One by one, David Bowden helped transfer the three wicker caskets into three hearses lined up outside St Eunan’s church in Raphoe, Co Donegal, as mourners stood in silence.
“It is hard to put into words what the feeling is to lose your whole family in one go,” Mr Bowden said in a eulogy to his “beautiful, fierce and funny wife” Úna and their “two gorgeous girls”, Ciara and Saoirse.
Mother and daughters died just over a week ago in a crash on the N17 near Claremorris, Co Mayo, as they were returning from Úna’s home county to their recently renovated home in Moycullen, Co Galway.
“Úna was my soul mate, my confidante, and my world is so empty without her,” Mr Bowden, who was working abroad when the tragedy happened said.
There were stark reminders of how much he and Úna’s father John Carlin and her sisters Eimear and Catriona had lost.
According to her husband, Úna (47) had recently project managed work on the “semi derelict cottage” they had bought near Moycullen and “the girls”, as he frequently referred to the trio, had moved in three weeks ago. “It is beautiful ... ironically I was already booked to fly home on the same day as I heard the tragic news, to spend our first night together in our new home,” he said.
In a tribute to his family, written by him and read during the Mass by his brother Andrew, Mr Bowden said Ciara (14) was “the most beautiful, wonderful girl turning into a beautiful woman” and had recently discovered make-up, fake tan and boys.
“She never made it to the Claregalway disco last weekend,” he added of the girl who excelled at art, all sports and who loved her friends and her two dogs, Daisy and Boo.
Saoirse was the “cheekiest bundle of joy”, he said. “She was the quirkiest kindest little girl,” he said of her, whose world revolved around Harry Potter, games on her iPad and her cats.
“I know she was wearing her Harry Potter jumper in the accident and I hope and pray she was taken into some magical world she envisaged,” he said.
The bereft husband and father stressed that the three had short but full, happy, fun-filled lives.
“That is how I would like to remember them and I ask you to please do the same,” he said, recalling mocking his future wife’s Donegal accent when they were introduced at a party in 2003.
“She told me to eff off. I liked that,” he said.
Parish priest of Raphoe and the main celebrant Fr Eamonn Kelly reminded those present that the three “only had 71 years of human life between them”.
“Words such as heartache, grief, sorrow do not capture the emptiness, the pain, the unfairness, the lousiness of what took place that day just outside of Claremorris,” he said.
Both he and Úna’s husband reminded those present that she had already faced challenges.
“After winning her fight with breast cancer one would have hoped for a clear pass through life for Úna, but that is not the way things go,” said Fr Kelly. He drew knowing laughter from Úna’s friends and loved ones when he commented on her “no nonsense directness” adding “one did not come away from Úna wondering what she was thinking”.
Recalling his adventures with Úna, her husband said they were married at a bush wedding in Zambia, where they later set up a safari company. When she was diagnosed with cancer, Úna had moved to Galway and spent a year undergoing treatment before the woman described by her husband “as one tough cookie” got the all clear. She immersed herself in the community in Moycullen where her daughters embraced sports and other community activities.
Both Fr Kelly and David Bowden spoke directly to the friends of Ciara, a first-year student in the Salerno Secondary School in Salthill, and of Saoirse who attended Scoil Naomh Bride and Tullykyne National School in Moycullen.
Fr Kelly told them that sometimes things happen in life that we have no control over, “things like the accident that has taken our friends Ciara and Saoirse and their mum Úna from us”.
He told them such accidents make us sad but it was important to talk about these feelings, and to share them with friends who were probably feeling the same.
Mr Bowden said he wanted his daughters’ friends to know how much they had valued the friendships. “They truly loved you. They would not want you to be sad,” he said.
“That is the last thing they would want. They would want you to live full and happy lives in this world. Most of all they would ask you to be kind, to be nice, and above all be considerate of others.”
A short time later, Mr Bowden wiped away tears as he led his wife’s casket down the church aisle, while close behind their grandfather and aunties shepherded his daughters’ caskets out of the church.
On their last journey, family kept Úna, Ciara and Saoirse company with Mr Bowden travelling in the first hearse while other family members travelled with the two girls. They were laid to rest alongside Úna’s mother Mary.
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