JIM O'SHEA
Counselling Service

Latest Posts from Jim's Counselling Blog....

Death took us by the hand

Frances, still hysterical, refused to budge: When the undertaker came to take Cathal, I would not leave. I was outraged that he was being taken – our boy.   I wanted to be alone with him now that the public was gone. The other members of my family dutifully left when asked. But I stayed. [...]

Posted on 28 January 2012 | 2:23 pm

THE COFFIN LID CLOSES ON OUR YOUNGEST CHILD

I will never forget that moment. It was a potent reminder of this unwelcome reality. I felt physically sick as the lid was closed and stared in horror as the bolts tightened. I could feel my anguish and my fear increase as I got the last glimpse of my child. I felt so helpless. What [...]

Posted on 21 January 2012 | 1:17 pm

waiting for the coffin to be closed, never to see our child’s face again.

Other members of our family wanted all this precious time with Cathal to be for the family only. Frances records that she was  hysterical, just hysterical. I resented every single person in that place that was not my immediate family. I felt this should have been for us only. He was ours and we needed [...]

Posted on 14 January 2012 | 1:16 pm

we support each other in the mortuary and many friends arrive to support us

We all stacked our hands on his chest. I don’t remember whose hand went first. But each of us automatically planted one hand on the next. We were declaring our unity as a family that would always include Cathal. Somehow his chest felt hollow, as if it would cave away. I couldn’t bear the signs [...]

Posted on 7 January 2012 | 1:17 pm

frances and breda struggle with the reality of seeing their brother in the austere room in the morturary

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 [...]

Posted on 31 December 2011 | 1:13 pm

our child was gone forever

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 [...]

Posted on 24 December 2011 | 5:34 pm

it is important to face the reality of death, however brutal

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 [...]

Posted on 17 December 2011 | 1:33 pm

our fear in the funeral room

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 [...]

Posted on 10 December 2011 | 8:30 am

PATHOLOGISTS SHOULD BE MORE EMPATHIC TO BEREAVED PEOPLE

Ned Lafferty led me from that place, a warm figure trying to negate the coldness I had experienced. My legs could just about carry me as I emerged, crushed, from the morgue. I walked robot-like to complete the formalities of the postmortem, and I still feel angry at what followed. I am still conscious of [...]

Posted on 3 December 2011 | 2:01 pm

the horror continues

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 [...]

Posted on 28 November 2011 | 12:35 pm