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Two traditions two families, two funerals, the same grief
By MIRIAM LORD

TWO small country churches in Co Tyrone.
One perched high on a bog in the Sperrin Mountains.
The other, nestling in the rich pasture of the foothills below.
Two strong traditions.
One Catholic.
One Presbyterian.
Gaelic Athletic Association as opposed to Ulster Unionist Association.
Two families.
Two funerals.
Same grief.
They buried Breda Devine first.
Three months off her second birthday, she gave back to God the three months she borrowed when she arrived prematurely in this world.
Baby Breda struggled and won her fight for life only to have it snatched away by callous strangers.
Yesterday they took her body from her home on the mountain to St Mary's Church in Aughnabrack.
Her mammy wasn't there to mourn her, nor could she comfort Breda's bewildered brothers and sisters: Tracey Devine still lies critically ill with 60 percent burns.
Tracey's husband Paul had to be strong for the children. As he stood in the misting rain, Aaron (6), Shay (4) and Naimh (2½ ) looked up to him for reassurance.
Daddy smiled and held little Shay's hand until the undertaker signalled it was time. Only the dark red flush rising in the young father's face betrayed his true feelings.
He stepped forward and made ready to carry his baby daughter's coffin to her funeral Mass.
But the white casket was so small he didn't know quite which way to hold it.
In the end, he did what felt right and gathered it up under his right arm.
The way any father would scoop up his little girl and run with her as she squeals in delight.
It was a heartbreaking scene, watched in anguished silence by a thousand mourners, two little boys and one little girl.
Aaron, the eldest, hid behind his aunties and uncles.
Shay, a four-year-old with a pale face and dark circles under his eyes, watched his father walk slowly inside, his face a stomach-churning picture of sorrow, wistfulness and fear.
Little Naimh - not quite yet three - regarded the crowd with demure curiosity.
Her bright summer frock stood out among the funeral blacks and greys as she gripped her aunty's fingers knowing instinctively this was not a time to talk.
It was a very private, very country funeral. The under-12 team from the local GAA club formed a guard of honour. Clann na Gael officials acted as stewards. The local women had baked cakes and made sandwiches for the after-mass buffet in the clubhouse.
Inside the church, Bishop Edward Daly remembered Breda's uncle Gary and his fiancee Donna Marie, both seriously injured in the blast.
And, as the grieving crowd walked the short distance to the tiny graveyard after the service, we remembered that baby Breda lost her life on a shopping trip with her mother to buy new shoes for Gary's wedding.
She was to have been a flower girl. But the only flowers she got were placed around her open grave, which will forever look across the valley to her home on the other side of the mountain.
And then down through the Sperrins and through Omagh town to another small grey church in another country churchyard.
They buried Fred White and his son, Bryan, at Old Drumragh graveyard.
In many ways this was a different type of funeral in a very different setting. The Whites are of farming stock and the people who came to mourn at Ballynahatty Presbyterian Church were of solid agricultural stock themselves.
Almost all the men wore dark-blue or grey, conservatively-cut suits; the women in floral print dresses looked the type who were stalwarts of the Women's Institute.
The grief here was just as sharply focused as that which had gone before in Aughnabrack and yet there was a stoicism about the mourners.
They carried in the father's coffin first. Then they followed with his son's.
Sixty-year-old Fred White had worked for the local Education Board and his passion in life was for growing daffodils.
His son Byran had recently been promoted in his job at the council. Like his father he, too, shared a deep interest in horticulture.
Edith White, who had just lost her husband and her only son, was supported into the church by her family. Bryan (26) had lived at home.
Now Edith and her daughter Linda are alone.
Perhaps Fred White would prefer to be remembered for his prowess with growing daffodils than for his membership of the Ulster Unionist Association. Unionist leader and Ulster's First Minister David Trimble was among the mourners having earlier been in Buncrana for the funerals there. The local rector Arthur O'Neill condemned the perpetrators of the atrocity, saying he could "only call it an act of medieval savagery''.
And then they bore the two coffins past the horse chestnut trees and laid them side-by-side in the hearse.
A mile further up the road, father and son were buried side by side.
Two country churchyards.
Two traditions.
Two families.
Same grief.