No child should go out to a disco and not come home.
That is the idea that everyone returns to when asked about the deaths of three teenagers — three children — at the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown, County Tyrone.
The phrase has become an almost automatic response among the locals of Dungannon, the home of Morgan Barnard and Conor Currie, and Donaghmore, the home of Lauren Bullock.
When we hear one phrase over and over, there is the tendency to think of it is a cliché. But there are other reasons to say something over and over.
The first reason might be because it’s indisputably true. A statement of fact. Another reason would be that to say anything more, to muse or speculate, to let your mind wander, runs the risk of acknowledging the abject horror of what we’re faced with. Of plunging your finger in the raw wound.
So best to stick with what is indisputably true. This shouldn’t happen.
But what on earth are you supposed to say when it does?
Towns change with tragedy, just like cliffs battered by wind and rain and time. Still standing, but worn down closer to the core.
The Tyrone towns of Dungannon and Donaghmore hosted three separate funerals between them on Friday.
Young teenagers leave fresh flowers outside the grounds of the hotel. A small wall curves around the Greenvale sign and every inch of it is covered in colour. Young people stand crying into the arms of their parents, or one another. Infants are collected by their parents from the creche directly next door.
The hotel’s vacant car park makes it seem like you’re not supposed to go any further, even though there’s nobody there to warn you away. A few local people approach the hotel, looking lost in thought. Nobody ventures beyond a barrier that’s only about two metres long, and absolutely wouldn’t keep out anybody who wants to get any closer. Still, nobody does.
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Once a favourite night-out spot for those in Mid-Ulster, in just five days it seems as though people are struggling to look at it. It remains closed. It's like watching the building become haunted in real time.
Meanwhile, in Dungannon, a wake for one of the deceased takes place, and school children line-up outside a small house on a busy enough road, still wearing their blazers and their backpacks.
Not far away, a notice on the local McDonald's warns customers that the restaurant will be not be open for business throughout the day of the funerals. The Oaks Shopping Centre is quiet. The main street is empty, as are its side streets.
In the wooded areas of Dungannon Park there are autumn leaves and fallen trees. A lot of the trees are bare even as we hurtle towards the end of March. Three children are being laid to rest. What kind of springtime is this? The seasons are fucked.
By Thursday evening, before the funerals have begun, the book of condolences in Dungannon is halfway to being full.
Reading through the condolences one by one, you can map out the thought process of each person who stood over it, wondering what to write. Almost every message is led by the one before it, each author borrowing phrases seen elsewhere on the page. Sincere sympathies. Gone before their time. Their families are in our thoughts. Best to stick to what is indisputably true.
One message prays specifically to St. Joseph to bring comfort to the families of the deceased, as his feast fell on 19 March.
On Friday morning, the rain is bucketing down.
In a queasy irony, two of the churches are named for St. Patrick. In Dungannon, the children line up in navy blazers. In Donaghmore the blazers are dark green. In Dungannon, stylish young men walk alongside the hearse. At the funeral of Conor Currie, in St. Malachy's, his teammates huddle in yellow and green GAA jerseys. In Donaghmore, it’s the purple and grey sweaters of the Euphoria Allstar Cheerleading group. Brown coffins. A pink and white coffin, adorned with pink roses.
In both towns, the people collapse into each other’s arms.
Once the first coffin is inside, more than half of the reporters pack up their cameras, sling their tripods over their shoulders and drive the 10 kilometres down the road to the next funeral. And then back to Dungannon again. Across just four hours, each of the three are laid to rest.
Moments such as these are considered a public concern. Though maybe they shouldn’t be. Listening to the invasive, shuttering camera lenses pointed at grieving family members is to witness the blurring of lines between the most personal of tragedies and the most universal of fears.
The fear that our children are not safe.
When something like the Cookstown tragedy occurs, we want every detail, as if the more we can study up on loss then the easier we can avoid it ourselves. It seems to us that without fully understanding the grief as best we can, then we fail to safeguard ourselves and our own children against such horror in the future.
After all, it should not happen. So what do we do now that it has?
