How many deaths will it take to know too many people have died?
A GRIEVING Mr Noel Clancy recalled how he listened to Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing in the Wind’ and thought how it reflected the tragedy of deaths on Irish roads.
Mr Clancy told Cork Circuit Criminal Court in his victim impact statement how he was in a daze at the funeral mass for his wife, Geraldine, and daughter, Louise after they were killed in a car crash on December 22, 2015 when the choir sang the Dylan anthem, which was a favourite of Louise’s.
“I could see Louise singing and playing her guitar - the words might well be the story of road collisions in Ireland. ‘How many deaths will it take to know that too many people have died – the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind’.”
Mr Clancy told how he and his other children, Fiona and Declan, had gone into the funeral home in Fermoy for a rosary on the day after his wife and daughter were killed when their car was hit by a car driven by their neighbour, Susan Gleeson near their home in Kilworth.
“When we went in and saw the coffins side by side, my heart broke. I pushed the coffins apart and knelt between them and put my left hand on Geraldine’s clasped hands and my right hand on Louise’s and cried for my wife and daughter.”
Mr Clancy recalled how he first met Geraldine when he was 19 but that it took him ten months to summon up the courage to ask her out and their first date was on July 20, 1980 and from that day until the day she died “we were a team”.
They had got engaged on August 16th 1984 in Galway, a city they grew to love as they holidayed there many times over the years and they were married on September 5th 1986 and went on their honeymoon to Italy.
“We honeymooned in Italy and it was idyllic. We always planned to return to Rome. We threw coins in the Trevi Fountain and wished to return. We were never in a rush, there would always be time. Rome would always be there but we ran out of time,” he said.
“When I lost Geraldine, I lost everything - my girlfriend, my wife, my life partner, my lover, the mother of my children and my best friend - all the things we did together, all the the decisions we made together, big and small, on farm and off farm.
“The holidays, the road trips to Wales, Donegal, Kerry and Scotland – the weekends in the Marina Hotel in Waterford to celebrate her birthday on December 15th- all lost – the magical Christmas of the past replaced last year by a visit to a funeral home and this year to a cemetery.”
Mr Clancy spoke about how Louise had overcome her struggles with autism to study English and Sociology at UCC and she was hoping to become a journalist and had just returned home for Christmas from her ERASMUS year at the University of Sussex when the crash happened.
“If I lost the past with Geraldine, I lost the future with Louise – because of her struggles with autism and her determination to overcome every obstacle, nobody deserved a bright, happy, safe and rewarding future more than Louise,” he said.
He recalled how on the night she was born, she swallowed mucus, choked and turned blue but was put into an incubator and recovered though doctors said the event was responsible for her autism which resulted in her being slow to walk and slow to talk
“It became apparent that she would not be able to go to mainstream national school and instead she spent three years in Scoil Triest in Glanmire and there with the dedication of the fantastic staff and home tuition by Geraldine, she bloomed and in 2001 was able to return to mainstream education.”
He told how after visiting Louise in the University of Sussex in Brighton, he imagined her achieving her dream of working as a journalist covering major stories in war zones and disaster areas and giving a voice to the voiceless.
“I could see her with the students in Tiananmen Square, I could imagine her in the townships in South Africa during the apartheid days, I could hear her telling the stories of the Kurds on the Iraq/Turkish border and being with the civil rights marchers on the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
“That’s where Louise would be – telling the story of the oppressed and the downtrodden, the persecuted and the hungry, the sick and the homeless – ‘ The pen is mightier than the sword, Dad – always remember that,’- I remember that, Lou, I remember.”
And he recalled how on Christmas Day – three days after they were killed - the undertaker asked him a question about the funeral which he hoped that he would never have to ask any other family ever again, as he spoke of the devastation that had hit their family on an ordinary December morning.
“He asked me ‘Which coffin will we lower first?’- While most people were enjoying Christmas with their families, I was trying to make a decision. I phoned him back and told him that we would lower Geraldine first and place Louise back in her arms.”