Considering Grace. Gladys Ganiel
They believe in the power of prayer. George was amazed that on the Sunday when his policeman cousin was still missing in another part of Northern Ireland, the Moderator visited his church and prayed that his body would be found. ‘The Moderator didn’t know there was a relative in the church. I got a phone call that afternoon to say his body had been found. I always felt he was speaking to me.’
Anne and George were frank in their assessments of the prospects for reconciliation. Anne said, ‘It would be nice to have reconciliation, but at the same time our lives have been ruined.’ George said ‘it’s not exactly anger’ that he feels, but ‘resentment that a lot of those boys who were at the back of those bombings are now in the government’. He is content to ‘live with’ people of the same religion as those who hurt his family, but thinks that ‘Corrymeela and those places where they talk about reconciliation are contrived. It doesn’t change the mind-set of your extremists’. Although George commended the churches for trying to promote reconciliation, he said their efforts would not get far because ‘your extremists wouldn’t be stepping through the church or chapel doors too much’. Anne was even less optimistic: ‘You’re talking about a lot of people that have been suffering and I don’t think any church, or any chapel, can make a difference.’
‘For me to reconcile with the boys that planted that bomb – there’s no chance.’
Johnston served in the police before the Troubles started. He was among those sent to Londonderry to deal with the first outbreaks of serious violence in the late 1960s. Later, he was one of the first on the scene after a bomb attack. He extinguished the flames on a young girl, saving her life.
Johnston and Paula were not surprised when their daughter, Samantha, followed her father into the police. Their lives were shattered when Samantha was killed in a bomb attack. Paula said, ‘To tell you the truth, we’re not over it yet. I lay in bed for a long time, I must admit. They had me on some sort of tablet.’ Paula has been especially haunted by the manner of her daughter’s death. Her body was not intact to prepare for burial. Paula initially lost her faith. ‘I didn’t believe God would let such a thing happen.’
Their minister visited and provided support. The local Catholic priest visited Johnston and Paula the day after Samantha died, and later read a eulogy for her in his chapel. Johnston said, ‘I worked with some very good fellas who are Roman Catholics. They stood here and cried when Samantha was killed.’ Paula said, ‘Gradually we started going back to church – but it took a while.’ She found comfort in the Bible. ‘I gradually came to the conclusion that it was meant to be, that there was nothing anybody could have done to stop it. My thinking was: Samantha’s death will be avenged.’
Johnston and Paula remain active in the community – serving others helped them deal with their loss. When asked about reconciliation, Paula said, ‘For me to reconcile with the boys that planted that bomb – there’s no chance. The way that word reconciliation is used – it’s meant to make victims reconcile with terrorists. I would not want to reconcile with Samantha’s killers, or meet them. I would rather remember Samantha’s face, not theirs.’
‘I just leave it up to the day of judgement.’
Jane’s son, Alan, was a policeman. He was murdered on duty when he was just twenty-five years old. ‘The police sent out a welfare man after he was murdered. We laughed at the stupid questions he asked: “How do you feel on Remembrance Sunday?” Sure, every day is Remembrance Day. People who haven’t come through it don’t know what it’s like.’
Jane feels Alan’s loss just as much now, perhaps even more. ‘On Father’s Day in church, you see his friends there with their families. You see the children riding down the road with their daddies in the tractors. That hurts. We have lost the next generation. Nothing was ever the same from when he died. You go through life, but there’s not the same joy in it.’
The minister, elders and others from Jane’s congregation and community visited regularly. ‘People called with us for ages and ages after. Our Catholic neighbours, too. There is more of a bond in the country, so there is.’
There is a memorial for Alan in her church. ‘That will be there when we’re all gone.’ There is another memorial in the location where he died. ‘The Catholic priest was there when they dedicated it.’ The minister who was the Moderator when Alan died has stayed in touch, which means a lot. ‘It’s been some twenty-five years but he came up on a Sunday to our church not so terribly long ago and he visited the grave and took a photograph of the headstone.’
Each year on Remembrance Day, there’s a wreath laid at Alan’s memorial in the church. During the service, the congregation sings, ‘Be Still My Soul, the Lord is on Thy Side’. In the years after Alan’s death, Jane got through by praying and thinking about the words of that hymn. ‘At night, when things were dark and you would have liked to cry, you thought: Lord, be still my soul. Before you came to the end of it, you would have calmed down.’
No one was ever arrested for Alan’s murder. Jane has no desire to learn the identity of his killer.
Alan’s gone and me knowing who killed him isn’t going to ease the burden in any way. I wouldn’t like to be there when he’s meeting his maker. I wouldn’t want to be with him on his deathbed, either. He’ll think about it, for everybody has a conscience. Through my faith I know there will be a day of judgement and he’ll have to answer for it. For him to truly repent I think he would have to come here first of all, and meet whoever belongs to Alan.
Jane blamed the Rev. Ian Paisley for stirring up the hatred that led to her son’s death.
If Paisley had been more Christian, I don’t think Alan would be dead today. I think the Troubles would have gotten nowhere and there wouldn’t have been so many lives lost. And then when he got to the top, he sat down with a murderer. Whereas the likes of Gerry Fitt – he was a good man – but he wouldn’t have given him the time of day.
Jane’s late husband wanted to know who murdered their son. ‘Maybe my faith was stronger. I just leave it up to the day of judgement.’
‘You can’t go forward referring to the past.’
Alice and her 12-year-old son John were injured when a bomb exploded. They were hospitalised for weeks and John had a leg amputated. ‘The Troubles never bothered me that much until we were thrown into the middle of it all.’ After the blast, Alice couldn’t move, and she didn’t know what had happened to John. ‘I was lying in the street very badly injured. I couldn’t be moved. I was just left lying there till help arrived. I was coming in and out of consciousness. I kept thinking: why is nobody coming to help me?’ When she got to hospital, ‘I asked about John and everybody would have assured me he was fine. But he wasn’t.’
Two days after the incident, Alice’s minister came to her hospital bedside to tell her that her son had lost his leg. ‘It was good that my minister was there to break the news. My husband was in a bad state. He wasn’t able to deal with it all.’ John was moved to a bed beside his mother. ‘I don’t know if it was a good thing or not, for I had to witness a lot of his pain. Whenever he needed a doctor, he cried and cried. It took quite a while for somebody to come sometimes.’
John endured some complications from his surgery and fresh bouts of pain. Alice was thankful that her son came to view his situation positively. ‘He wasn’t positive to start off with, but he became positive. That was what saved me: the fact that he didn’t complain. He never once said, “Why did this have to happen to me?”’
Alice’s minister continued to visit. ‘I prayed a lot that everything would work out all right in the end. But apart from that, what can you do? The only people that could help us at the time were the medical people. It was up to them to put us back together again.’ Support came from other sources. Her husband was involved in rugby, and teams and fans from all over the island sent John souvenirs and notes of encouragement. ‘We found out that there was a lot more kindness than evilness after the bomb. On both sides. People were very kind. They would always ask how John was. I knew the support was there and I could have got more involved in church activities if I’d wanted, but I didn’t