Elizabeth Boyle went to St Joseph’s church in Galliagh yesterday to sign the book of condolence like dozens of others.
By mid-afternoon, nearly 50 pages had been filled with messages of sympathy, of empathy, of faith and love, which those who wrote them hope may provide some sliver of comfort when eventually they are given to the surviving members of the McGrotty and Daniels families.
As she turned away, tears in her eyes, Boyle, a neighbour of Ruth Daniels in nearby Ederowen Park, spoke of her feelings.
“You can’t even think about what happened,” she said, “but, all the time, you can’t stop thinking about it.”
The dichotomy neatly encapsulated what so many people in Buncrana and Derry city have been feeling since the tragedy on Sunday evening.
Horrific image
Everyone can see, in their mind’s eye, the large black Audi Q7 sliding inexorably down the slipway in the Donegal seaside town with its unspeakable consequences: the deaths of driver Seán McGrotty (49), his two sons, Mark (12) and Evan (8), his mother-in-law Ruth (59), and her daughter Jodie-Lee (14), the family of Louise (35) who was at a hen party in Liverpool.
The mental replaying of the drama horrifies but, try as they do, people can’t stop thinking about it; can’t stop wondering how Louise is going to cope with her only surviving child, four-month-old Rionaghac-Ann, plucked miraculously – heroically – from the sinking car by witness to the tragedy Davitt Walsh.
Yesterday, Fr Paddy O’Kane of the Church of the Holy Family in Ballymagroarty, where the funeral of the five will be held tomorrow, said it was difficult to find words at such a time, especially what to say to Louise, who has told him she feels “lost” and “destroyed” by the tragedy.
In all of his ministry, he has never experienced a tragedy on such a scale, Fr O’Kane told Highland Radio.
The first person to sign the book of condolences in St Joseph’s was Derry’s mayor, Elisha McCallion, a 33-year-old mother of three.
“It is with a heavy heart that I write this today, as a mother, I cannot begin to imagine the pain that you all must feel,” she wrote.
Next to add to the book was the Bishop of Derry, the Most Reverend Donal McKeown, who wrote: “May they rest in peace – and may we find peace.”
A community writes
Then Martin McGuinness, deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.
He wrote: “With all my love, sympathy and condolences to Louise, the McGrotty and Daniels family at this sad time, Le grá.”
He was followed by the leader of the SDLP, Derry man Colum Eastwood.
“There are no words of comfort that I can offer you except to say that your deep loss is felt by our whole community.”
And thereafter, page after page, the community lost for words tried to express itself. So too in Fr O’Kane’s church where a separate book was being written in, frequently by mothers of young children, just collected from school.
Arriving home
In her note, Boyle expressed simply how much she would miss her neighbour, her ever-smiling friend Ruth Daniels.
“I will miss our wee chats. Rest in peace,” she wrote.
As the books were being filled, the bodies of the five arrived back in the city, the cortege escorted by police cars. People stopped and bowed as it passed.
All around Derry’s northern council-estate suburbs, with their rolling parkland grasses freshly cut and drifts of daffodils, life carried on.
When the white coffins of Mark and Evan were brought to their home for the wake, their mother Louise helped carry them into her and Seán’s home in St Eithne’s Park, Ballymagroarty.
She helped also with the white coffin of Jodie-Lee and the coffins of her husband and mother.
A single funeral service will be held in the Church of the Holy Family but Fr O’Kane said there would be no Requiem Mass because it was Holy Thursday.
The attractive, modern church will be filled to overflowing nonetheless as friends and neighbours from Galliagh, Ballymagroarty, Shantallow and the wider Derry community come to express, by being there, that which cannot be said.
The five will be buried in two graves, side-by-side, in Derry City Cemetery – Seán McGrotty and his two sons in one; Ruth Daniels and her daughter Jodie-Lee in the other.