JIM O'SHEA
Counselling Service

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.

I watched immobilised by horror as they pulled back the

sheet that covered Cathal. I hardly recognised my child.

When I had seen him on the previous day in the hospital he

had been warm, his soft hair resting lightly on the pillow.

Now I saw this pale corpse, his head bandaged, in this cold

place. I could see the great black marks on his shoulders and

his side, showing that he had tried to turn away from the car

when he had rounded the corner and crossed the road. This

memory is the one that reminds me of his last seconds, as I

cycle by that place every day. I felt his forehead, and now

I understood what the coldness of death really meant. It was

an icy coldness that somehow sapped the humanness from

my child.

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

I can well understand why Breda did not wish to enter that

morgue, and I am glad that she did not do so. I can

understand how appalled Frances was, and how Bill could be

so physically ill. Of all the experiences of that first week, and

of the entire grieving process, this was the most painful one

for me. I watch the Silent Witness drama on television quite

frequently, and most episodes include morgue scenes. Pulling

back the sheet to reveal the naked corpse is just a moment of

drama, which most people barely notice. But for me this now

evokes memories of that terrible day. I was led into the

morgue in Cashel by the late Inspector Ned Lafferty. Ned,

whom I got to know much later when I was the principal of

Our Lady’s Secondary School, showed himself to be a warm,

generous and caring person that day. 

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

Our lives had stopped. I remember resenting every

laugh I heard, every sign of life. I wanted to scream,

‘How can you laugh and joke? Don’t you know what has

happened?’ I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t

feel the cataclysm. I was enraged that some seismic scale

hadn’t registered it to the world.

Breda wanted to be near Cathal, ‘to touch him, to stay with

him; the urgent need to do this was choking me’. But, the

ordeal of seeing him for the first time was too much for her:

When we arrived I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t look at him.

I didn’t want to see his body I loved so much bruised &

bloody. I’d rather die. It would have haunted me forever.

If only I could have talked to him; even if he had lived

& been in a vegetative state I could have gone back

home & minded him.

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

That day the nightmare intensified. I was called to go to the

hospital and identify Cathal in the morgue. Frances, Breda

and Bill wished to come and support me. Frances, who was

exhausted from the journey home from the United States

and from the trauma, has the clearest description of what it

was like for Bill and herself:

I remember that Dad was to identify the body at the

morgue of Cashel Hospital. As I had been many times

before, I was once again his companion in the hard

moments. Bill came too. Cathal was unmistakeably dead.

In those days, undertakers took no pains to conceal

death. His yellow pallor was the ultimate proof. He

always had a rosy, healthy complexion. I’ve come to

associate that waxy, yellow colour with death.

Bill entered for just a second and went around the

side to vomit repeatedly. We were broken.

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

Breda and her aunt Margaret had long gone to Shannon

Airport to collect Frances. What an unenviable errand! Breda

describes what it was like for them:

 Our journey to Shannon was a nightmare; bitter stormy

weather, to match our emotions. Meeting Fran had

broken my barriers temporarily, & the raw pain made

me feel so ill, & the anger boiled within me. I was afraid

of the love we shared in my family, the feeling of

togetherness we had. It scared me. I wished we hadn’t

been so close, it wasn’t worth it. I hated God. My family

never did anything to deliberately hurt anyone, & he

had rewarded us by snatching away the child we adored

& idolised. I felt myself drift in & out of sanity, hardly

aware of what went on, bouts of numbness interrupted

by sharp stabs of physical pain in my stomach. I wanted

to go to Cathal & wrap my arms around him like before

& tell him it would be okay. I was so angry that God

hadn’t taken me instead.

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

But these were not my thoughts on that morning. They

would come later, and cause me worry and anxiety. For now

I had to survive. There was no question of my being the big

strong father. There could be no pretence here. This was real.

There was no hiding this vulnerability. But, vulnerability is

our greatest strength. It causes us to reach out for help. But

who would I reach out to? I did not have the strenght to reach

out. All those in the house could not support me. I dragged

myself out of bed and made some tea. I cannot recall if the

others were up. I don’t suppose we had much to say, except

to sit morosely, and dwell in our sad thoughts. 

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

I became even more aware of this bond and this maternal

love from a book that I am currently reading entitled Behind

the Lines by Andrew Carroll. It is a book which quotes the

letters of various people written during the major wars waged

since the eighteenth century. One of these was written by a

Hungarian doctor, Anna Koppich, whose young son perished

in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where she, too,

was imprisoned. I was moved by the following lines:

‘And now I have a confession to make. For many, many

years, even after I gave birth, I thought that being in love

is the most formidable, the strongest feeling in the

world. Later I realised, however, what being a mother

means. I found out that motherly love is way above any

other kind, a kind of love that is so little talked about,

so little written about.’

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