Families devastated - Deaths are a warning of our frailty

SOMETIMES words on a page are unequal to the events they are used to describe.

They, no matter how carefully chosen, paired and placed, are too silent, too coldly moderate. We, sadly, are at that dark and almost incoherent point this morning.

Yesterday’s seven violent deaths, four young children, two women and a man, represent something so out of kilter with our everyday lives that they are almost outside our capacity to imagine or even comfortably absorb.

At this early point the only response can be one of great sorrow and support.

A feeling of deep and questioning emotion, almost anger, that such terrible events should suddenly unfold in two quiet, ordinary communities would be appropriate too. Communities just like the ones we all live in; communities with GAA clubs, school runs and people out of work. This anger must be matched by whatever support the families touched by these deaths will need.

Though none of us can say with any degree of certainty today why these terrible killings took place it would be dishonest of us, and we’ve had far more of that than we can cope with, not to wonder if the country’s terrible economic circumstances played a part in the tragedies in Ballycotton or Newcastlewest. If they did then the sense of betrayal felt by so many people in every community in this battered country will quickly turn to something far less complacent and academic.

Already we know that an epidemic of suicide claims more lives than road deaths every year. Our economic crisis has been a catalyst for many of these tragedies.

Just last weekend we had a chilling example of how commonplace suicide has become.

Searches were ongoing for over a week in the River Lee for the body of a taxi driver missing presumed dead. A coastguard helicopter joined the search and two other bodies, as yet unidentified, were found. They may be the bodies of individuals reported missing earlier or they may not. Only time will tell who they are and only then can we begin to build their back story.

Every day we characterise our difficulties in political or economic terms but this is, as yesterday’s awful events showed, the reality of the times we live in, the times we have created.

We have to do far more than rebuild an economy.