Children like Hamish are an antidote to fear

OF ALL the stories of divine intervention or narrow escapes emanating from Creeslough, young Hamish O’Flaherty’s must be the most remarkable. The 12year-old was idling in the family Volvo in the service station forecourt, looking out the passenger window while his father James went into the shop. He bent down to pick something off the floor just as an explosion ripped through the concourse and the course of his life changed forever.

Hamish’s being almost in brace position just as disaster hit saved him from serious injury. It also meant that despite the carnage and the tragedy that engulfed his family and community, he could deliver the eulogy at his father’s funeral as naturally as if he was reading out the GAA results at school assembly.

Over several minutes Hamish held his audience in the palm of his hand and with a simplicity that belied his wise words, he brought his father alive, paying tribute to his work ethic, poking fun at his favourite jacket and ending on a note about cherishing family and home.

As he left the podium and the priests and congregation rose to their feet in thunderous applause, Hamish looked momentarily startled and confused, until it dawned that the acclaim was all for him and his face lit up with pleasure. If Hamish was 14 or 15, a few years older, he might not have been able to conduct himself with such self-possession and that would have been absolutely fine.

The self-consciousness that comes with adolescence can compromise the most natural orator but at 12 and still at primary school Hamish, whose mother Tracey stood beside him as he spoke, still draws strength and security from being a muchloved child. Nor would an adult have struck a chord the length and breadth of the county as Hamish has because an adult’s impulse is often to impress their audience and they fail to see how that alienates listeners.

It’s often said in the aftermath of tragedies like the shocking knife attack in Tallaght, which wiped out three siblings, and this catastrophe in Creeslough, that adults must shepherd children through the trauma, carefully explaining as much about the dreadful events as their minds can absorb. At Mulroy college in Milford, Leona Harper and James Monaghan’s school and of several

youngsters injured at the scene, a critical incident plan was enacted with psychologists on tap and the school opening specially on Sunday so that everyone could meet.

At Creeslough national school, where five-year-old Shauna Flanagan Garwe had just started in junior infants, a little unicorn was placed in her seat, something for her little classmates to cuddle whenever they missed her.

But while adults guide children, the reverse is also true; children help adults find a path out of the miasma of suffering not just by giving their parents a purpose in life when they might just want to die of grief, but by their example. Children don’t dwell on what ifs or indulge in self-recrimination or superstition. They have no idea that grief can be all-consuming or that the wounds from losing a parent or a partner before their time are permanent. Children live in the moment and are full of hope; they are an antidote to fear and dread, the default setting for grief-stricken adults.

The combination of Hamish O’Flaherty’s free spirit and old soul moved the country deeply; it was like a ray of light and hope in the relentless gloom and sorrow.

He may only have an inkling now but like all the children directly affected by the blast, as Hamish grows up, he will realise the significance of what he and indeed his mother have lost.

Hopefully his memory of the standing ovation in Derrybeg church and the wise words that prompted it, will help him with that realisation.