Pink ties and ribbons in emotional farewell to crash victim Lucia, 5
Little Lucia died on Christmas Day, exactly a week after she was critically injured in a three-car crash on the M6 motorway between Athenry and Oranmore in Co Galway. She passed away at Temple St Children’s Hospital in Dublin with her family at her bedside.
Fr Des Forde told mourners at her funeral Mass in Renmore that her mother, Lisa, had hugged her tightly immediately after she had passed away.
“The hug was empty from one side but made up on the other side by a crushing hug, and that’s the hug of life that all of us need at this time and into the future,” Fr Forde said.
No matter what words were put together the pain of Lucia’s parents, Lisa and Paul, her brother Josh and the Mulrooney and Cleary families could not be taken away, he said.
Mourners were visibly upset as they gathered earlier at the small pink coffin before the altar. A happy photograph of the five-year-old was placed on top.
Her grieving parents, four grandparents and two great-grandmothers were consoled by family and friends at the Church of St Oliver Plunkett in Renmore.
The attendance also included children, teachers and members of the boards of management of Scoil Caitriona Junior and Senior Schools in Renmore. Lucia was in the junior school and Josh was in the senior cycle.
Josh brought her pink blanket as an offertory gift, while other gifts included her teddy bear, chocolate biscuits she shared with her grandparents and pink nail polish.
Several members of the extended Cleary and Mulrooney families wore pink ties and pink ribbons in memory of Lucia.
Fr Forde told them: “We gather in that sense of pinkiness — the pink ties and pink ribbons — that reminds us of this special person who is with us now, not in the way that we would like, but is gone to that place where most of us won’t get the premier ticket that she got. Because she is gone into that place of angelhood.”
Burial took place afterwards at the New Cemetery in Bohermore.
