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I touched him – his skin was shockingly cold, like

marble; my brother, a cuddly, lively, warm little boy lying

here like an empty shell. I traced his face, the face I

loved, his eyelids, his forehead, lips, then his entwined

fingers & bloodless hands. I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. I just

needed to be with him. That’s the only feeling I had.

 Frances recollects how austere the hospital funeral home was: 

Cathal was not at a funeral home. He was in a very small

stone building on the hospital grounds. The building in

its austerity reminded me of a monk’s cell. There was

none of the comforts of a funeral home. And that

seemed fitting to me. His body had filled out since

I’d seen him the year before. I remember thinking that

he would have been strong and broad like my uncles.

The doctor told mammy how strong and well-cared for

he looked. That broke us even more. The needlessness.

The waste.

Extract from When a Child Dies. Footsteps of a Grieving Family. Published by Veritas.

The funeral home was the most horrendous of all. It was

then that it hit me very hard that Cathal was not coming

back to us. He was lying in his uniform in the white

coffin, and I knew for certain that he was gone from us

for good, that there was no way we could get him back.

I felt immense grief and sadness. I remember the black

marks on his fingers from the accident. I recall how white

he was … and all of us crying uncontrollably.

Breda’s account recorded at the time shows the trauma of the

family as we clung together, and how the numbness

prevented her from crying:

The coffin lay open … I could see a bandage. I walked

closer & saw what will always be the worst moment of

my life: my brother Cathal, dead. I pictured him

sleeping beside me in my bed, I would sit & look at his

sweet innocent face … this was different. He was white,

colourless, his lips were bloodless but there was blood

around his mouth, his tiny nose was bruised & his

forehead a strange shape. But the worst of it was the

bandage; they had shaved his beautiful hair off, the hair

he was so proud of, which, despite all my dad’s stern

warnings, he refused to cut short.

Extract from When a Child Dies. Footsteps of a Grieving Family. Published by Veritas.

There is something unnatural about seeing a child lying in a

coffin. I cannot imagine the trauma suffered by Mary at

seeing Cathal that evening, and I did not distress her by

asking as I write this book. She still finds it very painful to

talk about the events of those days. All I remember is wishing

that he was buried and that it all might go away. I envy people

who have their deceased children laid out in their own

homes. They seem to get relief from the pain. It is like

holding on to their children for as long as possible. But, I

could not bear to do this, and Mary recently told me that she

felt the same.

For Bill, seeing Cathal in the coffin was ‘hell’. He screamed

and ran away, but I made him return and see the corpse of his

brother, knowing, in my less confused state of mind, that it

would be a cause of regret to him if he did not do so. I sensed

then what I know now: that it is important to experience as

much of the pain as possible immediately after a death, and

that it is particularly important to see the body of the

deceased. It brings home the reality of the loss and is essential

for proper healing. Failure to do this, or, as sometimes

happens, being numbed by tablets, can prolong the grieving

process and lead to complicated grieving. Bill confirms how

seeing Cathal’s body brought the reality of the death into

focus. ‘I was devastated,’ he wrote. ‘I think this was the first time

it hit me … the worst moment of my life to date.’ Deirdre also

confirms how the distressing reality then began to take hold:

 Extract from When a Child Dies. Footsteps of a Grieving Family. Published by Veritas.

I drove home that day, Monday 19 February, full of misery

and anger, but I think that the horror of that entire

experience either anaesthetised me for the demands of the

funeral, or else it made everything that followed less

overwhelming. That evening we had to return, as a family, to

the funeral room attached to the hospital. For a time I grew

to hate that hospital because of the bad memories it held for

me. Our small family tried to console each other and pray

together as we stood beside the coffin, before the public

arrived to offer their sympathy.

 I sensed the fear and the pain of my family as we entered

the funeral room, which was beside the morgue. Having

experienced the coldness and bareness of the morgue there

was some comfort for me that the funeral room, while sparse,

was at least warm. For some of my family it was different.

They had not yet seen Cathal after the post-mortem, and were

unprepared for the trauma of seeing him laid out in a coffin.

 Extract from When a Child Dies. Footsteps of a Grieving Family. Published by Veritas.