Berkeley balcony collapse: The darkest hour

When a child dies, you not only mourn their loss but also the future that was denied them, and even perhaps the best of you, writes Dan Buckley

IMAGINE the greatest physical pain you might ever be likely to endure. Imagine being pulled from the wreckage of a car crash, your body mangled from the impact and clinging to life.

Imagine lying on the road or in a hospital bed with a broken arm and leg and praying for some relief from the agony.

Imagine, also, the greatest emotional pain you could ever experience. Imagine following your mother or father’s hearse to their final resting place and seeing the coffin being placed in a dark, dank hole in the ground.

Put those two together, multiply by 1,000 or 10,000 and you still cannot begin to imagine the horror, disbelief, shock, and trauma of the parents and loved ones of the Irish students who died in Berkeley, California.

READ MORE: New York Times apologises for Berkeley article .

The loss of a child is the most devastating experience a parent can face. There is something hideous about it. It does not seem natural that a parent should outlive his or her offspring. That is not the way it is supposed to happen. The natural order of things is that the parent goes first, a sad but undeniable reality.

From the moment we are born, survive childhood and teenage years, and grow up to be adults and have children of our own, there is an unspoken understanding that our death is inevitable.

Part of that understanding is the presumption that we will grow old and feeble and finally shake off our mortal coil in the loving embrace of our children. There will be sadness in that departure but not the searing heartache of burying someone long before their time.

Losing a child is like losing part — perhaps the best part — of yourself. What is lost is not just those past years of the child growing from infant to toddler, to teenager and beyond. The future is lost as well.

Does faith help in these circumstances? Is there solace in deeply held religious beliefs when you are looking at your child in a morgue?

Maybe. Maybe not.

How can anyone square divine mercy with a tragedy like this? How can a supposedly loving and omnipotent God visit such horror on one of His flock?

The manner of their deaths — a collapsing balcony — is so banal that it makes the tragedy all the more pointless, as if God was playing a sick joke.

Look at the faces of those who perished. Six bright faces — each smiling, each a beam of light with hopes, dreams, passions, and loves.

Each could be your son or daughter or my son or daughter. I have three — two boys and a girl — in their 20s and there is hardly a day goes by when I do not worry or fret about them.

They have all had their escapades, each one adding a few more grey hairs to my salt-and-pepper head.

At the age of 19 my eldest son, who is now 26, went to Vancouver in Canada for the summer. He and his pals found jobs in cafes, petrol stations, and even a pet shop.

They rented a house and as the weeks went on, more and more stragglers from Ireland arrived on their doorstep.

At one point, I asked how many were staying there.

“I think about 17 but it could be more,” he told me nonchalantly.

“God almighty! You can’t be serious. What about health and safety? What if there’s a gas leak? What if, what if...”

He told me to “take a chill pill”. I did, but it was hard to swallow and even he noticed how grey I had become when he got home, thankfully, safe and sound.

Another follicle challenge was when my middle son, now 24, went white-water rafting in the States, motor-cycled around Havana in Cuba, and got into an argument with a group of lady-boys on the streets of Bangkok when he refused their advances.

And that was all in the one summer.

Usually prior to indulging in some extreme sport or taking part in a bungi-jumping contest, he would text me to say: “Don’t tell Mum.” I was more salt than pepper by the time he returned home.

My daughter is just 21 but has already taken a year out of college to live in London and escape her supposedly hum-drum existence. She, too, went Stateside last summer and some of her adventures were not for the faint-hearted.

But, at least, and to my eternal gratitude, they remain safe and well.

In that, I am blessed, unlike the parents of Ashley Donohoe, Olivia Burke, Eoghan Culligan, Niccolai Schuster, Lorcan Miller, and Eimear Walsh.

This is their darkest hour.

The moment you first hold your child in your arms is a scary one. The umbilical cord may be severed but the emotional connection lasts a lifetime, sometimes beyond.

As a newborn, you hold your child in your arms. From their first steps, you hold their hand, but they hold your heart forever.

READ MORE: New York Times apologises for Berkeley article .