It's a Dad's Life:The kids were screaming around the house when Adam Brophygot word that his cousin had been shot dead in a post- office raid last week.
Last Friday afternoon I was sitting at my desk working, sourcing pictures for a schoolbook. It wasn't particularly demanding, so I paid no mind to the kids screaming around the house with their two cousins. The elder had been on a countdown since Monday for her relatives' arrival, every night before bed beaming at the prospects of the demonic games they would indulge in.
Nothing on earth gives her more pleasure than time with her west-Cork family.
At the same time, the Missus was Christmas shopping in town with her sisters, one of them the mother of the west-Cork hellcats who were busy tearing up my house. The Missus' shopping and my working were facilitated by her young cousin who had Darted over from Blackrock to give us a dig-out for the day.
The network of family was working to facilitate a number of adults and children doing what they needed to do. Cousins everywhere, but all well beneath my radar, all perfectly normal.
Then the phone rang and I heard my cousin had been shot in a raid on his post-office in Kilkenny. Two hours later he was dead.
I hadn't seen him in two years, and before that, conversed with him maybe five times in the previous 10, but hearing that news made the skin sag on my bones.
I wasn't going to write anything this week, feeling that to cast aspersions on another
topic would be disingenuous, while to speak of my cousin's dea may be somewhat voyeuristic. But watching the kids' delight in each other's company reminded me how close I had been to my
own extended family at that age. That made it important to say something because the thread that runs through a family is one that links you to the ground.
When all else collapses, no matter what the distance or the length of time since the last contact, you hope that these are people whose support you can count on simply because you share genes and a history.
Alan Cunniffe was a gentleman in the true sense of the word. He was a gentle man. When I spoke to him as an adult, either when we were both in UCD or on the occasional
time I ran into him in Dublin or Kilkenny, my abiding experience of him was one of someone without aggression. For him to have met his end in the manner he did is all the more infuriating for that.
On St Patrick's Day 2002, my brother-in-law came to Dublin to celebrate the festival with me. Around midday, as we were starting into a session and in buoyant mood, we happened to bump into Alan on O'Connell Street, and convinced him to come for a quick beer. He was on his way to get the bus home to Kilkenny, but agreed to have one and wound up staying for three.
After he left, everyone at the table commented on what good company he was.
I determined to look him up again, maybe invite him over for dinner and re-establish contact. But, to my regret, I never did.
My greatest fear is to bury one of my children. This week my aunt has had to bury one of hers. While these days could be no blacker, at some point the pain will start to ease.
Until then, if any consolation can be offered to the Cunniffes, maybe it is to simply remind them that there is support all around. Whether they choose to avail of it now or in 10 years' time or never, it will always be there.
