On the morning before he was shot dead on Sheriff Street Lower, a mistaken victim of Dublin’s gangland feud, Martin O’Rourke, a 24-year-old homeless Traveller man struggling to keep his life on an even keel, flung his arms around his sister-in-law, Eleanor Power, squeezed her a long, big hug and told her he loved her.
Yesterday in St Michan’s Church, she stood at the head of his coffin, both hands clasping the lid as if to steady herself, and keened loud, inconsolable and barely audible incantations of grief. “I’m sorry, Martin. I’m sorry, Martin,” she howled through tears. “Why did they do this? Why did they do this?”
Behind her in the front row of the church, also grief-stricken but more stoical with it, sat Martin’s fiancée, Angelina. She is the mother of their children – Angela (4), Martin Lawrence (2) and Michael Rocky (eight months). Angelina is expecting their fourth child, a baby who will never know its father.
With her, for support, sat her father Larry Power, and her sisters Sarah, Sammy-Joy, Brigid, Eleanor and Catherine, and several aunts, members of her and O’Rourke’s extended family and their friends.
Bereaved
Martin O’Rourke was already without his parents. His father
Patrick, also known as Podge, his mother Mary, and his brother, Michael Rocky, after whom he named his baby, were all gone since he was in his teens.
Behind the chief mourners sat acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny who was there, he said, because he knew some of the family’s relations “down the west”.
“I came along to attend the funeral of a poor, unfortunate man, with three children and a fourth on the way,” he said.
His presence was much appreciated by the mourners, several of whom made a point of approaching him, shaking his hand, thanking him and chatting with him for a few moments.
This was a harrowing funeral by any measure.
From the moment the plain wooden coffin was positioned in front of the alter of the pretty, plaster-ceilinged, late Georgian church, and two photographs of Martin O’Rourke were placed on it, those mourning his loss expressed themselves loudly and without restraint.
They were encouraged, or so it seemed, by the lyrics of the opening song, How Do I Live, the Diane Warren song, sung by soloist Michelle Lynch.
Throughout the funeral Mass, Eleanor was unable to stay far from the coffin for long; so too her sister Catherine. More than once, a sister would leave the church through a side door, unable to contain emotions but not wishing to detract from the occasion’s solemnity.
The chief celebrant, Fr Derek Farrell of the Parish of the Travelling People, was assisted by homeless campaigner Fr Peter McVerry and Fr Bryan Shortall, a Capuchin and the parish priest of St Michan’s.
The lilting, unaccompanied air of Amazing Grace was pierced regularly by howls of grief and the cry of babies but at times relatives also moved through the congregation of perhaps 75, greeting people and thanking them for coming.
In his homily, Fr Farrell sought to capture the essence of Martin O’Rourke’s life and death: he was a “bystander, an innocent man, a homeless man, a man doing his best to overcome personal adversity. A family man, a daddy, a fiancé, a young 24-year-old Traveller man. A young man who had very little really in life, but who had life and had a loving fiancée, children and friends, only to be so callously and brutally robbed of everything.”
O’Rourke’s family remembered him as “a loving child, very good-natured, always very respectful and generous”; he was also “a proud young Traveller man, and he loved his Traveller culture and tradition”.
Loving father
“He loved cars, and he loved music. He himself was a beautiful singer. He was a devoted fiancé to Angelina and a loving father to his three young children, Martin Lawrence, Michael, and Angela. He would always bring them back little gifts like chocolates when he had been out.”
Becoming a father caused him to reassess his life and he listened carefully to advice, said Fr Farrell. “Coming to his senses, realising his role as ‘Daddy’, Martin was looking ahead – proud of how he was doing. He had just gone back to adult education, next week he was due to begin a drug rehabilitation course, which was leading to a FÁS course and then a job, and then his and Angelina’s planning for an apartment, a family holiday, and for the arrival of their fourth child.”
Fr Farrell said it would be important for O’Rourke’s children to know that while he may have been “at the wrong place, he was also on the right path”. He wondered aloud whether what had happened would “help to bring some societal and political response to countering the type of violence which took Martin’s life?”
Martin O'Rourke wrote a poem to his late mother, Heartbreak and Shock, which was read twice at his funeral, once as his eulogy. In it, he said: Every day I bless your picture It makes me feel okay, 'cause it feels like I'm with you I miss you in heart and I miss you in my soul I really miss you, I want to see your face . . .
Before his coffin was taken from the church, to the strains of Gerry and the Pacemakers' You'll Never Walk Alone, his and his daughter Angela's favourite song, Daddy's Girl, by country-and-western singer Red Sovine, was played and his three children were lifted, each in turn, to kiss his coffin. I recall the night that you came into this world I couldn't believe the doctor when he said it's a little girl
Martin O’Rourke was buried in Fingal Cemetery.
