“I spoke to God about Ciaran’s favourite toys, food, colour and all the things that made him unique. My injuries were two fractured ankles, a compound fracture to my left leg, a fractured pelvis and hip, a fractured elbow and sternum, but the worst injury was the pain which came from my broken heart.”
Every so often an article or a passage or a video comes along that we are all encouraged to consume. To read, to watch, to hear. Every so often, we are encouraged to open our ears so that our hearts and our heads may hear. Every so often we have to, for our own sakes.
Over the past few years in Ireland, we have had many of these seminal moments.
We had to open our ears and listen to young Donal Walsh talk about his impending death. How he was embracing it but how behind it all, he wished so much that he was given more time to live his life. And in this moment of selflessness, he implored many of us not to be frivolous about life, risking it, or taking it, when he would gladly give so much for just some more time.
We had to open our ears and listen to Panti Bliss as she stood on the stage and delivered the noble call, a call that called us all out for the nation we were, a nation that treated The Other differently. It brought us all into the mindset of a community that should never have been The Other. There should never be Others, but there are. And will continue to be, and that we have to combat within ourselves.
We had to open our ears and hear the words of Conor Cusack. In his bravery, he shattered the myth that big boys don’t cry. How they hide the angst and the pain and only let it manifest itself in actions that are always too late to be prevented. Those words brought so many back from the brink. Those words made so many people seek help in being given the coping mechanisms for life.
None of these articles or orations were easy listening or reading. Not for the recipient or the giver. But we are all the better for it. And this week, there is another thing we should read.
If you have read it already, then read it again, and get your friends to do the same.When Gillian Treacy wrote her victim impact statement, after the accident in which her young son was killed by the actions of a drunken driver, she put into it the raw naked pain and grief of a parent mourning a child. — one taken needlessly by the stupid actions of another human. But by describing the sheer physicality of grief, of the coldness of the event, of the pain that burns like a poker through the heart.
Of the desire to stay with your dead child, to focus your shocked persona into minding them, she went further and gave us all a picture we would rather not see again. Although there is not a season for the abuse of drink in Ireland, at this time of the year, there is more opportunity to become inebriated.
When you are socializing, think of this before you get into your car. Think of it when your friends get into their car. We have come a long way since we were a nation of litter dropping, chain smoking, inconsiderates, but the number of drunken drivers who flaunt the laws and who try to evade conviction with all kinds of legal stunts is still far too high.
And above all this shows that there is still a feeling in this country that we will try it if we think we will get away with it.
I’ve been the victim of a drunk driver. The guy was too drunk to even stand up when I pulled him from his car a few hundred yards up the road where he was trying to hide in the darkness. It was just after midnight and he’d been drinking since noon.
The man who drove the car which killed young Ciaran Treacy said “I just didn’t think. I just hopped in the car. This weekend, seek out this victim impact statement, read it, and then decide never to take that chance again. How many more mothers do we want lying beside their dead child overnight, accompanying them as they lie cold, rubbing the hands that were once warm and vibrant and loving.
Don’t just hop in the car. Don’t say you didn’t think.
Think beforehand.
