Anthony McIntyre reflects on the death of a Drogheda teen.

Goodbye to you my trusted friend
We've known each other since we were nine or ten
Together we've climbed hills and trees
Learned of love and ABC's
Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees
Goodbye my friend it's hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky
Now that the spring is in the air
Pretty girls are everywhere
Think of me and I'll be there

- Terry Jacks


We can almost sense it coming. Each time the school holidays arrive I grip my teenage son and talk to him about the dangers lurking out there but which are masked by the haze of a shimmering sun. He turned 14 this morning, so perhaps I am more emotionally driven because of the day that is in it. Before he came of age I did the same with my daughter, who is now an adult and even less inclined to listen to advice if she feels it might erode her autonomy to make her own decisions.  Having instilled in her the right to choose and have no one else steal the choice from her, I can not fault her for her stance.

A parent no matter how much they try can never be sure where their children are or what they get up once they head off with their friends. Even at home it is a difficult enough task in the modern technological world where internet gives them immediate access to their friends. And when young friends get together, parental control is shunted off to the margins.  The lure of adventure, the existential need for excitement, ineluctably draws them to a variety of unsupervised thrill centres: railway lines, isolated pools, high trees, under age drinking and illicit drugs -  there is no shortage.

Our children don't need to be addicted to risk to end up in potentially fatal situations: like the biblical thief in the night, death comes unexpectedly. Just that, when they are home at night parents can relax. It is not in the darkness of night but during the light of bright summer days that parental anxiety zooms upwards. In recent years Drogheda has lost some of its children to summer accidents. Young Gareth McGuirk and Daniel Roche, both 13, are names that have featured on in TPQ in circumstances no one wished for. This time tragedy befell 14-year-old Jill Amante from Aston Village on the northern outskirts of the town. 

Jill Amante was a child of this town, a full life ahead of her, tragically snatched away. She had been swimming in the summer sun with friends at Seapoint beach near Termonfeckin. Her family are said to have come to Ireland from Nigeria, and like other Africans who have made the trip hoped to make Drogheda their home, not an early grave for their daughter. 

Local councillor Ged Nash summed up for many when he said:

It’s an awful thing to happen to a family. The idea that a 14-year-old girl can leave home and not come back is traumatising for everybody … It is an unspeakable tragedy and we can only imagine what the family is going through at the moment.

Jill will be laid to rest, Drogheda will mourn the loss of yet another of its youth, amidst mothers and fathers “hugging their children tighter” and the town will return to normal in the terrible knowledge that the sun has set on a young life but will rise again in the morning and will again beckon the young to danger. Last year two young rugby playing teenagers, Jack Kineally and Shay Moloney went swimming in a lake with friends. Neither their strength or stamina, nor the herculean efforts of their young friends could save them. Only a pre-emptive caution can assist there. As we mourn the death of a child of this town, we could do worse than caution our children until we weary of it. And then caution them again.

Drogheda Loses Another Of Its Children

Anthony McIntyre reflects on the death of a Drogheda teen.

Goodbye to you my trusted friend
We've known each other since we were nine or ten
Together we've climbed hills and trees
Learned of love and ABC's
Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees
Goodbye my friend it's hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky
Now that the spring is in the air
Pretty girls are everywhere
Think of me and I'll be there

- Terry Jacks


We can almost sense it coming. Each time the school holidays arrive I grip my teenage son and talk to him about the dangers lurking out there but which are masked by the haze of a shimmering sun. He turned 14 this morning, so perhaps I am more emotionally driven because of the day that is in it. Before he came of age I did the same with my daughter, who is now an adult and even less inclined to listen to advice if she feels it might erode her autonomy to make her own decisions.  Having instilled in her the right to choose and have no one else steal the choice from her, I can not fault her for her stance.

A parent no matter how much they try can never be sure where their children are or what they get up once they head off with their friends. Even at home it is a difficult enough task in the modern technological world where internet gives them immediate access to their friends. And when young friends get together, parental control is shunted off to the margins.  The lure of adventure, the existential need for excitement, ineluctably draws them to a variety of unsupervised thrill centres: railway lines, isolated pools, high trees, under age drinking and illicit drugs -  there is no shortage.

Our children don't need to be addicted to risk to end up in potentially fatal situations: like the biblical thief in the night, death comes unexpectedly. Just that, when they are home at night parents can relax. It is not in the darkness of night but during the light of bright summer days that parental anxiety zooms upwards. In recent years Drogheda has lost some of its children to summer accidents. Young Gareth McGuirk and Daniel Roche, both 13, are names that have featured on in TPQ in circumstances no one wished for. This time tragedy befell 14-year-old Jill Amante from Aston Village on the northern outskirts of the town. 

Jill Amante was a child of this town, a full life ahead of her, tragically snatched away. She had been swimming in the summer sun with friends at Seapoint beach near Termonfeckin. Her family are said to have come to Ireland from Nigeria, and like other Africans who have made the trip hoped to make Drogheda their home, not an early grave for their daughter. 

Local councillor Ged Nash summed up for many when he said:

It’s an awful thing to happen to a family. The idea that a 14-year-old girl can leave home and not come back is traumatising for everybody … It is an unspeakable tragedy and we can only imagine what the family is going through at the moment.

Jill will be laid to rest, Drogheda will mourn the loss of yet another of its youth, amidst mothers and fathers “hugging their children tighter” and the town will return to normal in the terrible knowledge that the sun has set on a young life but will rise again in the morning and will again beckon the young to danger. Last year two young rugby playing teenagers, Jack Kineally and Shay Moloney went swimming in a lake with friends. Neither their strength or stamina, nor the herculean efforts of their young friends could save them. Only a pre-emptive caution can assist there. As we mourn the death of a child of this town, we could do worse than caution our children until we weary of it. And then caution them again.

2 comments:

  1. We didn't see the potential dangers at that age either and ran heedless in to the summer and beyond..many times..when you consider some of the antics you got up to you only realise how close to death you placed yourself and yet carried on regardless...hindsight is wonderful but also a bloody annoying predicament to parents...
    terrible for that wee girl and her family....I can just imagine the hardships her family went through to create a life for themselves and then this...very cruel.

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  2. that is it in one Niall. The nightmare we were for our parents is revisited on us now that we are parents. Every summer, I wonder what it is going to bring and to whose door. Tragic.

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