the wrong place. It belonged to the bishops and religious superiors who covered them up, not to the priests on the ground who had little say and less knowledge about abusers, and without whose dedicated service in parishes across this island the Catholic Church would probably have disappeared from Ireland by now.

Had the church, all churches, all faiths more people like Fr Duffy, religion in Ireland would be in a far healthier state.

Through his Masses and rosaries, as well as his physical presence at the scene of this tragedy, he helped put a frame on all of this woefulness for the bereaved, for the first responders, for the local community, for all involved. He has given them a structure in these early days through which they can be just be together, even in silence, as they contemplate the catastrophe that has befallen them in their innocence. This senseless catastrophe.

Closer to home it is also a reminder of what the family and boyfriend of 23-year-old Ashling Murphy have been through since her death along the Grand Canal near Tullamore last January. What befell them too was every bit as without expectation or warning as happened in Creeslough on Friday, October 7.

It is a time for consolation, a time to reach out and embrace those bereaved, all bereaved who deserved so much better. And, in this autumn season, we might - as Patrick Kavanagh wrote - “.let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.”