I've been trying to come up with some sort of response to the childish, disrespectful Susanne Morrison, but I think is beautifully written piece says it all and more.
Brenda Power: Michaela was the All-Ireland girl we all could love
Of the three most powerful institutions in this state’s history — the church, Fianna Fail and GAA — only one now still commands respect
Faith, family, loyalty: as Michaela McAreavey was being carried to the chapel last Monday, she shared the headlines with the Fianna Fail heave. There was a time when the GAA, Fianna Fail and the Catholic church formed the three cornerstones of any rural Irish community. But however strong their lingering fidelity to the faith of their fathers, it’s unlikely that many of the thousands of mourners at Michaela’s funeral gave a thought to the death throes of Dev’s party, and even less likely that they cared.
Faith, family and loyalty: these were the three cornerstones of Michaela’s evidently luminous and delightful existence, and the words were inscribed on the missalette for her funeral mass on Monday, underneath a picture of the newlywed and her husband on their recent wedding day.
There are many reasons why her murder in a honeymoon hotel suite didn’t just shock the country, but genuinely depressed and saddened people who had never met her. There was the sheer misfortune of the timing. A minute either way and she’d have missed the men who, police believe, went to her room to rifle her purse.
If the couple had spent a little longer over lunch, if the kitchen had been a little slower serving their meal, if the tea that required the biscuits had come just a moment later, the thieves would have been gone. A day or two afterwards, perhaps, she’d have counted the rupees in her purse, thought there should have been more, and put the shortfall down to an error with unfamiliar currency.
Judging by the profile of the suspects arrested, it seems the police reckon that the practice of sneaking into guests’ bedrooms with the aid of an illicit key, and taking a small sum from a purse or pocket, may have been a common one. The theft of a purse would be noticed and reported, and any staff member involved would lose his coveted job, but pinching a few notes from a stuffed purse and leaving the scene undisturbed was a sustainable strategy.
If thieves entered the room and quickly grabbed the purse, though, they would have left by the time Michaela arrived. And she’d have thought that the loss of her spending money and jewellery was the worst thing that could have happened on her honeymoon. Out of such a near miss with normality a tragedy was made.
The proximity of one of life’s happiest events, marriage, to its most distressing seemed almost deliberately cruel. The family’s rare closeness, prominence and palpable decency and her dad’s extraordinary eloquent expression of his heartache conspired to make Michaela McAreavey’s murder a nationally unifying sadness.
But there was another reason why the whole country shared in genuine grief at the death of somebody else’s child, sister and wife, and it’s not a million miles from the unedifying antics unfolding elsewhere in the week of her funeral. Of the three most powerful institutions in this state’s history — the church, Fianna Fail and GAA — only one still commands respect, and the Michaela McAreavey most of us only got to know after she died embodied everything about it that deserves that respect.
She represented everything about us that the convulsions of the past few years have failed to quench. She personified everything we feared we’d lost, and the irony was that we discovered it only after she was gone. Of all the pillars of Irish society, the GAA is the only one that remains unimpaired, and the Michaela McAreaveys of the country are its backbone.
Faith, family, loyalty. On All-Ireland Sunday mornings, the priests in my Kilkenny parish still pray for victory for the county team, and even club matches get a mention. The GAA is probably the only sporting organisation in the world which expects God to take sides. The players, from primary school to inter-county standard, give their time and talents freely for nothing more than the joy of the sport, the glory of the parish, the club and county.
There was a time when political loyalty was a shared household conviction — your parents’ voting choices determined yours — but family allegiances are now splintered by cynicism and despair. But there’s rarely much dissent about the GAA team a family supports, and family involvement is essential to the association’s countrywide network. Fathers and older brothers coach the youngsters’ teams, mothers and sisters wash jerseys.
Michaela McAreavey was a Celtic tiger cub, one of those relatively well-heeled teenagers who came of age just as the country began to grow prosperous. These are the twentysomethings, we’ve been told, who lack the resources to deal with the downturn, who’ve known nothing but instant gratification and enhanced expectations, whose moral compasses have been knocked out of kilter by affluence and the decline in traditional values.
The most persistent carp about the Rose of Tralee festival is that it purports to showcase the kind of Irish girl who doesn’t exist any more: the wholesome, God-fearing, GAA-loving, devoted daughter and sister who is so modest and demure she needs a chaperone for a week away from home.
And yet, it turns out she exists after all. Michaela McAreavey, a former Ulster Rose, was a bright, popular, stylish and beautiful girl who lived a fulfilled and loving life according to old-fashioned values. She didn’t smoke or drink or live with her boyfriend before they married. She loved her brothers, confided in her mum, adored her dad. She was madly, passionately engaged in the local GAA. A page from her diary as a 12-year-old, published in her father’s recent memoir, spelled out in childish script her ambitions for the county team that year. And she had a deep faith.
She chose a career that allowed her to share both her beliefs and her love of Irish culture with the next generation. She married the kind of fellow any parents would be thrilled to see their daughter bring home, and she rounded off a perfect wedding with a trip to a paradise island. But for all the appeal of the exotic, she was content with the simplest pleasures: a half-finished packet of Rich Tea biscuits, still wrapped in the cling film that kept them fresh in a faraway hotel room, was carried to the altar at her funeral mass.
A diverting little spat has broken out between RTE and TV3 over Mad Men. RTE has secured the rights to broadcast the series, but is broadcasting it in a midnight slot, far too late for most viewers. TV3 complains that it would have run Mad Men much earlier if it had bought the series, and adds that this is another example of RTE using its clout — and the licence-fee revenue — to deny a commercial rival a popular show for which the national broadcaster seems not to have enough room in its schedule. TV3’s claims might cut more ice, though, if it had actually bid for the series. RTE says that it was the only broadcaster to show an interest when it was for sale.
Speaking of Mad Men, TV3 bosses do have a point when they grumble that RTE is muscling in on Vincent Browne’s territory by screening a late-night political discussion against his Tonight programme. So much for offering viewers a choice. Taking Browne on may prove unwise, however, because like Mad Men, he’s got something of a late-night cult following himself.
brenda.power@sunday-times.ie
