‘I knew that I had found my wife and my soul-mate’

GRIEVING mother and grandmother Peggy Kenneally lived in hope her beautiful daughter, Nollaig Owen, would defeat post-natal depression.

“We had high hopes she would come round,” Ms Kenneally told yesterday’s funeral Mass.

Her 33-year-old daughter and nine-month-old grandchild, Tadhg, were both laid to rest in a single coffin. Their drowned bodies were discovered last Saturday.

Ms Kennelly spoke to the congregation in a packed St Martin’s Church.

Her daughter was the fourth of seven children to herself and her late husband, Donal, she said. Born on December 22, 1973, Nollaig was the Christmas baby she’d always wanted.

“She was a beautiful, determined, loving and happy-go-lucky girl. She was a perfectionist — she was fiercely loyal and when her dad was paralysed from the neck down eight years ago, she gave us her all.”

Ms Kenneally recalled when a younger son was born, little Nollaig asking, ‘Mam, will I still be your doties?’ as a little sibling rivalry set in.

“She was a loving, caring mother, wife, daughter, and sister and she will always be my doties.”

Nollaig Owen’s husband, South African-born Gareth, broke down in tears as he quoted songs — Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight and Tears in Heaven — that were special to him, his wife and baby son.

After a first date with Nollaig, he said: “I knew that I had found my wife and my soul-mate.”

He had an engagement ring made secretly in South Africa and said that their wedding day was “just perfect”.

Fr Donal Leahy, parish priest of Kilworth in north Cork, described the young mother as loving, helpful and caring, but said it was her depression which led her on the sad road to tragedy.

“Don’t blame yourselves,” the priest told her loved ones.

“Don’t blame others. Blame — that doesn’t help. Few, if any, deaths like Nollaig’s happen because of one event or tragedy.”

He said that, for whatever reason, the pain and loss became too much for her to bear and that those left behind shouldn’t spend time trying to second-guess what more could have been done.

“Be consoled,” said Fr Leahy. “It was not the Nollaig we knew who had to resort to her final decision. Because of her depression, it wasn’t the Nollaig that we knew.”

The congregation also heard that Nollaig graduated in early childhood studies in UCC in 2000, and taught for some time in the national school in Kilworth. She also worked in South Africa, and it was while working with Bupa that she met Gareth.

Her husband nodded quietly as Fr Leahy said that it was “love at first for both of them”.

Other mourners included Nollaig’s two sisters, Aisling and Geraldine, brothers John, Donal, Ruairi, and David, as well as Gareth’s parents Mary and David.

Family members said readings and prayers of the faithful, as well as bringing up offertory gifts including a phone which Tadhg played with, and a T-shirt worn by Nollaig during her fundraising efforts for Aware.

After the funeral Mass, mother and son were buried in New Kilcrumper Cemetery in Fermoy.

Help is there for you

* PND Ireland can be contacted at 021 4923162. A Support Line is attended on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10am and 2pm with an answering service available outside these hours. Email: [e-mail]. Contact groups have been set up in most parts of the country.

* The Depression Awareness group, Aware can also be contacted at 01 6617211 or lo-call 1890 303302. Email: [e-mail]

* Mental Health Ireland is at 01 2841166 or http://www.mentalhealthireland.ie

* Parentline is at 01 8787230 or lo-call 1890 927277 and http://www.parentline.ie