On the morning of June 1st, 2024, Alice Myers recognised one of the two gardaí who woke her after knocking on her bedroom window.
It was one of the gardaí who had dealt with her and her husband, Denis, 26 years earlier when their six-year-old son, Jack, was killed in a road collision.
This time, just six months ago, the garda arrived shortly before 7am to inform her of the death of her other son, Danny.
“I looked at him and I said that he had made a mistake, that it was Jack who died in a crash, not Danny,” she says.
Danny was due to stay with them the night before in Carrigerry, Co Clare, but they assumed he had returned to his grandmother’s home, where he was living, acting as a carer.
She recalls falling to the floor in shock after hearing a second son had died, before picking herself up and telling his two brothers.
“Davy and Connor were so young when Jack died, they didn’t fully grasp the whole impact of losing their brother, now they know they’ve lost two brothers,” she says.
[ Road deaths for year close to 180 with Co Mayo recording highest toll in 20 years ]
She then travelled to tell Danny’s two children, Abbie and Jack, aged 16 and 14, that their father had been killed, all within an hour or so of finding out, to ensure they heard it from somebody they knew, love and trusted.
“You’re speaking the words but you don’t believe them,” she says, adding: “It was horrendous, walking in the door bringing that pain.”
She subsequently found out that her son, whose phone was broken, had missed the last bus home from Limerick, and proceeded to walk home on the hard shoulder of the N18. He was struck by a car near Cratloe shortly after 4am and died at the scene.
“It was just shock and disbelief, what happened and how it happened,” the 56-year-old mother says.
There were 45 minutes between the collision and his death being pronounced and for six months his family wondered about those 45 minutes.
They questioned what he went through, if he died slowly, and had “horrendous visions going through our heads” while waiting for a copy of his postmortem. This month, they were relieved to find out that he died instantly.
“I wouldn’t have the answers I have today if it wasn’t for Parc and its booklet,” she says.
She credits road safety group Parc and its guide for families affected by fatal or serious road collisions for helping her to navigate everything following Danny’s death.
His death, which remains under investigation by gardaí, was one of 13 road fatalities in June.
Danny, who worked in the aviation industry and had turned 38 two weeks before his death, was “funny and determined”, and a “gentle soul who wouldn’t harm a fly”, though he had his struggles, she says.
“His children were his absolute life and in the times he was struggling the most, it was his children who got him through everything,” she says.
“Because we’ve walked this road before, we know all of the pain that lays ahead, we get moments where the reality hits and it’s soul-crushing, it’s so hard that you can barely breathe,” she says.
While the family lived in Shannon and when Danny was 12, his six-year-old brother Jack also died instantly in September 1998.
That afternoon, Jack’s school principal and a local doctor arrived at her door.
“They said there had been a terrible crash and I said, Jesus Christ, what’s he done now?” she says, recalling how she believed Danny may have become injured while playing a hurling match.
Jack was “away with the fairies most of the time” – “a real happy, cheerful, funny little lad, he was so gentle, so timid,” and one who would not be the type to get injured.
“They said Jack was in a terrible crash, and I asked if he had been hurt, they said it was worse and that he was dead. I just sank to the floor, my body just went,” she says.
Denis, who was in the Army, was cutting the grass before he was told and the couple travelled to the school just 100m away, where their son remained on the road outside his school, with a lollipop in his mouth.
“He had been a good boy at school that day, and his teacher had given him a lollipop on the way out. The lollipop was still in his mouth,” she says.
She discovered that her son had been crushed by an oil tank after running with friends and trying to grab a ladder attached to the truck.
“He ended up falling underneath the wheel of the truck and his head was crushed, there was no other mark on Jack’s body,” she says.
In the immediate days following the death of both of her sons, she focused on choosing coffins, choosing clothes, readings and music for their funerals. Their deaths did not sink in for several months, once things calmed down.
“That’s when reality really hits, you’re not washing their clothes any more, you’re standing with six plates in your hands for dinner and realise you have to put one plate back,” she says, recalling the aftermath of Jack’s death.
“It never gets easier but with the passage of time, you get used to it. Denis always says you learn to walk beside it,” she says.
Losing not one, but two sons to road collisions is “soul-crushing”, she says, sometimes questioning: “Why me? What did we do to deserve losing two children?”
She wanted to ignore Christmas altogether, but her family, including Danny’s two children, wished to continue the family traditions once led by him, including cooking together as a unit.
“While the overriding feeling might be sadness, we know there will be moments of happiness and joy,” she says.
She feels an intense pain in the pit of her stomach for families affected by road deaths each time she sees a news report of another road collision, she says.
“That’s not just a name, that’s not just an inconvenience that a road is closed, I know what that knock on the door has done to those people,” she says.
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