POIGNANT MOMENTS AS RAIN WASHES AWAY TEARS
Poignant moments as rain washes away tears
BY DARACH MacDONALD
editor@ulsterherald.com
If raindrops could wash away all the tears, then Omagh had plenty of both on Friday as a soaked town paused and turned its collective focus to the devastation caused ten years ago by an indiscriminate car bomb. At 3.10pm as the church bells tolled, people who had come together at the new Garden of Light rose as one, bowed heads and cast their minds back to the worst day of the community's life - August 15, 1998. In a simple, well-orchestrated ceremony, there were poignant moments between the inspirational words of guest speaker Terry Waite, the former Church of England negotiator turned hostage in Beirut, and the beautiful musical interludes from the Omagh-Waterford Peace Choir.
One such moment in particular came when the Duchess of Abercorn read out the names of the victims killed in that dastardly attack. They were the eerily familiar names, etched forever into the consciousness of a community's terrible grief. Then something changed forever as the Duchess named "Mary Grimes, her daughter Avril Monaghan, Avril's daughters Maura and unborn twin girls, Evelyn and Eimear..."
You could hear an audible gasp from some in the crowd as the list of Omagh's dead at last was complete. After years of anonymous acknowledgement, the youngest lives claimed in a cowardly atrocity were voiced aloud in public at long last and their memory moved from notional to actuality. For the first time, the assertion of 31 lives lost had a real and personal validity.
Beside me, Mick Grimes, the husband, father and grandfather who endured that terrible loss with his quiet determination that those unborn granddaughters would not be forgotten, was vindicated and seemed at peace.
A second moment of special poignancy came as David Bolton of the Northern Ireland Centre for Trauma and Recovery read a passage from "Finding the Inner Light - a Mother's Reflection". This was written by a mother who lost her child in the Omagh bombing and it was stressed that her "insights have been sculpted from raw and terrible loss".
For me, a sentence in this passage summed up the purpose and hope of all those who were gathered in reverential silence to hear those words on Friday, especially the sentence, "Inner healing begins when we give up the hope for a better yesterday and take the fist step towards making a better tomorrow."
In a row in front of me, was the Marlow family who lost 17-year-old Jolene in the Omagh bomb. I noted that there was a serene smile etched on the face of Nicola Marlow, Jolene's sister, who was very badly injured in the atrocity. For some, there clearly is hope beyond the nightmare and the visible familiar warmth of the Marlow family group testified to the power of healing and hope which can follow such an awful tragedy.
A final moment of special poignancy came at the end, after the Garden of Light had been officially opened and the monument in Market Street unveiled. Relieved at last from the solemnity of the occasion and as the rain eased off, people walked into the garden and mingled around the pond.
Mick Grimes moved quietly in their wake, under the shelter of a large umbrella held by a grandson. Unfazed by the crowd, he progressed slowly along the wall quietly reading the etched inscriptions and the inscribed messages attached to the wreaths which had been laid by the great and the good.
In the week after the publication of his own collection in memory of the Omagh victims, 'Til We Meet Again, his quiet progression made vividly real the final stanza of John Hewitt's haunting poem, Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto' which had been read out at the start of the proceedings:
"I might have recited a pitiful litany
Of the names of all the dead:
But these could effectively be presented
Only in small batches,
Like a lettered tablet in a village church,
Valid while everyone knew everyone,
Or longer, where a family name persists."
BY DARACH MacDONALD
editor@ulsterherald.com
If raindrops could wash away all the tears, then Omagh had plenty of both on Friday as a soaked town paused and turned its collective focus to the devastation caused ten years ago by an indiscriminate car bomb. At 3.10pm as the church bells tolled, people who had come together at the new Garden of Light rose as one, bowed heads and cast their minds back to the worst day of the community's life - August 15, 1998. In a simple, well-orchestrated ceremony, there were poignant moments between the inspirational words of guest speaker Terry Waite, the former Church of England negotiator turned hostage in Beirut, and the beautiful musical interludes from the Omagh-Waterford Peace Choir.
One such moment in particular came when the Duchess of Abercorn read out the names of the victims killed in that dastardly attack. They were the eerily familiar names, etched forever into the consciousness of a community's terrible grief. Then something changed forever as the Duchess named "Mary Grimes, her daughter Avril Monaghan, Avril's daughters Maura and unborn twin girls, Evelyn and Eimear..."
You could hear an audible gasp from some in the crowd as the list of Omagh's dead at last was complete. After years of anonymous acknowledgement, the youngest lives claimed in a cowardly atrocity were voiced aloud in public at long last and their memory moved from notional to actuality. For the first time, the assertion of 31 lives lost had a real and personal validity.
Beside me, Mick Grimes, the husband, father and grandfather who endured that terrible loss with his quiet determination that those unborn granddaughters would not be forgotten, was vindicated and seemed at peace.
A second moment of special poignancy came as David Bolton of the Northern Ireland Centre for Trauma and Recovery read a passage from "Finding the Inner Light - a Mother's Reflection". This was written by a mother who lost her child in the Omagh bombing and it was stressed that her "insights have been sculpted from raw and terrible loss".
For me, a sentence in this passage summed up the purpose and hope of all those who were gathered in reverential silence to hear those words on Friday, especially the sentence, "Inner healing begins when we give up the hope for a better yesterday and take the fist step towards making a better tomorrow."
In a row in front of me, was the Marlow family who lost 17-year-old Jolene in the Omagh bomb. I noted that there was a serene smile etched on the face of Nicola Marlow, Jolene's sister, who was very badly injured in the atrocity. For some, there clearly is hope beyond the nightmare and the visible familiar warmth of the Marlow family group testified to the power of healing and hope which can follow such an awful tragedy.
A final moment of special poignancy came at the end, after the Garden of Light had been officially opened and the monument in Market Street unveiled. Relieved at last from the solemnity of the occasion and as the rain eased off, people walked into the garden and mingled around the pond.
Mick Grimes moved quietly in their wake, under the shelter of a large umbrella held by a grandson. Unfazed by the crowd, he progressed slowly along the wall quietly reading the etched inscriptions and the inscribed messages attached to the wreaths which had been laid by the great and the good.
In the week after the publication of his own collection in memory of the Omagh victims, 'Til We Meet Again, his quiet progression made vividly real the final stanza of John Hewitt's haunting poem, Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto' which had been read out at the start of the proceedings:
"I might have recited a pitiful litany
Of the names of all the dead:
But these could effectively be presented
Only in small batches,
Like a lettered tablet in a village church,
Valid while everyone knew everyone,
Or longer, where a family name persists."
Further Information
Publisher: ULSTER HERALD
Ref: UH10An/58
Published Date: 21-Aug-08
Related Images
