WEDDING BRINGS HOPE
Wedding brings hope
By JEANETTE OLDHAM
BARRY McCullough says the story behind his recent marriage to Spina Bifida sufferer Mary McGinn is a simple one. "It's a love story, plain and simple. We got married because we fell in love like ordinary people do all the time."
But however ordinary a tag the couple try to pin on that process of falling for each other, they admit that what emerged from the day that sealed it, is something rather more extraordinary; hope for Omagh.
For intertwined in the ordinariness of their union, is a powerful sense of inspiration for all blast survivors, who one by one, are returning home from hospitals across the Province to face very different lives with disabilities.
Mary feels she is living proof that disabled people can come to lead happy, healthy lives and find very special love.
Like so many others, 43-year-old Mary was personally touched by what happened in her town on August 15.
She lost a life-long friend, 43-year-old Geraldine Breslin, with whom she had been at school, gone on holiday, and partied at her hen night just a week before the bombers struck.
She would have been in Market Street herself that Saturday, but her life was saved for the most unremarkable of reasons.
"I couldn't get a parking space because all the disabled spots seemed to have been taken up by non-badge holders," she explains. She was driving on the outskirts of the town centre when she heard the bomb's deafening bang. She headed home. "There was nothing someone in my position could have done to help."
It was there that she learned the dreadful news that her friend Geraldine was among the victims.
"Everything's been said about her; how lovely she was and how witty," she says. "She was such a witty, witty person."
After the shock sank in over the following two days, Mary and Barry realised they had to make the very difficult decision of whether to go ahead with their wedding ceremony on the Wednesday, at which Geraldine would have been a guest.
Incomprehensibly, her friend's funeral was the following day.
"At first we thought the only thing we could do was cancel the wedding," she says.
"We had spent months planning and perfecting it but it just didn't seem right to go through with the wedding - an event at which you celebrate - after Geraldine and so many other people in the town had been killed."
But it was Geraldine's family's reaction to news that the wedding might be called off that made them realise that it was now more important than ever that their special day took place.
"We went to see her family, her sister and her parents.
"They said they wanted us to stick to our plans to marry on the Wednesday. They said we had put so much effort in to organising it,' says Mary.
But it was a heartfelt comment from the dead woman's father that convinced them.
Barry adds: "He said the wedding should go ahead out of respect for Geraldine - that that was what she would have wanted.
"He said she had enjoyed the hen night the week before so much and had been very happy that we were getting married."
Mary giggles. "Geradline and 1 used to have this joke going. We both thought it was funny that we'd left getting married to late in life - she got married three years ago - you know, as if we were leaving it to the last minute."
The couple, however, continued to agonise over whether their wedding would seem insensitive to those who had suffered - especially in a week which saw more than 20 funerals in the town. But as Barry explains: "We realised that as far as being insensitive was concerned, there would never be a better time to get married.
"At the risk of this sounding wrong, if we left it six months or a year, the victims would still be dead, the injured would still be disabled or scarred.
"Nothing would be much better for them. And people said cancelling the wedding would be robbing Geraldine's family of this one bit of happiness in all the sorrow."
So they went ahead and had, in their own words, a wonderful wedding.
"Everyone was very understanding, they realised it was hard getting married in the light of Geraldine's death," Mary says.
"Her death was on everyone's minds. It helped us when her sister came to the reception for a short while.
"She said she wanted her photo taken with us. That meant a lot." Mary looks every bit the buoyant newly-wed - it's apparent in her smiles and the shine that bounces off her conversations with Barry.
But her smiles stem from the realisation that her disability has not stopped her becoming happier than she has ever been in her life. At a time when she's less mobile than ever before, she managed to enjoy new experiences, like swimming in an outdoor pool in the sunshine, which once would have seemed too high a mountain to climb.
And she crammed dozens of new sensations in to her week-long honeymoon in a Tenerife hotel specially adapted for disabled people.
There the couple made friends with a man who had lost the use of his legs after being hit by a taxi.
"He was so happy and courageous. It sounds corny but he was a real inspiration to us both," says Barry.
"We met another man who was left disabled after he was stabbed in the back in a totally unprovoked attack by a stranger.
"I think that's what we're getting at. People's ability to win through even after they have been terribly injured suddenly.
"Just like people here in Omagh."
What is evident from the sight of this loving couple locked in conversation is the old adage - where there's a will, there's a way.
The love which led to their marriage in the most tragic of circumstances and their utter determination to seize a sense of normality despite sorrow and disability must surely be a symbol of hope for others around them.
There clearly is hope in Omagh The McCulloughs, and the recent birth of a baby to one of the survivors, bears this out.
Mary and Barry believe even though it is hard to see on the surface at the moment, hope is winning through in this brave Co Tyrone town.
By JEANETTE OLDHAM
BARRY McCullough says the story behind his recent marriage to Spina Bifida sufferer Mary McGinn is a simple one. "It's a love story, plain and simple. We got married because we fell in love like ordinary people do all the time."
But however ordinary a tag the couple try to pin on that process of falling for each other, they admit that what emerged from the day that sealed it, is something rather more extraordinary; hope for Omagh.
For intertwined in the ordinariness of their union, is a powerful sense of inspiration for all blast survivors, who one by one, are returning home from hospitals across the Province to face very different lives with disabilities.
Mary feels she is living proof that disabled people can come to lead happy, healthy lives and find very special love.
Like so many others, 43-year-old Mary was personally touched by what happened in her town on August 15.
She lost a life-long friend, 43-year-old Geraldine Breslin, with whom she had been at school, gone on holiday, and partied at her hen night just a week before the bombers struck.
She would have been in Market Street herself that Saturday, but her life was saved for the most unremarkable of reasons.
"I couldn't get a parking space because all the disabled spots seemed to have been taken up by non-badge holders," she explains. She was driving on the outskirts of the town centre when she heard the bomb's deafening bang. She headed home. "There was nothing someone in my position could have done to help."
It was there that she learned the dreadful news that her friend Geraldine was among the victims.
"Everything's been said about her; how lovely she was and how witty," she says. "She was such a witty, witty person."
After the shock sank in over the following two days, Mary and Barry realised they had to make the very difficult decision of whether to go ahead with their wedding ceremony on the Wednesday, at which Geraldine would have been a guest.
Incomprehensibly, her friend's funeral was the following day.
"At first we thought the only thing we could do was cancel the wedding," she says.
"We had spent months planning and perfecting it but it just didn't seem right to go through with the wedding - an event at which you celebrate - after Geraldine and so many other people in the town had been killed."
But it was Geraldine's family's reaction to news that the wedding might be called off that made them realise that it was now more important than ever that their special day took place.
"We went to see her family, her sister and her parents.
"They said they wanted us to stick to our plans to marry on the Wednesday. They said we had put so much effort in to organising it,' says Mary.
But it was a heartfelt comment from the dead woman's father that convinced them.
Barry adds: "He said the wedding should go ahead out of respect for Geraldine - that that was what she would have wanted.
"He said she had enjoyed the hen night the week before so much and had been very happy that we were getting married."
Mary giggles. "Geradline and 1 used to have this joke going. We both thought it was funny that we'd left getting married to late in life - she got married three years ago - you know, as if we were leaving it to the last minute."
The couple, however, continued to agonise over whether their wedding would seem insensitive to those who had suffered - especially in a week which saw more than 20 funerals in the town. But as Barry explains: "We realised that as far as being insensitive was concerned, there would never be a better time to get married.
"At the risk of this sounding wrong, if we left it six months or a year, the victims would still be dead, the injured would still be disabled or scarred.
"Nothing would be much better for them. And people said cancelling the wedding would be robbing Geraldine's family of this one bit of happiness in all the sorrow."
So they went ahead and had, in their own words, a wonderful wedding.
"Everyone was very understanding, they realised it was hard getting married in the light of Geraldine's death," Mary says.
"Her death was on everyone's minds. It helped us when her sister came to the reception for a short while.
"She said she wanted her photo taken with us. That meant a lot." Mary looks every bit the buoyant newly-wed - it's apparent in her smiles and the shine that bounces off her conversations with Barry.
But her smiles stem from the realisation that her disability has not stopped her becoming happier than she has ever been in her life. At a time when she's less mobile than ever before, she managed to enjoy new experiences, like swimming in an outdoor pool in the sunshine, which once would have seemed too high a mountain to climb.
And she crammed dozens of new sensations in to her week-long honeymoon in a Tenerife hotel specially adapted for disabled people.
There the couple made friends with a man who had lost the use of his legs after being hit by a taxi.
"He was so happy and courageous. It sounds corny but he was a real inspiration to us both," says Barry.
"We met another man who was left disabled after he was stabbed in the back in a totally unprovoked attack by a stranger.
"I think that's what we're getting at. People's ability to win through even after they have been terribly injured suddenly.
"Just like people here in Omagh."
What is evident from the sight of this loving couple locked in conversation is the old adage - where there's a will, there's a way.
The love which led to their marriage in the most tragic of circumstances and their utter determination to seize a sense of normality despite sorrow and disability must surely be a symbol of hope for others around them.
There clearly is hope in Omagh The McCulloughs, and the recent birth of a baby to one of the survivors, bears this out.
Mary and Barry believe even though it is hard to see on the surface at the moment, hope is winning through in this brave Co Tyrone town.
Further Information
Publisher: NEWS LETTER
Ref: NL/310
Published Date: 17-Sep-98
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