TM/040

SILENCE OF THE INNOCENTS
By BRIAN READE, STEVE WHITE and LUCY ROCK

Two coffins for four funerals... a mum her baby and her unborn twins
IT WAS the sight of the big coffin that reduced every mourner to a shambling wreck.
On the outside it looked normal enough. Expensive oak with The Virgin Mary carved on the front, Jesus on the back, and a scene from The Last Supper on either side.
They'd seen its like many times before. But on the inside this coffin was like no other they had seen. For there lay a mother and her two girls killed weeks away from entering this world.
Three bodies in one coffin. A small wooden box which encapsulated the futile tragedy of the Omagh bombing. And indeed, the whole bloody history of this troubled land.
A glimpse behind it only deepened the agony.
Another coffin, a much smaller white one. Held at waist height, looking like a big pencil case with a gold crucifix on top.
The type of minute coffin that strikes at the pit of your stomach and tears at your every emotion.
Inside was 18-month-old Maura. Or Mossie to the family who doted on her.
Unlike the two unborn babies, Maura had enjoyed life on earth. This life: Born 1997. Died 1998. Cause of death: Unknown to mankind.
Behind the coffin walked a man who is now an empty shell. Avril's husband Mickey clasping his two-year-old son Patrick to his big barrel chest.
Wept
Mickey is a joiner with the build of a boxer. And now he has the face to go with it. Eyes puffed up out of all recognition by tears wept for the four loved ones he was burying. The ones he had just built a new, bigger house for, in anticipation of the joyous arrival of the twins next month.
Mickey held the hands of his two little daughters, Aoibheann, aged 5, and Elisha, a year or so younger. Pretty little things in their best blue frocks and best shiny, black shoes.
They looked bewildered. Their eyes wide-eyed, inquisitive, subduing a grin because they were going into church. Because mummy had taught them that you don't grin in church. They knew something was up but their minds had not allowed the truth in yet.
Since Saturday they had been mouthing the words "Mummy and Maura have gone to heaven" but they didn't know the meaning of them.
All they knew was they had never seen a crowd like this before.
No one in this small town of Augher had. They had lined the streets, sobbing and hugging their kids as the cortege went past heading for St Macartan's parish church in nearby Ballinagurrah.
Inside were 300 mourners, with as many again spilling out the doors and forming a four-deep ring around the small, grey church.
Some sat on the grass saying Rosaries, others slumped over headstones. The vast majority just stared silently at the church door and listened intently to the words being relayed to them from the altar by a loudspeaker.
Pain
Father Gerald McAleer, Avril's local priest who was with the family the night before the service, told of his massive pain: "There was an awful silence in a home that has seen so much laughter. Avril, her mother, and little Maura always went shopping of a Saturday. They were the image of each other.
"Avril had great faith. Great faith. There are two coffins, but four funerals. People are lost for words. What do you say?"
From the altar the mourners were urged to keep the faith despite this most inexplicable of human tragedies where not just Avril and her three girls, but her 65-year-old mother Mary were needlessly killed. And they were told about the beautiful woman that was Avril Monaghan. A woman who went to church every day. A woman who had kept the faith right to the end.
"She had a great faith in God and it always showed in the smile and in the happiness, care and love of Avril who went about slopping around in her bare feet, looking after the children, cooking, making tea, consoling and comforting," Fr James Grimes, Avril's uncle, said.
"She lived the life of God. She gave her all for others. Giving all the time and never asking. I never heard a complaint from her. She accepted all that God sent her with a great love, patience and endurance.
"We hope this day will be the last of the terrible agonies that people have suffered for 30 years. We are only a few families involved in what has been a long, long list of terrible murders and destruction.
"God said: 'No murderer will enter His kingdom.' We try to forgive but that is not easy." said the priest who married Avril and Mickey in the same church and who last saw her in this church on Saturday morning, attending Mass before she drove to her death.
This was the church where her two unborn babies would have been christened next month.
Instead they were buried with their mother in the Monaghan family plot.
And today, the grandmother they never knew will also be buried.
Outside the sun shone down for the first time in this dark week and illuminated a poignant scene.
The beautiful rolling countryside looked like it had been swept up from the cutting room floor of the Ballykissangel set.
Inside the church they read from the funeral booklet whose cover carried the haunting mother and child image of Mary with baby Jesus. And as they looked at the coffins with a photo of Avril and Maura sitting on top, the message of the reading from The Book of Wisdom was painful.
Tears
"The virtuous woman, though she dies before her time, will find rest. Coming to perfection in so short a while she achieved long life, her soul being pleasing to the Lord he has taken her quickly from the wickedness around her."
Rarely have I seen such tears at words from The Bible.
Outside the church the grave was being decorated with flowers. They littered the base and formed a necklace around its edges.
Most of the wreaths bore no message, just names as though they could find no words words to write. Except for the pink wreath in the shape of a teddy bear which had the words: "To a beautiful cheeky sister, you will be missed always, love Aoibheann, Elisha and Patrick.
Then next to it another teddy bear, this time purple, bearing the words: "Your lovely curls, your little smile and your dark brown eyes will always be with us for the rest of our lives. God bless you little angel, from your granda, aunts, uncles and cousins Grimes."
But there were harsher words coming from the altar: "We must exorcise the evil which caused Saturday's blast," said the Bishop of Clogher Joseph Duffy.
But Mickey's mind was elsewhere. As he took that 30-yard walk from the church to his beloved wife and children's final resting place, Patrick was still clinging to his neck.
As the coffins were lowered into the ground, his tears and those of Avril's nine brothers and one sister almost blinded his sight.
And his eldest daughter Aoibheann finally seemed to grasp what was going on and she joined the weeping. As she was led away with the terrible truth finally sinking in. a member of the family issued this statement.
"Avril was a wife, mother, daughter sister and a friend. She was looking forward to bringing up her family in a peaceful society following the Good Friday agreement.
"Maura was just a beautiful curly haired angel who was loved by everyone. Both families know it would have been the wish of Mary and Avril that in some way some good would come from their untimely deaths.
"They would also wish to make clear that no party or section of the community should seek to take advantage of the tragedy."
It was a fitting epitaph to two remarkable woman, one little angel and two unborn babies.
The real people of Northern Ireland would dearly love it to be an epitaph for the Troubles. But they're not holding their breath.