Remembering my nephew, who died on a day we are supposed to celebrate

● Lives changed for ever a year ago when David (15) died in an accident. Today, I hope the spirit of Easter wraps its arms around those who grieve

Easter last year started as it usually does for me. My local diocese of Kildare and Leighlin had its annual Chrism mass in the cathedral in Carlow at the start of Holy Week. Liam Lawton performed live, and there was a cup of tea and refreshments afterwards. I suppose you could describe it as the Electric Picnic for the pious, or Longitude for the laity. Fast forward to Easter Sunday — and my family saw life as we had known it forever changed.

Strangely, some of that day remains a haze, while other parts are crystal clear. I had just come home after having dinner in a friend’s house and my sister phoned me in the early afternoon to say our nephew, David, had fallen off a quad bike in a wood near his maternal grandparents’ home in Vicarstown, around 15 minutes from Portlaoise.

Assuming “fallen off ” meant at worse a broken arm or some bruising, we jokingly asked if we couldn’t have one day without some drama in it. With all nine siblings living around the same town and nearly twice that number of nieces and nephews, there’s often a family mishap.

David’s mother Carmel, my sister-in-law, had already gone out to the scene. I don’t know whether it was a sixth sense or a guilty conscience, but I decided to go over to my brother James’s house, a short drive away. By the time I got there, the situation was developing quickly.

James, David’s father, was told to go to the scene. I drove him there, but to this day I don’t know how we got to the wood. I couldn’t find it again. Even now, when I drive the motorway and see the sign for Vicarstown — the road I took that day — a shiver goes through me. I do remember driving up to what seemed like an unending dirt track to a place like that referred to in Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken — two roads diverged in a wood.

On the road to the right there was an ambulance with its back door open, and other emergency vehicles. To the left there was another ambulance, on its own, with its back door closed.

The open ambulance was tending to David’s cousin, who was also on the quad. He seemed OK. He was sitting upright and chatting with a paramedic. Gardaí came and took James and Carmel into the back of their car.

It’s in the nature of teachers to take charge. Some would call it being bossy. Regardless of the adjective, I made my way to the closed ambulance to find out what was going on with David.

On the way down that track I saw the quad bike with a ribbon around it — like you’d see at a crime scene. The quad looked so small and harmless — like a child’s toy tractor.

Someone must have opened the door of the ambulance. I am fortunate and privileged to work in a large and vibrant secondary school with over 1,100 teenagers. I know what a happy, sad, distracted, unsettled, giddy, spirited, quiet, shy, outgoing, funny and loud teenager looks like. It comes with the job. Unfortunately, I now knew what a dead one looked like.

Although there was some sort of electronic device pushing up and down on David’s chest, he was as white and motionless as the sheet that covered his legs. The paramedic standing over him didn’t say anything — he didn’t need to. We exchanged looks. He went back to his work.

There are so many details I remember vividly from that Easter Sunday, but two will be etched on my mind for ever. The first is that sight of David in the back of the ambulance and the noise of that chest compressor punctuating the silence in the wood.

The second also took place in the back of that same ambulance. I called our parish priest, who left his Easter dinner and came to the scene. Monsignor John Byrne lost his beloved niece, Kathy, in 2005 when she was hit by a car in her home town of Tullow. She was 15 years old, the same age as David when he died.

The oils used at the sacraments of baptism and confirmation throughout the year had been blessed at that Chrism mass on Easter Monday and then distributed to the various parishes of the diocese. So it is probable that Monsignor John used that very oil to anoint David in the ambulance, as his parents cried and hugged their son and then each other.

As David’s godfather, I was there when he was baptised and confirmed. Those oils would have been used on both those occasions. I could never have imagined that I would be there to see a priest bless his lifeless body on the day we were supposed to celebrate our Lord’s Resurrection.

Today, while we still await the inquest, we do know David did not fall from his quad; rather, he was flung from it and into a tree. And since that moment, James, Carmel and David’s grief-stricken siblings Conor and Sarah have been carrying an Easter cross.

But just as we associate Good Friday with mourning and sadness, Easter Sunday brings with it a message of hope, optimism and new life.

Today, our local GAA club in Portlaoise has organised a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of David’s death. Along with many other local organisations and schools, including my own, they have tried to help David’s family carry that cross since last Easter Sunday. The community has wrapped its arms around them.

Portlaoise has been hit by a number of tragedies since David died. We think particularly of Eoin and Dylan Fitzpatrick, Ronan McNamara, who was in the same year as David, and Adam Kirwan and Joe Drennan from neighbouring Mountrath.

People who grieve — especially brokenhearted parents outliving their children — may not feel much hope and optimism for the future. From the outside looking in, the loss is a pain like no other.

In time, though, I hope they can draw some hope from the profound kindness, thoughtfulness and goodness of people. In that respect, we are very much an Easter people.

The paramedic standing over him didn’t say anything, he didn’t need to