‘We will never know why Lara took her life’
This was the very worst type of school assembly. St Mary’s Church began to fill from the back, those rows reserved for pupils from Maynooth Post Primary School, where Lara was a first-year student.
Many of her friends and classmates were reduced to tears by the time her white coffin — chosen by older brother Brendan — was carried through the church. Then came her family, including her mother Helene, father Robert, and stepfather Noel, as well as cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, some almost doubled over in anguish.
Some in the congregation shook their heads as parish priest Fr Liam Rigney told them that this sad occasion was to mark the death “of a 12-year-old girl — not even a teenager”.
Since her death onSaturday, when her body was found in stables close to her home in Newtown, Kilcock, crushing grief has been mixed with wonder over why the pretty schoolgirl would take her life.
Fr Rigney, who recalled how he had baptised Lara at age 8 in the same venue in which she then received first communion and where she was confirmed earlier this year, said as much.
“We do not know, we will never know, why Lara took her own life,” he said. “We will never know what went on in her poor head.”
Her family clasped each other for comfort as Fr Rigney spoke of the person Lara was: Someone who loved nature and animals, especially horses. Her mother had decided she should be buried in her riding outfit, as she was happiest when tending to her horses.
A friend called Mary from Clonfert Equestrian Centre placed a horseshoe on the white coffin, and turned away in tears. Helene sprinkled water from the baptismal font on the white wood, and later a drawing by one of Lara’s younger cousins, depicting her on her horse, was placed on it.
As pale winter sunlight piled through stained glass windows, co-celebrant Fr David Halpin attempted to tackle the darkness that had enveloped Lara at the weekend. He said dark feelings are temporary, that “these feelings will pass”, but that Lara had been “too young to realise that”.
When she took her own life, he said, Lara might have thought it was an answer to her problems, but it was not: instead, like a stone landing in a pool, the grief had rippled, and had multiplied and caused devastation to so many. “It should never be seen as an answer because it is not an answer,” he said. “It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
Later, Fr Rigney repeated what Helene had said to him in the days since Lara’s death — never be ashamed to get help.
The prayers uttered by Lara’s relatives were a procession of quivering lips and broken voices. Her aunt Netty said “we could fill an ocean with our tears, but you will shine so brightly in heaven” and her uncle John said words failed him. Her godmother, not much older than Lara, remembered her joy when she was taught how to plait a horse’s mane.
Her brother Brendan drew applause when he read a passage that called on everyone “to have the courage to go on”. Then he took his place, one of the four carrying his sister’s coffin from the church, out into the cold afternoon. Across the road, the boys of St Mary’s national school were playing.
On the church walls are a number of posters, including one that shows a faceless being leaning on a question mark over the words: What are we missing?W Answers, undoubtedly, but for Lara’s family, they may never come.
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