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The mother of Chloe Fogarty has paid a moving tribute to her seven-month old baby daughter who died of suspected heat stroke in a car last Thursday.
“I’m so sorry you had to go, we had such big hopes and dreams for your future. Heaven was missing an angel, a special angel, and they needed you,” Louise Fogarty said at her daughter’s funeral Mass in St Nicholas’s Church in the village of Solohead, on the border between Tipperary and Limerick.
Standing beside her husband in the church where the couple got married in 2015 and celebrated again just three months ago when Chloe was baptised, she said: “Paul and I will stay strong together because we know that that’s what you would want.”
Chloe Fogarty died after being found her father’s car on Thursday afternoon outside O’Dwyer Steel, where he worked in the village of Dundrum.
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It is reported that her father had brought her in the car as he travelled to work at O’Dwyer Steel in the village of Dundrum on Thursday morning and forgot to drop her off at crèche. He realised after 1pm that his daughter was still in the vehicle and emergency services were called.
Ahead of the funeral Mass on Monday, hundreds of mourners gathered in silence to mourn the loss of the the baby, who would have been eight months old on Tuesday, and to offer their support to the couple.
At the outset of the Mass, Louise and Paul Fogarty walked to the altar together, carrying a teddy bear and a photograph, flanked by two family members, to pay their tribute to Chloe, "our beautiful angel," as Louise put it.
“Chloe, you switched on a happiness in us that we never knew we had. You were the most precious person in our lives. Our beautiful happy Chloe. You always had a smile on your face for everyone you ever met. You knew how to put a smile on everyone else’s faces too.”
She spoke of how much they loved Chloe, how she had so much love to give, and how it pained her to return to work after maternity leave three weeks ago, although she knew how much Chloe loved her crèche.
“You were the most inquisitive baby, so sociable, first in the door every morning and you loved to watch all your little pals come in, one by one. Your laugh was so infectious.”
Fighting back tears, Louise remembered Chloe lying in her room, playing happily with her teddies. “We will treasure every memory… Mammy, Daddy and your family love you. We will love you forever and never forget you.”
One of the songs played during the Mass was Tears in Heaven, written by Eric Clapton after the death of his young son Conor.