Family heartbroken as Sharon loses her fight for life
THE family of young Wexford woman Sharon Bennett who died last week, a fornight after being subjected to an alleged assault in Ennis, County Clare, will never get over her death, according to her heartbroken dad.
Sharon, originally from Blackstone, Duncormick, sustained severe head injuries and never regained consciousness following the alleged attack. She died in University Hospital Limerick in the early hours of last Wednesday, with her parents P. J and Vicki lying beside her, holding her hands, after her life support was switched off.
Sharon leaves behind her two beloved daughters Leah (9) and Alisha (6) who wrote letters for Sharon to place in her coffin, describing her as the best mammy in the world and saying how much they love and will miss her.
Sharon, the eldest of a family of three, is also survived by her brother Tom, a jockey based in the UK; her sister Sinéad, also living in England; her paternal grandparents Tony and Kathleen Bennett; her maternal grandparents Eugene and Clare O’Leary of Howth, County Dublin; her aunts and uncles; nieces and nephews; cousins and extended family and friends.
Sharon was a former student of Rathangan national school and Bridgetown Vocational College where she did her Leaving Cert. One of her Bridgetown teachers, Cllr. Jim Codd whose mother Ann taught both Sharon and also her father in primary school, said the local community was ‘profoundly shocked and saddened’ by her death.
‘She was a very kind and good-natured young person and had a great sense of humour and wit. She didn’t have an unkind bone in her body. She was very well loved in the community and we are all heartbroken at her loss’, he said.
Growing up in a family which kept horses, Sharon loved ponies, music and make-up. A photograph of her as a 19-yearold with her favourite horse Gypsy, was placed on her coffin in Rathangan Church where her funeral Mass was held last Saturday, alongside a photograph of her beloved daughters.
Her brother Tom is a racing jockey in England and like him, Sharon tried out for the Race Academy in Kildare when she was a teenager.
Her family will always remember her fantastic sense of humour and her smiles and laughter. ‘I have a box of photographs and there is not one of them that Sharon is not smiling in,’ said P. J.
‘She was so kind and so decent. It is so sad that she was taken the way she was. We are all devastated. We will never get over it. It was the sheer violence of it. For her to go like that. It is just heartbreaking. It is not just Sharon’s life that was taken, all our lives have been destroyed by what happened, the whole family.’
‘Everyone loved Sharon. My father loved her to bits. He’s 83 years old and it’s really killing him,’ he said.
Sharon’s grandparents in Howth where she and her siblings regularly went on holidays as children, are also deeply affected by her death. When their granddaughter was 16, they took her to New York on holiday.
‘We are all just numb. We will never get over it properly,’ said P. J.
Sharon’s parents were told that she had sustained a catastrophic brain injury but they were unable to visit her in hospital in Limerick for the first seven days, due to Covid-19 restrictions. They were allowed to spend time with her after that.
‘ That was very tough, not being able to be with her for that first week,’ said P. J.
He and Vicki lay on the bed on either side of Sharon, cradling their beloved daughter, after her life support was switched off, and were with her when she died 32 hours later.
‘We cannot thank the staff of the intensive care unit in University Hospital Limerick enough. They were absolutely fantastic in the way they cared for Sharon and also looked after us. They treated us with such kindness and respect and gave us the time and space to be alone with her.’
The couple said they will be eternally grateful to the people of their local area for the warm support and care shown to the family in their bereavement. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, the food, cards, the messages, the phone never stopped ringing,’ said P. J.
‘We received condolence messages from all over, from Clare, Limerick, Wexford, even America, from people we’ve never met or spoken to. We really appreciated that and we can’t thank everyone enough.’
Sharon who had been living in Clare for the past nine years, was brought home to Duncormick and waked in her parents’ bedroom for a night before her funeral in Rathangan on Saturday, allowing close family members including her young daughters and their dad Niall O’Loughlin of Ennis to say goodbye.
‘ The children were everything to her. She adored those two girls and they adored her. It is so hard on them. It was heartbreaking to hear Leah asking in the church why her mammy had to die,’ said P. J.
‘ They wrote little letters and put them in the coffin, telling her how much thexy loved her’.
Sharon was buried in Rathangan Cemetery on the eve of Valentine’s Day, with her family throwing red roses on her coffin as it was lowered into the grave on a bitterly cold February afternoon.