All Questions, No Answers

Adrian and Ciara Dunne went to the funeral home in New Ross on Friday morning, to make arrangements for themselves and their two little girls. The funeral director thought it odd, that two young people, full of life, would be thinking along those lines.

What if we were all to die in some terrible accident, the couple said. They had often spoken of going over to Liverpool, great fans of the team there, and there are so many road deaths that maybe there was nothing odd after all. Perhaps a bit more fatalistic than most, but not mad.

Adrian requested an oak coffin, and he was to be laid out in his Liverpool jersey and Sunday jeans. He'd be waked at Cooney's for the one night, and then brought to the church in Boolavogue for the funeral. Play "You'll Never Walk Alone" and the Guns n' Roses version of "Stairway To Heaven", he requested as he described the service he'd like.

Now, should Ciara die at the same time, the couple made arrangements for a guardian for the two girls. Everyone should name a guardian for their little ones; it makes sense to set out your wishes. Ciara was Adrian's eyes, they were always together in the car, and weren't there a tragic number of road fatalities in Ireland?

Taking it a step further, Adrian ordered very specific arrangements for his two girls. If they died before they were six years old, the elder was to be put in his coffin and the youngest buried together with her mother. The girls were to be dressed in Liverpool jerseys and Dora the Explorer logo jeans. The family headstone would be black, the plot lined with kerbing, and Liverpool colors would be used for the stones.

The funeral director, Frances Cooley, rang up the local Garda station as soon as the family had gone. She knew that Dora the Explorer branded clothes were only available for small girls, toddler sizes, and Adrian had been clear on what his children were to be buried in. Acting on the concern, a garda rang up Father Redmond, who knew the family, and the priest called at the house in the Moin Rua estate on Friday night. He spent two hours there, and then arranged for the priest in Monageer to visit the next day. No one answered the door on Saturday afternoon when Fr. Cosgrave came to call.

Gardai on patrol in the estate drove past the house several times, to keep an eye on things, and Father Cosgrave came back on Monday morning, but still got no answer. When the gardai and health service officials arrived that afternoon, they broke into the house and found Adrian had hanged himself. Ciara was strangled, and the two girls had been suffocated.

Rational people ask rational questions, to find the cause of this irrational act. Was Adrian struck down by the grief of losing his father and then losing his brother to suicide only a month ago? His hereditary blindness had been passed down to his girls; did he despair that they would have a wretched life if they lived? Was it a suicide pact? In a moment that lacks all reason, can reasonable people ever find the answer?

All their meticulous plans came to nothing in the end. The family was waked at Adrian's mother's home, the girls in separate coffins and not with their parents. Then the bodies of Ciara and the two girls were taken by Ciara's parents, brought back to her hometown in Donegal for burial. Adrian was left at his mother's house, to be waked for a second night before his body is taken to St. Cormac's church yard in Boolavogue, to lie alone. The instructions left behind have been ignored, leaving nothing but questions that may have no answer.