Losing A Child On The Field Of Dreams

Anthony McIntyre 🏴 Maybe it is just because I live in the town and notice it more, but summer seems to have a habit of bringing tragedy to Drogheda's young.

On a number of occasions over the past decade I have taken to TPQ to share thoughts on children losing their lives during the summer holiday season. Jill Amante, Daniel Roche and Gareth McGuirk have all found their way onto these pages, lives wrenched away from them in summers they should have been basking in, feeling life was eternal. Gill and Gareth both drowned while Daniel collided with a car when he was out cycling.

The latest to slip into that tunnel of darkness is Zara Murphy, a young soccer player who died on the pitch while turning out for Termonfeckin Celtic FC under-14s in a match against Glen Magic in the Louth School Girls League. She had previously played for Glen Magic. The weekend after her death all fixtures in the Louth School Girls League and in the North Eastern Football League were canceled as the world of local soccer came to terms with the loss. During the recent cup clash between Drogheda United and neighbours Dundalk, rivalry was set aside as the stadium applauded the youngster.

Zara's dream was to emulate and eventually bypass Katie McCabe, the captain of the Irish national women's squad and Arsenal stalwart.

Being a lover of soccer the death of a player so young concentrates the mind. While I was up at 3.30 this morning to send my own teenage son off to Greece with a huge fry as fuel, my thoughts went to the family of Zara who have seen her leave the house for the last time.

Her father, chair of the Louth Branch of the Irish Referee's Society, described his daughter as one in a million, but to them she was more than that: one in eight billion, wholly irreplaceable, the family's world ''turned upside down''.

We live in a world where the deaths of children is commonplace. For the past ten months we have been aware that not a day goes by without children being murdered by Israel. We strive not to to become fatigued by it nor inured to it when it happens.

There is simply nothing on this earth that can fill the vacuum caused by the death of a child. There is no coffin heavier, the weight of it never really dislodged from the shoulders of parents. When mothers and fathers pass a school at break time, it will not be the voices of the children playing they will hear but the silence of their own lost child.

Zara's funeral mass was held in the same church where only months earlier she had made her confirmation. The officiant observed:

Today is undoubtedly one of unspeakable sorrow and raises very difficult questions, questions that can't be answered; why do bad things happen to good people, why Zara. why such injustice?

There are answers but none that emotionally address the harsh questions that life often throws up. Bad things can happen to any of us at any time in life, but life still has to be lived rather than avoided, its risks faced. And when bad things happen, we try to learn from them so that we might ensure the next child can avoid them and be safer in a world where absolute certainty and total safety will always evade us.

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