THE MURDERED RUC MAN’S MOTHER — ‘I just leave it up to the day of judgement’

Jane’s son, Alan, was a policeman. He was murdered on duty when he was just 25-years-old. “The police sent out a welfare man after he was murdered. We laughed at the stupid questions he asked: ‘How do you feel on Remembrance Sunday?’ Sure, every day is Remembrance Day. People who haven’t come through it don’t know what it’s like.”

Jane feels Alan’s loss just as much now, perhaps even more. “On Father’s Day in church, you see his friends there with their families.

“You see the children riding down the road with their daddies in the tractors. That hurts. We have lost the next generation.

Nothing was ever the same from when he died. You go through life, but there’s not the same joy in it.”

The minister, elders and others from Jane’s congregation and community visited regularly. “People called with us for ages and ages after. Our Catholic neighbours, too. There is more of a bond in the country, so there is.”

There is a memorial for Alan in her church. “That will be there when we’re all gone.” There is another memorial in the location where he died. “The Catholic priest was there when they dedicated it.”

The minister who was the Moderator when Alan died has stayed in touch, which means a lot. “It’s been some 25 years but he came up on a Sunday to our church not so terribly long ago and he visited the grave and took a photograph of the headstone.”

Each year on Remembrance Day, there’s a wreath laid at Alan’s memorial in the church. During the service, the congregation sings, ‘Be Still My soul, the Lord is on Thy Side’. In the years after Alan’s death, Jane got through by praying and thinking about the words of that hymn. “At night, when things were dark and you would have liked to cry, you thought: Lord, be still my soul. Before you came to the end of it, you would have calmed down.”

No one was ever arrested for Alan’s murder. Jane has no desire to learn the identity of his killer.

“Alan’s gone and me knowing who killed him isn’t going to ease the burden in any way. I wouldn’t like to be there when he’s meeting his Maker.

“I wouldn’t want to be with him on his deathbed, either. He’ll think about it, for everybody has a conscience. Through my faith

I know there will be a day of judgement and he’ll have to answer for it.

“For him to truly repent I think he would have to come here first of all, and meet whoever belongs to Alan.”

Jane blamed the Rev Ian Paisley for stirring up the hatred that led to her son’s death.

“If Paisley had been more Christian, I don’t think Alan would be dead today. I think the Troubles would have gotten nowhere and there wouldn’t have been so many lives lost.

“And then, when he got to the top, he sat down with a murderer. Whereas the likes of Gerry Fitt — he was a good man — but he wouldn’t have given him the time of day.”

Jane’s late husband wanted to know who murdered their son. “Maybe my faith was stronger. I just leave it up to the day of judgement.”