Westport rallies around Rigney family

POIGNANT?Friends of Keith lined the road at Sandyhill as Keith body returned home from Australia in the early hours of Friday morning last.

Community rallies around Rigney family


Neill O’Neill

THE community of Westport united in grief last weekend, as the Rigney family buried their much-loved son Keith, almost 12 years to the day that his older brother Vinny had lost his life.
Almost a dozen years to the day since the family had last made the solemn journey to Aughavale Cemetery to lay their eldest child to eternal rest, following his untimely death after a motorcycle accident on Reek Sunday 2001, they returned there again on Saturday, surrounded once more by family and friends, after a chain of events so chilling, cruel and unfathomable in similarity and nature that it is difficult to comprehend, had befallen them.
On an emotional afternoon, like few seen in in such circumstances, Keith, 28 years old when he too died following a motorcycle accident in Australia on July 15, was laid to rest following requiem Mass in St Mary’s Church at 1pm, where there was barely a seat to be had, and not a dry eye in the house.
Keith’s lengthy repatriation had been completed on Thursday last when he arrived, to a candle-lit guard of honour, at his family’s home in Sandyhill. His many friends have mobilised in a massive way since news filtered through of his death, and mourners came in their thousands to file past his coffin in the front room of the Rigney household last Friday.
The moment stirred up poignant memories of the last time such crowds flocked there, nobody had ever imagined it was a memory they would have to live through again. For Keith’s parents Bridie and Vincent, sisters Thelma and Sandra and younger brother Colm, that reality was etched on their faces, as was the knowledge that the question of why they had to relive their greatest nightmare will never be answered. His young son Noah, three years old, strikingly like his father but just too young to appreciate the loss that had befallen him, will grow up surrounded by the love of his mother Thomasina and the Rigney family, and will come in time to know, through them, and the memories they will recall of the lives they all shared together, of the father who loved him dearly and the way he touched so many lives.
At his Funeral Mass, concelebrated by priests from numerous parishes, Fr Charlie McDonnell spoke of all he had heard about Keith, while his family participated in the ceremony, bringing gifts and doing readings. Keith’s friends too had a large part to play, saying prayers, forming a guard of honour afterwards and uniting in grief with the Rigney family in an inspiring show of solidarity.
One from among their ranks, Keith McGovern, spoke from the altar of the man Keith was, how he always had a twinkle in his eye, a smile on his face and a joke ready to play on somebody. Recalling some of the various stages in Keith’s life, he described him as a friend you could depend on, who was just the best of ‘craic’. He also spoke of how Noah’s birth had changed Keith’s outlook on life, and that he was in Australia working hard, as work was hard to come by in Ireland, so that he could provide for his son and better secure his future.
Keith’s uncle Tom Rigney, who had played an instrumental role in his repatriation and in organising his funeral, thanked the various agencies and individuals who had rowed in behind the Rigney family with unwavering support since Keith’s passing.
Following the ceremony, Westport came to a complete standstill as his cortege made it’s way up Bridge Street, something that would surely have had the mischievous rogue inside Keith laughing down from the heavens.