Breda O’Brien: The Berkeley deaths draw us close together in our sorrow

Even for those of us who did not know and love those lost in Berkeley, their photos are poignant and heartbreaking.

The faces of Niccolai Schuster, Eoghan Culligan, Eimear Walsh, Olivia Burke , Ashley Donohoe and Lorcán Miller, captured in mundane moments of happiness, now symbolise something that every parent fears – the loss of a child.

Their open, smiling faces, some with a hint of mischief, others with a hint of shyness, have become icons of unimaginable loss. And it is even harder because the loss occurred away from home. Social media can make the world seem very small, but nothing replaces physical presence at times of tragedy.

Something deep in our cultural heritage causes us to gather protectively around the suffering, to try to ease their pain by presence and practical help.

Sometimes we worry that community is weakening in Ireland. That may be true in some respects, but it is at times of bereavement that we see the importance of community ties.

Communities come into their own, like schools, which continue to have deep significance long after pupils have left them behind, and parishes, which open their doors to create a safe space to gather.

Kindness

The fact that the deaths have occurred so far away means that we rely even more on those who are present at the scene to represent us with kindness and dignity.

Fr Brendan McBride and others from the Irish Immigration Pastoral Centre were among the first to respond that night.

They have continued to stand in solidarity with the young people left mourning their friends, and worrying for the injured, Clodagh Cogley, Aoife Beary, Niall Murray, Hannah Waters, Seán Fahey, Jack Halpin and Conor Flynn.

At a time of immediate, raw loss, there is a desperate need for people who can create a space where grief can be contained, and the first, stumbling steps on the immensely long road of coming to terms with the tragedy can be taken.

The dignified empathy displayed by Consul General Philip Grant and all those at the Irish Consulate helped provide such a space.

Mary McAleese also displayed leadership, speaking for many when she reproved the New York Times for its insensitivity and stereotyping.

The young Irish who were in Berkeley face huge challenges. Young people, quite understandably, tend to act as if life will go on forever, and to be brought abruptly face to face with the brutal fact of mortality is utterly disorientating.

Parents who are bereaved have to cope with the news every parent dreads. The youthful rite of passage that they hoped their children would navigate with ease has become something indescribably grim and bleak.

Close-knit

Even those who got good news on Tuesday night that their child was not physically harmed will not escape unscathed. Ireland, not to mention south Dublin, is still a close-knit place.

The positive side is that such close knowledge of each other causes people to rally. The necessary cost is that you share the grief.

One mother told me her son had been on the balcony just moments before the collapse, and then spent hours searching the hospitals for news of his friend with whom he was sharing an apartment. Sadly, his friend had died.

Her joy that her child was physically unharmed was followed immediately by grief that others who had spent so much time in her house would never come home again.

Parents whose children who have escaped death and life-changing injuries have the difficult task of trying to show their bereaved children that it is possible to go on, even when grief seems overwhelming.

Our immediate need at a time like this is to make sense of something senseless, but there is no facile response possible.

Even people of deep faith may find themselves echoing the words from the Psalms spoken by Jesus on the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

For believer and unbeliever alike, there is a need for rituals that soothe and comfort, a need for the presence of others who can sensitively accompany them.

Others who have trodden the path of grief before are often best able to say that time does not heal, but it makes bearable the seemingly unbearable.

Bereaved

For the young bereaved, who feel that they will never be the same again, they are right.

Yet this dreadful experience which no one would ever have wished for them, may bring gifts of empathy, compassion and even gratitude for life, impossible as it seems at this moment.

Even out of the most arid, bleak experiences, grace and hope can flower.