JIM O'SHEA
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Now with her uncle Tim and his wife, Mary, Breda’s sense

of numbness ebbed and flowed: ‘the horror came floating

back.’ Her aunt Breda was there and Breda implored her aunt

to assure her that it wasn’t true. She fluctuated between

numbness, anguish, denial and anger. It seemed as if the

world had gone mad, that her relatives had gone mad. She

rang her mother and thought that she sounded tired. She was

ambiguous about getting home and facing the nightmare; she

had a strong desire to be with her family and an equally

strong wish that she would never reach home. As she stood

in Tim’s sitting room, she felt a great rage, particularly at

God: ‘I felt like smashing all the windows, kicking down the

doors. I wanted to scream “f—k you God, you b———d. I hate

you”.’ I was to experience such anger much later.

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

I remember nothing about the journey from the

airport home, not even who drove. I remember nothing

about meeting my family, or entering the house. I was

consumed by the need to see Cathal. It was like a force

driving me forward.

As Breda and Frances made their way back to

Ireland to confront this dark spectre of death, the

rest of our family sat disconsolately in the small

waiting room of the hospital, until we summoned the energy

to leave. Darkness had fallen when we began to make our way

home. Neither moon nor stars were shining that night. Our

neighbours had remained with us in the waiting room as we

sat in dazed silence. What was there to say? We were still in

shock and disbelief. What was this all about? Chaos! A world

destroyed! Survival! Helplessness! And ultimately, horror. I

cannot remember if I drove home. Probably not. But, I do

remember the darkness as we came into the yard of our

house. It is one of the clearest and bleakest memories I have.

With my senses heightened, I became conscious of the house

being shrouded in a deep gloom of blackness. What had once

been a warm and welcoming home was now a cold building

brooding under a winter sky. The heat was not on, and the

house was freezing. I felt at that time that this house would

never be the same again. I felt that laughter and fun would

never be heard there anymore. And so it was for a long time.

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

Meanwhile in London, Tom, knowing that he could not

protect Breda from the pain of grief, was doing everything in

his power to console and support her, and help her find her

way home to rejoin her shattered family. She recorded those

moments in her diary:

I packed my case, pulling out my black clothes with a

macabre logic. Tom drove me to his house, where his

wife, Vourneen, put her arms around me, and made me

a hot whiskey. By now I was in a complete state of shock,

completely and utterly oblivious to the painful reality,

my mind was numb … I vaguely remember ringing my

work associate & friend Katie & telling her calmly why

I wouldn’t be in for a while. I remember trying to

estimate for her how long I would be gone, as if I was

going to a wedding. Totally unreal.

 Extract from book When a Child Dies. Footsteps of a Grieving Family.

When she was allowed in to see Cathal, she stumbled into

the little room where he was laid out and I can remember her

horror-struck face when she saw her brother on the bed. I felt

so helpless. I wanted to support my children, but I was unable

to support even myself. I had mentally, but not emotionally,

accepted that Cathal was dead. Deirdre could not accept this

reality, especially as her brother looked as if he was asleep.

This is the image that stuck in her mind:

 When I saw Cathal in the hospital I began to believe

that he was only sleeping. He looked so peaceful, looked

the same as he always did. I really began to think that he

would most definitely wake up any minute, that he

would move, even a small movement to show us that he

would live. I felt very strongly that he wasn’t dead, that

he would come home, and that the doctors were wrong.

extract from ‘When a Child Dies. Footsteps of a Grieving Family’ published by Veritas

My shocked family had to struggle through that afternoon and evening, when time lost all meaning for us. Deirdre, having heard the bad news, could not, and cannot to this day,

recollect leaving Denis’s house and getting to Cashel hospital.

All she can recall is ‘a constant feeling of extreme numbness’.

Mary and I waited in the small room for Deirdre to come. Bill

was so upset that he would not go in to see Cathal, but was

with us in the waiting room when she arrived. Deirdre felt as

if it was an eternity before she was allowed in to see her

brother. She recalled how upset Mary was, but apart from that

she felt frozen, ‘as if I was no longer in control of my own body,

as if I was not really physically present, but in another place’.

extract from ‘When a child dies. footsteps of a grieving family’