Young deaths: Incomprehensible tragedies

There is something to-the-marrow about the unexpected death of a young person. Great tragedy arrives at an unexpected, impossible-to-anticipate moment, and is all the sharper for that. If that death — or deaths — occurs at what should be a time of happiness or celebration then the cleaving is all the deeper, the heartbreak probably ever lingering.

Galway teenager Jessica Moore died last weekend when she became unwell after a debs’ ball in Ballinasloe. She was to have collected her Leaving Cert results along with her school friends yesterday, but fate intervened. It is hard not to see that intervention as cruel and unfair. Jessica’s family and friends will certainly regard it as such.