James will be with me in spirit, says Omagh bomb victim’s mum in poignant journey to NI to unveil memorial
THE mother of a young boy killed in the Omagh bombing has returned to Northern Ireland to unveil a quilt dedicated to the memory of children who died during the Troubles.
Donna Maria Barker’s son James was among 29 people killed in the August 1998 atrocity.
Since that terrible day she has carried the burden of grief, pain and anger fuelled by the knowledge that no-one has ever been held accountable in a criminal court.
She continues to grieve for her son and the life he should have had, but also for the life she and her other three children should have enjoyed but which was altered so irrevocably on August 15, 1998.
Today Ms Barker will, for the first time in over 19 years, visit Omagh ahead of the remembrance service in Fivemiletown tomorrow where she will unveil the “Patchwork of Innocents”.
During her visit to Omagh, which has been organised by Kenny Donaldson from the South East Fermanagh Foundation victims group, Ms Barker will meet a policeman who was on duty in Omagh on the day of the bombing.
Ms Barker said she was nervous at the idea of returning to Northern Ireland but humbled that she had been invited to unveil such a poignant tribute to children who died during the Troubles.
“I am very apprehensive about returning to Northern Ireland but I am doing it for James,” she told the Belfast Telegraph. “My other son, Oliver Tristan, will be by my side and I know James will be with me in spirit — it is the only way I could have even contemplated this.
“James is with me every day, when I get up in the morning I think about him and when I come home from work and close my front door I think about him — he has never left me and I know he will be with us on this trip.
“Except for a very brief twoday visit six years ago when my father died, this is the first time I have been back (to Northern Ireland) and it will be very emotional but I am humbled to have been asked by Kenny Donaldson to attend the service on Sunday.
“He is also going to accompany us on a visit to Omagh, where I am going to meet a policeman and visit the memorial garden along with Oliver Tristan.”
No one has ever been found guilty of the Omagh bombing — something that fills Ms Barker with anger.
She continued: “I wouldn’t even call the bombers people — in my eyes they are not human.
“I hate them for taking my son from me and for taking the life I should have had away too and that of my other three children.
“They are the guilty ones and I am so frustrated that they have never been held accountable.
“They know who they are, everyone does, but they can sit around with their families celebrating Christmases, birthdays, whatever and life goes on for them — but not for our family.
“It is surreal really but I have to live with it and of course the guilt that I have carried for all these years as well.”
Ms Barker carries an unwarranted burden of guilt because, just 11 months before James was killed, she and her now ex-husband brought their children back to Ireland so they could have a better quality of life. She continued: “I made the decision to move back home from England so we could give the children a better quality of life — so they could have the childhood that I had experienced.
“We moved to Buncrana and James just idolised the beach, the water and the freedom.
“A week before he was killed, we were on the beach and James said to me that this was the best time of his life and we were only there a matter of months then.
“We came back full of hopes and aspirations and I could not have imagined that within 11 months James would be killed — that is something I will take to my grave.”
The service of remembrance during which A Patchwork of Innocents will be unveiled takes place tomorrow at Fivemiletown Methodist Church. The event gets under way at 3pm.