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THINGS MOVE PRETTY quickly in this world. No matter how significant or exceptional an event, thanks in large part to a 24/7 news cycle and our ever-diminishing attention spans, it isn’t too long before it fades off the radar screen.
It is a sad testimony to the gravity of the devastation in Creeslough, Co Donegal that – a week after the freak explosion which killed 10 people, critically injured several and destroyed Lafferty’s Service Station, the petrol station/supermarket/post office which was the de facto hub of that rural area – so many of us cannot stop thinking about what happened.
Not a huge amount can be added to what already has been written and said very well in the wake of this horror. But for me, it has hammered home how comparatively trivial politics, the topic that usually gets examined in this space, is. And it just didn’t feel right to do the usual now.
Mourning
In the review of the papers on Brendan O’Connor’s Sunday radio programme, Justine McCarthy of The Irish Times was assigned the unenviable, though necessary, the initial task of naming the victims and providing some background on them and how they came to be there on that day. To her great credit, she got through it. Her voice, laden with emotion, encapsulated the sentiments of disbelief and despair felt collectively by the nation.
In particular, this awful occurrence has had an enormous impact on the people of Donegal. Since then, the towns and villages of that beautiful place have stopped and, in different ways, commemorated the dead and conveyed sincere sympathies to their neighbours in Creeslough. Donegal remains sparsely populated. For notwithstanding this country’s prosperity, its young have continued to travel to the four corners of the globe in search of opportunity.
These women and men have similarly pressed the pause button on their new lives and gathered with previous generations of emigrants and others with ties to the northwest of Ireland in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and further afield to offer their condolences. In Boston, at an evening Mass in St Brendan’s Church in Dorchester, a parish adjacent to my own, they prayed for the 10 who were lost and stood in solidarity from afar with the grieving. One can only hope that these small gestures have given a measure of comfort to the residents of Creeslough.
Much has correctly been made of how the community has rallied since all in the vicinity were shaken to their core by what they heard at Lafferty’s. The individuals and businesses – who rushed in immediately without regard for their own safety in a desperate attempt to aid those in peril, who have fed first responders and journalists for free and who have donated bread and milk to locals who don’t have a shop to go to anymore – are deservedly called heroes.
Community
And in this terrible period, Creeslough is fortunate to have Father John Joe Duffy, the parish priest at St Michael’s Church. By all accounts, he is a pastor in the truest sense of the word, someone who is instinctively a friend to and an ally of everyone he meets, as well as a man of God.
Having to preside over multiple funeral Masses during this dreadful week must have been heart-wrenching for him. Yet he did a wonderful job. Father Duffy dwelled appropriately on the best qualities of the victims whose lives he and the congregation were there to celebrate, the attributes that made them special, unique and so loved by their friends and family. He also managed to intersperse some badly needed moments of levity in his homilies.
For us who share Father John Joe Duffy’s or another religious faith, this incident is extremely challenging. These 10 people were in a shop, doing something totally normal and ordinarily safe. They were not engaged in an inherently risky activity. Consequently, probably with more anger due to the innocence and randomness of the circumstances, we ask ourselves: How could God allow this fate to befall, for instance, five-year-old Shauna Flanagan Garwe, who, together with her father Robert, was buying a birthday cake for her mother?
Continued support
It is a question that has been posed on countless occasions, typically following a human tragedy. Theologians across the spectrum have grappled with this quandary and struggled mightily to arrive at a formulation that can resolve it satisfactorily for the bereaved. I don’t know if it’s possible.
Whether they will turn to their faith or elsewhere, those who were close to Shauna and Robert, Catherine O’Donnell and her son James Monaghan, Leona Harper, Jessica Gallagher, James O’Flaherty, Martin McGill, Martina Martin and Hugh Kelly will seek answers and solace.
They will require support in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. The citizens of Creeslough have been amazing on this front to date. Undoubtedly, they will not be found wanting when the spotlight is not focused there.
At the end of James O’Flaherty’s funeral, 12-year-old Hamish O’Flaherty spoke with equally abundant bravery and eloquence about his Dad, who perished inside Lafferty’s while his son waited for him outside in the car. In addition to paying a marvellous tribute to a person he adored, Hamish’s broader message was clear: Be grateful.
It’s an important lesson that this boy has learned in the most difficult fashion imaginable. Our existences are precious and fragile.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a Law Lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with TheJournal.ie.
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Formerly the most stable state in the Middle-East. Hundreds of thousands dead and fundamental islamists set to capitalize on it. All because they decided to talk about pricing oil in Euro instead of the US dollar.
Truly terrifying what you can do with public opinion and a large military budget.
They’ve had a horrible last 50 years. First Saddam, now this. Terrible.
Re R H Beige Lark.
Well said. Libya was invaded for the same reason. It was going to take oil payments in anything, commodities, gold, euro etc. The threat to the Petrodollar was too much. I’m afraid Iran will go the same way unless they start taking payments in dollars again for their oil.
The US is a country teetering on the brink financially and the last thing they want is any upstart threatening to stop using Petrodollars. I believe the US government knows it is close to the abyss and hence the Sandy Hook massacre and Boston bombing events which have been orchestrated and planned to take more rights away from citizens, especially attempt to get high powered weapons away from people with subsequent pre planned legislation.
Libya actually had an excellent way of ending debt in African countries, they were about to introduce an African gold standard that countries would have to use to pay for African commodities
Couple of weeks later Libya is no more and the other African leaders are put back in their place
Gaddafi actually had some very bright ideas to make the middle east a very financially stable region, unfortunately it involve a threat to the petroldollar. If Libya and the others involve put their plan into action it would have put the dollar into a early grave by showing it’s true overwashed value. But hey they showed us that Libya, afgan and Iraq were evil countries that were a threat to mankind. We found the true hero’s in the middleeast like Saudi Arabia were it’s traditional to stone a woman to for wearing a dress that exposes flesh.
Sandy hook was orchestrated?! What a despicable comment!
You mean the same Iraq that gassed their own civilians? Or the same Libya which was trying to establish a modern empire of its own by invading and trying to annex Mali?
Rose-tinted glasses work both ways.
Seoirse, you are reaching a low with your comments. You are reading from the same script as b Lowe.
Niall, so if a African country receives gold for commodities what happens then? Please elaborate? There is a reason why the gold standard was dropped. Not every country has reserves of gold so how would they trade with Africa?
Must make a correction, I was referring to Libyan expansionism in Chad, not any involvement in Mali.
Re Niall.
You are exactly right with the gold dinar system Gaddafi was close to implementing.
The French President st the time, President Sarkozy, called it the greatest threat on history to the financial existence of mankind(wherein mankind for Sarkozy was France and a handful of other Western countries).
Imagine a system that was one of the greatest threats to mankind as described by an imperialist and it received zero coverage in Western media outlets.
Ah yes, the great legacy of the US/UK unprovoked illegal invasion and the papers still play the pipers tune.
A recent survey on the UK found the majority of people think fewer than 10,000 have died in Iraq since the invasion. Good to see Western media is giving an unbiased and objective accounting of Iraq over the years.
How can George Bush look in the mirror with all the murders and killings he has caused. He should be strung up and locked away for life and charged with war crimes!!! It breaks my heart every time I read about this :(
Sunni and Shia Muslims where killing each other centuries before anybody ever heard of George Bush or even America for that matter.
Re Al Shamen.
Yes, your point is valid but it is an inconsequential one.
The point is as a result of US stupidity this has been allowed to fester and there is an abundance of weapons available for these guys mow since General Petraeus started to arm these guys.
Iraq has always been awash with weapons.Apparently most households have access to an AK47.
Most of the weapons Al Qaeda use are Eastern Bloc.America has a lot to answer for but you cannot blame them for a centuries old sectarian feud that predates the foundation of that country.
Al Shamen – The US is awash with weapons too. Apparently most households have access to something that shoots bullets and they want to keep it that way. People get killed there in their droves on a daily basis and their human rights record is frankly appalling. There has also been civil war, sectarian strife and effective apartheid in the US within the last century. It has also engaged in criminal foreign wars. Again it is an irrelvancy to what has been said here.
Nobody has blamed the US for there having been age-old sectarianism in Iraq – though the CIAs involvement in keeping various factions at war is legendary – but people are right to expect the US to answer for its actions in recent times and to expect some sort of defence of those actions without it pulling in excuses like “there was always trouble so we can be excused of what we did to them”.
Well it was America who formed and funded the Al Queda to help them against the Russians, so America does have alot to answer for.
Democracy, don’t ya just love it! They do!
Every dog on the street knows the invasion was based on utter lies and a direct consequence of those lies is one and half million people dead……..spreading democracy ?? spreading death and destruction !!
Freedom!
Well Mr jingles freedom is what we have but when I look around all I see is people trapped in financial pain, there is a big problem with the system
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