Grace, dignity and heartache for two lost young lives

Six families have suffered a profound, personal loss.

Their grief is fathomless; they are burying their children.

It has touched us too.

Because we also know them.

We recognised the fashionable young women and men in those south Dublin churchyards yesterday, grief-stricken and clinging to each other at the funerals of their friends.

They could have come from any part of Ireland. The funerals could have been in any parish.

We recognised the anguished parents, drawn from many thousands all over the country who bit their lips at airports and train stations as they waved excited kids off to America on their summer solo adventure of a lifetime.

Most of all, we recognised the six bright, happy-go-lucky students who died in such random circumstances in San Francisco last week. Far away from home and enjoying a night out at a 21st birthday party, they were killed when the balcony they were standing on collapsed on to the street.

Their faces smile at us now from the newspapers and television screens. The tragedy of their passing has touched the nation.

Laid to rest

Eimear Walsh and Eoghan Culligan were buried yesterday. The funerals of Niccolai Schuster and Olivia Burke are being held today and Lorcán Miller will be laid to rest tomorrow. All were 21 years old.

Olivia’s cousin Ashley Donohoe (22), who held dual Irish-American citizenship, was buried on Sunday in California.

Huge numbers came to support the Walsh and Culligan families yesterday morning in Rathfarnham and Foxrock. Gardaí directed traffic on approach roads to the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.

The celebrants at their funeral Masses had to find some words of comfort for the grieving families and their shell-shocked friends. They acknowledged how difficult a task it was in such cruel and unnatural circumstances.

‘Precious and fragile life’

In Foxrock, Fr Paul Ward addressed the large attendance of students.

“When you are young, your own mortality is the furthest thing from your mind. And so it should be” he said. “As you look to the future you are now very aware of how precious and fragile life is. Appreciate the gift of life to its fullest and take on the mantle that Eimear has left behind, by making the world and the future a better place in her memory.”

In Rathfarnham, Fr Richard Olin of St Mary’s College in Rathmines spoke of Eoghan’s class of 2012 “tasting a hard and bitter agony in the past days as you have gathered together to support each other, support your colleagues and to support your family and your friends.”

Yesterday, in these two nearby parishes, as these young adults struggled to come to terms with what had happened, they were strengthened by the bonds of family, friendship and community.

The wider dimension was touched upon by Fr Ward. “Many words have been written over the past week. Ireland has been united in grief and has reflected on the loss of our group of young talented people who represented abroad all that is good about us.”

The grace and dignity of the families in the midst of such immeasurable loss shone through. They spoke with affection and the deepest pride of their wonderful, talented children.

It was heartbreaking.

Eoghan’s eldest brother Andy (Cully, as he was known, was the youngest of three boys) summed up perfectly the sense of promising futures unrealised. He spoke after Cully’s girlfriend Sarah read out a short poem about how much she’ll miss him.

It was touching and full of the crushingly important little details of young romance: “I’ll miss your button nose . . . I’ll miss your hipster clothes . . . the dinner dates and cheeky pints . . . I’ll miss texting you every second of the day.”

And then Andy mused how he had often thought about being his best man, how: “I always pictured myself being there for those two on their wedding day . . .”

He brought home the poignant reality of how the warm and loving words uttered by so many yesterday were heartwrenchingly out of context and out of time. Fathers, mothers, siblings and friends speaking proud words of love and admiration which they hoped they might have been delivering at a future graduation or wedding.

Memorabilia

Symbols of the lost young lives were brought and laid beside their coffins before the mass began.

"Girl's things" as the priest put it at Eimear's funeral: false tan and make-up, along with the promising medical student's white coat. For Eoghan, a rugby and a GAA jersey, his grandfather's watch and some memorabilia from Lord of the Rings.

The mass booklets reflected milestones in Eimear and Eoghan’s lives – happy photographs with family and friends.

A line from Finnegans Wake, quoted by UCD president Andrew Deeks at last week's memorial service, was reproduced on Eimear Walsh's booklet.

“They lived and laughed and loved and left.”

In Rathfarnham, the parish youth group sang a Bob Dylan classic as the coffin was carried into church.

May your heart always be joyful ,

And may your song always be sung,

May you stay forever young.