Micheál Martin speaks about the ‘terrible, terrible trauma’ of losing two children

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said life has never been the same following the “terrible, terrible trauma” of two of his children dying.

Mr Martin’s son Ruairí died from a cot death in 1999 at just five weeks old, while his daughter Léana died aged eight from a heart condition in 2010.

Mr Martin has described the sense of loss and how he deals with it in an episode of The Meaning of Life, which will air on RTÉ One on Sunday.

‘I can still remember the phone call in the early hours of the morning from Mary to say Ruairí has been taken to the hospital but I don’t think he’s going to make it’

“You could spend the rest of your life working out how does it affect you,” he said. “Ruairí's death was just an enormous shock to your entire experience of life. Life was very happy. We had a good family. These things were not meant to happen to us.

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“I can still remember the phone call in the early hours of the morning from Mary to say Ruairí has been taken to the hospital but I don’t think he’s going to make it. We drive down literally in the middle of the night, and it’s hard.

“All your certainties are gone in life. But Mary has a great philosophy that each person has to go through grief and trauma differently. I think by and large that has stood to us in the sense we allowed that space for each person in the family to deal with it differently.”

Mr Martin, who was at times emotional, said he still finds it very difficult to talk about Léana’s death.

“She was a beautiful child,” he said. “She had a heart condition that we felt would be manageable. She got into challenges. It was a terrible, terrible trauma.

“She was so loving, so affectionate. She was the light of the family. There’s no doubt about that. It really knocked us. Life hasn’t been the same in many ways. But, in many ways, you learn to try and live with that that terrible trauma and that reality.

“Mary has been very resourceful in some respects. It’s very tough on Mary, obviously. Mary did calendars every year. Beautiful calendars of photographs of Léana with her friends, the family, and with cousins.

“All that helps. They’re small things but they help. They don’t ever bring Léana back. Léana is still part of our lives, if that makes sense. So, if I walk the fields in west Cork Léana is in my mind. You go back over the places you were happy with Léana.”

‘The other kids would have got us through, certainly Ruairí’s death. Micheál and Ava were four and two. We had to get up the next morning. You have to play the games with them’

Mr Martin said he talks to his children at their gravesides. “It’s a place to go where the memories come back, and you just have a bit of time on your own,” he said.

“The other kids would have got us through, certainly Ruairí's death. Micheál and Ava were four and two. We had to get up the next morning. You have to play the games with them. You have to get breakfast for them. You have to do the things that are the routine of life.”

Speaking about what sustained him through an onslaught of political crises during the early days of his leadership of Fianna Fáil, soon after the death of his daughter, he said he did know.

“Some of it was instinct to keep going,” he said. “Also, you can’t leave in the middle of a crisis. I think you’ve got to try and fix it and work to do the best you can in relation to it. I think there’s an obligation.

“Brian Lenihan had his [cancer] diagnosis also. I was very struck by his determination to carry on and keep going.

“He had very clear views as to what we should do. In some ways, I think his diagnosis added to his clarity of thinking. There was no short-term electoral political gain for him here in what he was going to do. But he was going to do what was needed.

“In a strange way, all that trauma that we’ve talked about does bring a clarity to the mind. Because you’ve gone through so much, you’re not as focused on the normal political stuff. You see it in more fundamentalist terms, if that makes sense.”

The Meaning of Life with Taoiseach Micheál Martin, interviewed by Joe Duffy, airs at 10.25pm on RTÉ One on Sunday, September 4th.