‘Speechless and empty’

FINAL JOURNEY Kitty Fitzgerald’s coffin is carried to her final resting place followed by her husband Tom’s coffin. Pic: Paul Mealey

Why and how could this happen?’ – Parish Priest

Edwin McGreal
Irishtown

The community of Irishtown ‘fell silent’ upon hearing the news of the deaths of pensioners Kitty and Tom Fitzgerald at their home in Knockadoon last week.
Speaking at the couple’s funeral Mass in the Church of the Holy Family, Irishtown yesterday (Monday) local Parish Priest Fr Martin O’Connor spoke of the struggle to comprehend what happened.
“Words become feeble and they desert us. They desert us when we are confronted with the mystery of life, the mystery of death and the mystery of what happened Kitty and Tom. We fall silent.
“Indeed a silence fell right across this parish on Tuesday last, the Feast of All Saints, when news spread of the tragic events in Fitzgerald’s home in Knockadoon. On hearing the news everything changed. Nothing, I expect, will ever be quite the same again. Many felt a knot in their tummy, including myself as we tried to digest the sad news.
“It was one of those moments in life when we remember exactly where we were when we heard it. So the news left us speechless and empty, like orphans looking for a hand to hold or a voice to tell us all will be well.
“The circumstances and nature of their going seems to empty the future of happiness and meaning, so no wonder we fell silent,” said Fr O’Connor during his homily.
The church was full to overflowing as family and friends gathered on a cold but bright November afternoon.
It is believed that Tom Fitzgerald killed his wife, left his son Paul critically injured and then took his own life. Fr O’Connor said the answers to why such a tragedy could happen were hard to find.
“Today, gathered as we are around the altar of the Lord, we must not hesitate to speak our real feelings or perhaps bewilderment, dismay, anger, whatever. To speak them to our Lord. Then, I remember, on the night before he died, in the loneliness of his suffering, Jesus cried out ‘my God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ and it is a cry that echoes in all of our hearts and minds this day.
“Why and how could this happen to a family like Kitty and Tom and Paul? The tragic nature of their deaths might lead us to forget, to forget the gift they were to you, their families, and to us, their friends. The goodness of their lives and the contribution they made to their parish and wider community. We all have special memories of Kitty and Tom.
“Memories of their love, of their generosity, of their wholesomeness and it is these memories that we need to turn to so that you, their family, and we, their community, can pick up the shattered pieces of this past week and make something good and holy out of them,” said Fr O’Connor.
Paul Fitzgerald, who is in a critical condition in Beaumont Hospital, was prayed for often during yesterday’s funeral Mass.
His recovery is one, Fr O’Connor said, ‘we all so fervently wish and pray for this day’.
Family members read Prayers of the Faithful, first and second readings and a post communion reflection.
After the Funeral Mass, the families of Kitty and Tom Fitzgerald shouldered their coffins from the church to the nearby graveyard. Members of the community formed a large guard of honour along the main road in the village. In the graveyard, after prayers, Kitty and Tom Fitzgerald were laid to rest together.