It Occurs To Me:  Mourning has broken

Writing about the Omagh Inquiry of late has reminded me of someone who has become a dear friend, and who was the catalyst in inviting me to the Omagh Trauma Centre in the years after the horrific 1998 bomb. 

When I first got to know Don McGurgan, he was not a grief counsellor, but the go-to keyholder guy for BBC Foyle/Ulster when they needed the BBC Omagh studio opened for guests on a regular basis. 

The Omagh Memorial Garden

Don was also a great source for local music or stories and helped fill many a programme for me in the 1990s. Everything changed in August 1998, when every world outlet - BBC, RTÉ, CNN, CBS, RTÉ and many more queued to use the Omagh studio to report on the horror. During this extraordinarily busy time, Don’s wife Marian was seriously ill.  In his wonderful book, Mourning has Broken, Don writes: “I have worked for more years than I care to remember in bereavement support and this is what inspired me to write this book about grief and loss. Have you ever settled down to watch a film and the story telling starts at the end emphasising that the real story is about the journey? This portion of the book is about my journey. As a bereavement support worker/counsellor I have had the honour and privilege to accompany many people on their own personal journeys as we discussed how their bereavement resulted in our paths crossing. I have learned that the universe doesn't do accidental and the people we meet have come into our lives either for a reason or season. When clients present themselves for bereavement support, they are taking a major step in opening up about their loss and will only do so on the understanding that any and all conversations are totally private and confidential. I could write books longer than War and Peace about what clients have said to me over the years. I have been privileged beyond words to sit with clients as together we try to make sense of the what and how their loss has affected them. I would never betray any of their confidences, the only person I am going to discuss in this book, or use examples of is from my own experiences and my story.

                                                Marian

“I first met Marian, who was to become my future wife and mother to our children, on the first of January 1972. We met at a dance in the Gap Ballroom when we had just turned seventeen years of age. Asking a stranger out to dance was not an easy thing to do. Those were the days when ladies were expected to line up against the wall and men would walk up and down looking for someone suitable to dance with. It was nothing short of a human cattle market, humiliating for both sexes, the woman for not being approached and the risk of being turned down for the men, walking away with a feeling of total rejection. 

“It was my good fortune to ask Marian out and as she took my hand I discovered it was a slow set of about three or four songs. Long enough for us to both decide to head upstairs for a lemonade, and I asked to escort her home. She politely refused because she was only allowed to go to the dance on the understanding that she went home with her older sister, but we made a date to meet at the same venue the following Sunday. 

Over forty-five years later I can still remember exactly what she was wearing the night we met. I can still see her pale unblemished complexion and her white mini dress and black leather boots. “I was wearing twenty-six-inch bell bottoms and a green velvet jacket, brown platform boots with long brown shoulder-length hair, which I assure you was the height of fashion at the time. I had just purchased my first car, a green Volkswagen Beetle and recently left school for my first job.

READ NEXT: Donegal filmmaker Ciarán McCann releases debut sci-fi novel

Anyway, we married on the seventeenth of September 1977 and work was well underway on our home, a long apex bungalow typical of 1977 architecture. Sadly, my father who was only fifty-five years of age was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer while we were on our honeymoon. He passed away six weeks later at the age of fifty-five. My brother and I sat with our dad the night before his death and in one of his more lucid moments told me if only I had known how much I was loved. I held his hand and I watched as he passed away early the next morning.”

                                       The lap of the Gods

Din and Marian moved into their bungalow in May 1978 and immediately tried to have a family. Months of disappointment led to them contacting their GP and an onward referral to a gynaecologist who diagnosed endometriosis and blocked fallopian tubes ,leaving the possibility of conceiving greatly reduced but not impossible, and so they were discharged and told to just hope for the best. At that time there was little or no support for infertility except by going private.

Don recalls: “If you are aware of how the infertility process was back then then you will know exactly how humiliating the system is. We were pretty-much left in the lap of the Gods and after a further two years decided to make an application to adopt. Of all the decisions we can make in our lives this was by far the best one we ever made, and four years later we adopted our first child, a boy Jonathan. Four years after that we were blessed again with our second adoption and our second child, a daughter Maria.” 

Marian was booked into the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast a few days before Easter (1990) for a small procedure to remove a small ovarian cyst which would then aid the IVF process. Don had taken a few days annual leave to look after the children and on the morning of the operation the phone rang. The memory is still vivid: “I could hear the consultant's voice and from his tone he sounded very serious. He said he was ringing from the operating theatre and instead of a small operation he was going to perform a complete hysterectomy as he was convinced that she had ovarian cancer and it was necessary for her survival. He said it was important that I be at her bedside when she would awake to explain the situation. He told me that there would be further procedures, and he would talk to us when he was free. 

“One minute I was blissfully listening to music and the next trying to pack some of the children’s clothes to stay with their granny, as I made my way to the hospital. From memory it was a living nightmare, as I drove up the motorway, trying to think what I was going to say to Marian and how could I break the news that not only had she lost any hope of having another child, but that her life was in serious danger.”

Marian fought a painful and courageous battle for ten years until November 1990, when Don recalls: “Two days after that she stopped drinking and eating and as I carried her to bed for the last time. I rang her family and said that I didn't think Marian would be with us very much longer. They gathered at our home and we, as in the Catholic tradition lit candles and said some prayers. She grew very weak, and her voice was just above a whisper. I held her hand and I knew despite her eyes closing she could see someone or something and her breathing was laboured. She gently squeezed my hand and spoke her last words. She said, ‘it’s just perfect’ and I didn't understand what she was saying but she repeated it again and I knew what she meant. I replied well go now and we will meet again and with that breathed her last breath and passed away.”

At a later stage, I’ll share those aspects of Don’s books which crucially deal with coping with and handling grief, but suffice to say Mourning Has Broken is an extraordinary life-affirming book which - to quote Fr Brian d’Arcy - “will inspire readers to journey in hope through the bereavement process”.

I will leave you with a poem I wrote after visiting Don the day after Marian’s passing:

                                        Just perfect

Just Perfect…November 2000 

(In memory of Marian McGurgan) 

That morning, your family had left Woodbank Road, 

And I landed from Derry to find you alone. 

We sat beside the coffin but not in the way 

That awkward men do…no, it was ‘Just perfect’. 

‘Just perfect’ Frank, you said, ‘Just perfect’ 

Marian’s last words before an imperfect world 

Took her from you…but her farewell gave you 

Strength…her strength, forged in pain…and love.

As I drove back, between the Strule and Foyle, 

I imagined you, still alone, but not on your own, 

Marian smiling in the Arvalee clouds, 

’Just Perfect, Donald’...she reaches out.