Chapter Twelve - ‘The Morgue-The Coroner’s Inquest-The Burial’
Mary slowly entered the hospital morgue. It was, as one might have expected; ‘as silent as a tomb’. The mortuary was empty of all personnel except one attendant. The atmosphere was clinically cold with its steel, fringe-like doors concealing its rows of dead.
After Mary indicated that she was ready to start identifying the bodies, the morgue attendant warned Mary to be prepared for the smell of burnt flesh that still lingered on the corpses. He also warned her that there would be considerable bodily disfigurement and broken and displaced bones.
Looking at her deceased parents and siblings was heart-breaking for Mary and while she needed to get the experience over as soon as humanly possible, however horrible her loved ones looked, something made Mary avoid any swiftness that might have been construed as ‘indecent haste’ by the observing attendant and Garda.
While it took Mary less than two minutes to identify her mother and father, and her twin brothers and sister, she was unable to positively identify all three of her triplet sisters; there being insufficient features remaining that were recognisable due to the severe burning in intense heat they’d been subjected to. Mary broke into tears when she noticed two of the triplets had died holding hands. This was the first time since their birth that the identical trio had looked different from one another!
The two Garda took Mary home and after another half an hour they left her alone. She didn’t know what to do or where to put herself as she marched up and down the lounge aimlessly.
Not surprisingly, Mary didn’t sleep a wink that night, and during the weeks ahead, when she did close her eyes, she had nightmares, seeing visions of the crashing bus bursting into flames as her family screamed for help.
It was three hours after returning from the morgue before Mary turned her phone back on and heard her mother’s recorded voice. For a moment, she wondered if her mum was dead, or whether she was dreaming, or that some ghastly mistake had been made.
Mary was initially shocked to hear the calm tones of her mother’s voice and it took her a few minutes to realise that it was a recorded message. It was her mother’s final words spoken seconds before she died on the coach, as the recorded message concluded with Mary’s mother saying, “Holy Mother of G.....,” before being drowned out by the mounting screams of other frightened passengers as the bus careered off the motorway and down the embankment, before bursting into flames and exploding from fuel in the petrol tank.
Until the funeral of her family took place, Mary played and replayed the last words her mother had spoken to her by phone repeatedly amid her heartache and constant tears.
“Hi Mary. Mammy here! We are less than half an hour away. See you soon. Your da’ wanted to stay overnight with cousin Martin in Dublin and come back tomorrow, but I don’t like being away from the old place for any longer than is necessary. Peel a few spuds, Mary, the twins are starving. See you soon. Love you. Holy Mother of G.......,”
After Mary indicated that she was ready to start identifying the bodies, the morgue attendant warned Mary to be prepared for the smell of burnt flesh that still lingered on the corpses. He also warned her that there would be considerable bodily disfigurement and broken and displaced bones.
Looking at her deceased parents and siblings was heart-breaking for Mary and while she needed to get the experience over as soon as humanly possible, however horrible her loved ones looked, something made Mary avoid any swiftness that might have been construed as ‘indecent haste’ by the observing attendant and Garda.
While it took Mary less than two minutes to identify her mother and father, and her twin brothers and sister, she was unable to positively identify all three of her triplet sisters; there being insufficient features remaining that were recognisable due to the severe burning in intense heat they’d been subjected to. Mary broke into tears when she noticed two of the triplets had died holding hands. This was the first time since their birth that the identical trio had looked different from one another!
The two Garda took Mary home and after another half an hour they left her alone. She didn’t know what to do or where to put herself as she marched up and down the lounge aimlessly.
Not surprisingly, Mary didn’t sleep a wink that night, and during the weeks ahead, when she did close her eyes, she had nightmares, seeing visions of the crashing bus bursting into flames as her family screamed for help.
It was three hours after returning from the morgue before Mary turned her phone back on and heard her mother’s recorded voice. For a moment, she wondered if her mum was dead, or whether she was dreaming, or that some ghastly mistake had been made.
Mary was initially shocked to hear the calm tones of her mother’s voice and it took her a few minutes to realise that it was a recorded message. It was her mother’s final words spoken seconds before she died on the coach, as the recorded message concluded with Mary’s mother saying, “Holy Mother of G.....,” before being drowned out by the mounting screams of other frightened passengers as the bus careered off the motorway and down the embankment, before bursting into flames and exploding from fuel in the petrol tank.
Until the funeral of her family took place, Mary played and replayed the last words her mother had spoken to her by phone repeatedly amid her heartache and constant tears.
“Hi Mary. Mammy here! We are less than half an hour away. See you soon. Your da’ wanted to stay overnight with cousin Martin in Dublin and come back tomorrow, but I don’t like being away from the old place for any longer than is necessary. Peel a few spuds, Mary, the twins are starving. See you soon. Love you. Holy Mother of G.......,”
~~~~~
As soon as cousin Martin and his wife heard about the bus crash and deaths, they immediately made their way up to see Mary at the parental abode. Martin took complete charge of the funeral arrangements and said that he would pick up the undertaker’s bill for the cost of the family burial. The bill amounted to just short of €14,000. Martin said that Mary could pay him back in her own time, and if she couldn’t, he said it didn’t matter.
John’s brothers and father said they would attend the funeral service and his brother Davy agreed to officiate. Mary’s grandmother Lizzy Lanigan also wanted to be there. Grandfather Mick had died several years earlier when his liver failed. Her mother Mary’s six siblings also decided to attend the funeral of their big sister, along with brothers-in-law, nephews, and nieces.
This was the first time that Mary had met all her mother’s siblings in one place. In descending order was her Grandmother, Lizzy, her Uncle Adam who delivered the Eulogy, her twin Aunts, Brigit and Bernadette, her Uncle Dermot and her twin Uncles, Patrick, and Peter.
All her uncles and aunts were accompanied by their marriage partners and their children. To see all of Mary’s relatives descend upon the church for the funeral service made Mary cry. Her mother would be missed by all her family which now stretched from Dublin to Donegal, Waterford to Wicklow, and Limerick to Tipperary.
John’s brothers and father said they would attend the funeral service and his brother Davy agreed to officiate. Mary’s grandmother Lizzy Lanigan also wanted to be there. Grandfather Mick had died several years earlier when his liver failed. Her mother Mary’s six siblings also decided to attend the funeral of their big sister, along with brothers-in-law, nephews, and nieces.
This was the first time that Mary had met all her mother’s siblings in one place. In descending order was her Grandmother, Lizzy, her Uncle Adam who delivered the Eulogy, her twin Aunts, Brigit and Bernadette, her Uncle Dermot and her twin Uncles, Patrick, and Peter.
All her uncles and aunts were accompanied by their marriage partners and their children. To see all of Mary’s relatives descend upon the church for the funeral service made Mary cry. Her mother would be missed by all her family which now stretched from Dublin to Donegal, Waterford to Wicklow, and Limerick to Tipperary.
~~~~~
Two weeks before the day of the funeral, the Coroner’s Inquest was held. Mary attended, accompanied by a work colleague from the hospital where she worked to give her moral support.
She naturally found it difficult to hear specific details of the multiple crash spoken of by the various witnesses. The most important fact to emerge from the Inquest was the verdict. All the coach passengers who’d died or had been seriously injured now had someone to blame. The Garda presented evidence that the coach driver, who’d been breathalysed after the crash, was found to have been four times over the alcohol limit! The recorded verdict was ‘Death by Dangerous Driving, while over the breathalyser limit’.
The two significant aspects of this verdict were that the bereaved now had a person to blame for their loss; someone whom they could project their anger towards. Secondly, the Coroner’s verdict opened the possibility of a multiple and massive compensation claim being made by survivors and bereaved relatives against the insurers of the coach company.
While Mary couldn’t concern herself with the prospect of receiving future monies for her loss, part of her was relieved to know that she would now be able to pay her cousin Martin back much sooner than she originally thought.
Shortly after the Inquest, the Coroner ordered a Post Mortem to be held. Mary never quite understood why, but her solicitor explained that just because ‘x’ number of bodies were found dead after a multiple traffic crash doesn’t necessarily mean that every death was due specifically to the crash.
“For instance,” a court official told Mary, “someone could have died from a heart attack five minutes before the crash. Nothing can be presumed to have occurred, whatever appearances suggest! And until a Post Mortem indicates otherwise, another passenger could have even been murdered in their coach seat before the crash, or indeed had poison secretly administered to them prior to their departure by an impatient relative seeking to get their inheritance quicker if they never returned alive from the journey!”
She naturally found it difficult to hear specific details of the multiple crash spoken of by the various witnesses. The most important fact to emerge from the Inquest was the verdict. All the coach passengers who’d died or had been seriously injured now had someone to blame. The Garda presented evidence that the coach driver, who’d been breathalysed after the crash, was found to have been four times over the alcohol limit! The recorded verdict was ‘Death by Dangerous Driving, while over the breathalyser limit’.
The two significant aspects of this verdict were that the bereaved now had a person to blame for their loss; someone whom they could project their anger towards. Secondly, the Coroner’s verdict opened the possibility of a multiple and massive compensation claim being made by survivors and bereaved relatives against the insurers of the coach company.
While Mary couldn’t concern herself with the prospect of receiving future monies for her loss, part of her was relieved to know that she would now be able to pay her cousin Martin back much sooner than she originally thought.
Shortly after the Inquest, the Coroner ordered a Post Mortem to be held. Mary never quite understood why, but her solicitor explained that just because ‘x’ number of bodies were found dead after a multiple traffic crash doesn’t necessarily mean that every death was due specifically to the crash.
“For instance,” a court official told Mary, “someone could have died from a heart attack five minutes before the crash. Nothing can be presumed to have occurred, whatever appearances suggest! And until a Post Mortem indicates otherwise, another passenger could have even been murdered in their coach seat before the crash, or indeed had poison secretly administered to them prior to their departure by an impatient relative seeking to get their inheritance quicker if they never returned alive from the journey!”
~~~~~
After the Coroner’s Inquest and Post Mortem had taken place, only then could the funeral of Mary’s family take place. Because Mary had been the only person to have lost all the eight members of her immediate family in the coach crash, her story was the most prominent in the national newspapers and media, and her home phone was constantly ringing whilst newspaper reporters clambered for a personal feature story from her. Mary eventually left the phone off the hook and refused to answer the swarm of reporters at her door all day long.
~~~~~
The funeral service was naturally tearful yet proceeded as well as any multiple bereavement could be expected to go. Uncle Adam performed the main Eulogy and Mary also spoke a few words before she broke down in tears and had to resume her seat in church.
“What can I possibly say to convey the loss I feel today,” Mary said. “I…I loved my family so much. Never a day went by…when…mammy forgot to tell me that I was ‘special’. I…don’t know what to do…who to turn to, now that mammy and da’ aren’t here? It grieves me to think that I’ll never see them again. The deep pain of knowing that I’ll never see my brothers and sisters again wounds me more than I am able to adequately put into words. I’m .......I’m ....... sorry ......”
At that point of her brief speech, Mary broke into uncontrollable weeping and was helped back to her church pew by her mother’s sister, Aunt Brigit.
The actual burial was the hardest thing Mary ever had to endure. There were three grave sites side-by-side in the grave yard. The first grave was for Mary’s parents, the second grave plot occupied the twin brothers and her sister Brigit, and the third plot was for her triplet of sisters.
The weather was threatening to shower to begin with and half way through the family burial it started to rain heavily. As the rain began to pour down, most of those attending wanted the priest to speed up the pace of his prayerful delivery. But with it being his older brother that he was burying and his sister-in-law and six nephews and nieces, it could piss it down for all that Davy could care. He’d only be burying his brother John and his wife and family once, and there was no way he was hurrying just to ease the discomfort of some grave attenders who might have been better going straight for a drink at the reception and missing out the prayers by the grave sites and the lowering of the coffins!
The reception was held in a large hall that was once a building that recorded births and deaths before being converted into a conference centre. Mary found herself unable to eat or drink, and before the afternoon came to a natural end, she excused herself and was driven home.
Returning inside the family home, Mary had never felt so alone. As it started to dawn on her that never again would she hear her father hurry up her mother as mammy prepared to dress for church at the last minute, a deep depression descended. She started to realise the huge family loss she felt eating away at her insides when she thought about those little everyday things that once irritated and annoyed immensely which no more ever would: the squabbling of her younger siblings at the dinner table when one took enough meat from the family roast plate to feed two people, leaving a smaller portion for the next person; and playing their records too loud in their bedroom, and hogging the house landline for half an hour at a time.
Mary would never complain again if only she could have these daily irritants returned to her life. She was even prepared to tolerate the early morning family stampede to occupy the bathroom when everyone in the house needed to be out of the house ten minutes later and one or two siblings decided to have a shit as well!
The old house was now totally silent; silent enough to hear her music above the noise of her siblings each playing theirs or chatting nineteen to the dozen on their mobiles as they ran up and down stairs or entered and left their bedroom; slamming doors in the process and breaking the peace of others in the house.
If only Mary could wave a wand and change things back, she’d welcome all the family noise that made the old place a home! It wasn’t a home any longer, nor would it ever seem so again. There would always be too many ghosts to haunt it; all it was now was a memory of great personal loss, a family morgue!
Before a week had passed after her family funeral, Mary decided to sell up and move into another place; somewhere much smaller, like a small terraced property or a modern flat.
Mary returned to her work in the hospital three days after the funeral, saying that she was better occupying her mind throughout the day instead of maudlin at home alone.
“What can I possibly say to convey the loss I feel today,” Mary said. “I…I loved my family so much. Never a day went by…when…mammy forgot to tell me that I was ‘special’. I…don’t know what to do…who to turn to, now that mammy and da’ aren’t here? It grieves me to think that I’ll never see them again. The deep pain of knowing that I’ll never see my brothers and sisters again wounds me more than I am able to adequately put into words. I’m .......I’m ....... sorry ......”
At that point of her brief speech, Mary broke into uncontrollable weeping and was helped back to her church pew by her mother’s sister, Aunt Brigit.
The actual burial was the hardest thing Mary ever had to endure. There were three grave sites side-by-side in the grave yard. The first grave was for Mary’s parents, the second grave plot occupied the twin brothers and her sister Brigit, and the third plot was for her triplet of sisters.
The weather was threatening to shower to begin with and half way through the family burial it started to rain heavily. As the rain began to pour down, most of those attending wanted the priest to speed up the pace of his prayerful delivery. But with it being his older brother that he was burying and his sister-in-law and six nephews and nieces, it could piss it down for all that Davy could care. He’d only be burying his brother John and his wife and family once, and there was no way he was hurrying just to ease the discomfort of some grave attenders who might have been better going straight for a drink at the reception and missing out the prayers by the grave sites and the lowering of the coffins!
The reception was held in a large hall that was once a building that recorded births and deaths before being converted into a conference centre. Mary found herself unable to eat or drink, and before the afternoon came to a natural end, she excused herself and was driven home.
Returning inside the family home, Mary had never felt so alone. As it started to dawn on her that never again would she hear her father hurry up her mother as mammy prepared to dress for church at the last minute, a deep depression descended. She started to realise the huge family loss she felt eating away at her insides when she thought about those little everyday things that once irritated and annoyed immensely which no more ever would: the squabbling of her younger siblings at the dinner table when one took enough meat from the family roast plate to feed two people, leaving a smaller portion for the next person; and playing their records too loud in their bedroom, and hogging the house landline for half an hour at a time.
Mary would never complain again if only she could have these daily irritants returned to her life. She was even prepared to tolerate the early morning family stampede to occupy the bathroom when everyone in the house needed to be out of the house ten minutes later and one or two siblings decided to have a shit as well!
The old house was now totally silent; silent enough to hear her music above the noise of her siblings each playing theirs or chatting nineteen to the dozen on their mobiles as they ran up and down stairs or entered and left their bedroom; slamming doors in the process and breaking the peace of others in the house.
If only Mary could wave a wand and change things back, she’d welcome all the family noise that made the old place a home! It wasn’t a home any longer, nor would it ever seem so again. There would always be too many ghosts to haunt it; all it was now was a memory of great personal loss, a family morgue!
Before a week had passed after her family funeral, Mary decided to sell up and move into another place; somewhere much smaller, like a small terraced property or a modern flat.
Mary returned to her work in the hospital three days after the funeral, saying that she was better occupying her mind throughout the day instead of maudlin at home alone.
~~~~~
Over the next three months, Mary worked and worked. She would volunteer to do double shifts; anything that kept her from lying in bed awake late at night unable to sleep, or falling asleep only to awake screaming, ‘Mammy ... mammy ... mammy!’
When Mary did deign to come home, she would barely eat a proper meal and would, instead, open a bottle of wine and finish it off before trying to get some sleep. Mary found that imbibing alcohol was the only thing that dulled the constant pain that left a hollow hurt in her stomach most of the time.
Within a short space of six months, Mary had moved from drinking wine to drinking vodka. Not only did the vodka provide a bigger kick with each mouthful swallowed, but a small bottle of it was easier to conceal when she went to work and she fancied a taste to put her on until she was back home at the end of her shift.
When Mary did deign to come home, she would barely eat a proper meal and would, instead, open a bottle of wine and finish it off before trying to get some sleep. Mary found that imbibing alcohol was the only thing that dulled the constant pain that left a hollow hurt in her stomach most of the time.
Within a short space of six months, Mary had moved from drinking wine to drinking vodka. Not only did the vodka provide a bigger kick with each mouthful swallowed, but a small bottle of it was easier to conceal when she went to work and she fancied a taste to put her on until she was back home at the end of her shift.
~~~~~
Mary’s solicitor, Frank Nevis, did her proud when it came to arrange for the sale of the family home and the purchase of a modern flat in the centre of Clonmel. He excelled, however, when he undertook to get her the highest possible financial award as he could to compensate for the deaths of her entire family.
Mary couldn’t believe the extent of the pay-out she would eventually receive, but Frank Nevis assured her that after he’d hired a good barrister to act on her behalf, she would never need to work again should she not wish to. He told her it was his intention to seek a total of €4 million as a sum commensurate with the loss of her parents and six siblings but said that he would settle for anything over €3 million as an out-of-court settlement if it could be speeded up, but not a penny less! He also told Mary that an out-of-court settlement could possibly be achieved within the year, but that were the claim contested in court, it could take four or five years, and the legal expenses would grow and grow, eating into the final amount paid to her.
Mary told her solicitor to go ahead and settle out of court if possible, adding that it wasn’t the money that concerned her, but the emotional hole she’d never be able to get herself out of the longer things dragged on.
Mary couldn’t believe the extent of the pay-out she would eventually receive, but Frank Nevis assured her that after he’d hired a good barrister to act on her behalf, she would never need to work again should she not wish to. He told her it was his intention to seek a total of €4 million as a sum commensurate with the loss of her parents and six siblings but said that he would settle for anything over €3 million as an out-of-court settlement if it could be speeded up, but not a penny less! He also told Mary that an out-of-court settlement could possibly be achieved within the year, but that were the claim contested in court, it could take four or five years, and the legal expenses would grow and grow, eating into the final amount paid to her.
Mary told her solicitor to go ahead and settle out of court if possible, adding that it wasn’t the money that concerned her, but the emotional hole she’d never be able to get herself out of the longer things dragged on.
