“I embraced them, I said I have no words”
A priest became emotional this morning as he spoke about the moment he hugged the parents of one of the five young people killed in the Dundalk road crash.
“I embraced them, I said I have no words,” Monsignor Shane McCaughey said of his meeting with the parents of Chloe McGee, 23, who died in Saturday’s disaster.
Mgr McCaughey, who is the parish priest of Carrickmacross in Co Monaghan where Chloe, a teacher in Dundalk, was born and bred, said that all he could do was embrace parents Eileen and Kieran when he visited them on Sunday.
Speaking at St Joseph’s Church in the town on Monday, he told us: “I embraced them, I said I have no words. I don’t have words to overcome the grief that they are experiencing. I don’t have those words.
“I have compassion, certainly. I have presence to show that we are supporting them in any way that we can.
“But what words do you say to a person, a mother who has a 23 year old daughter whom she had such dreams and hopes and visions for the future for – and all just snuffed out in a flash?
“There is nobody who has words for that and I most certainly wouldn’t presume to have words for that situation. All that we can do is be present with them, be with them.”
Mgr McCaughey also spoke of how Chloe’s parents came to St Joseph’s early on Sunday morning after gardai told them in Dundalk station that their daughter had died in the road smash on Saturday evening.
He said: “There is one very special moment occurred yesterday. Our first mass of the day was at half past nine here in St Joseph’s.
“Just before mass, Chloe’s parents came in to ask would we pray for Chloe. That was such a challenge for them. They had just come from the Garda Station in Dundalk where they had been given the news that their daughter was dead.
“And the first thing they wanted to do was to pray for her. They came in here to ask the priests here and the congregation to pray for Chloe. I thought that was a most powerful moment.
“To come in to ask for prayers for the daughter, their 23-year-old daughter who was killed the night before, I thought that was unbelievable.”
He also said that the families and communities affected by the tragedy would never get over their loss.
He said: “The sense of grief and loneliness and sadness that has descended upon us – you can sense it, you can touch it. It is palpable. It is all around us.
“The family does not get over this tragedy You don’t get over this kind of event. You may grow to become used to the absence of your loved one, the same applies in the community
“They are thinking of their own child, their own son or daughter, their grandchild, their granddaughter. You would have sensed today a senior congregation, people who are retired coming to mass. They are all thinking of their own grandchildren.
“It could be them, they would be on this journey of grief. They know that all they can do is to pray because they are people of faith and at the end of the day that is what we cling to.
“But we don’t have words, there are no pat answers to go out and say to a person who is waiting on the return of a 23-year-old girl that there is some simple way of addressing this – there is not.
“The community will always remember the weekend of the five young people being killed outside Dundalk, It will be there forever.”
Mgr McCaughey also said that Chloe had recently been in Dubai with her boyfriend Alan McCluskey, 23, who also died in the crash.
They were celebrating Ms McGee getting a permanent job as a woodwork teacher in O Fiach College, Dundalk. He said: “Chloe is a teacher in Dundalk. She had just been made permanent as a teacher and that was her goal to be a fully fledged teacher.
“They were celebrating that and the images that were coming back to her family of the joy and the happiness and the exuberance of young life, 23 years of age – everything is in front of you.
“And then for the parents to get the word on Saturday night that there had been an accident. I am not sure how parents can cope. I have no understanding of what a parent must go through each time their child goes out, will they come home safe.
“The death of young people affects all of us. Young people should have a life in front of them, they should not be finishing up killed on a road. It is difficult to pastor in these situations, but the strength we have is the strength of a community coming together to support them.”
And he also paid tribute to the emergency services who rushed to the scene on Saturday night. “Those people who were the first responders deserve so much credit and so much praise and so many prayers for the work that they do day in and day out,” he said.
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