In the village by the deep lake – signified by its Irish name: An Craoslach (The Gorge Lake) – they’re experiencing deep grief.
Creeslough in County Donegal has a population of 400 and they are preparing to bury 10 of their own.
The first two in a series of 10 funerals will take place at St Michael’s, the only church for miles around here.
They have one church, one school and they had one petrol station until three o’clock last Friday afternoon.
Some people were just doing their job, others purchasing fuel. Teenagers were choosing sweets for the weekend.
One man was getting cash from an ATM. A five-year-old girl had gone with her dad to buy her mum a birthday cake.
There were taken in an instant, their lives cruelly snatched away by what seems to have been a random accident.
A suspected gas explosion brought apartments above crashing down on to the busy shop below.
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Jessica Gallagher, 24, a young designer who had worked in Paris, was visiting her boyfriend Conor McFadden in his apartment.
He won’t be able to attend her funeral. He suffered critical injuries and remains in a Dublin hospital.
Requiem mass for Jessica will be offered in the afternoon, following requiem mass for Martin McGill, 49, in the morning.
Martin, an avid Celtic fan, was born in Scotland but moved to this remote corner of Ireland to care for his elderly mother.
The 10 victims from top row, left to right: Leona Harper, 14, Robert Garwe, 50, Shauna Flanagan Garwe, five, Jessica Gallagher, 24, and James O’Flaherty, 48, and (bottom row, left to right) Martina Martin, 49, Hugh Kelly, 59, Catherine O’Donnell, 39,
Not since January 1925, when a train was blown off the Owencarrow Viaduct, killing four people, has Creeslough known such loss.
But the sense of community here, as deep as the lake from which they take their name, is sustaining them.
Seasoned journalists, who have covered the darkest of days, have never experienced such hospitality.
Before you have time to introduce yourself, they are offering you a sandwich and a hot bowl of soup.
They’re standing together and singing together, the same song rising from candlelit vigils across the county.
‘This is my homeland, the place I was born in; No matter where I go, it’s in my soul; My feet may wander a thousand places; But my heart will lead me home to my Donegal.’
It’s that sense of home that will carry them through when the grief hits like the waves on the coastal rocks here.
