Considering Grace. Gladys Ganiel
is the only way. Most families in Northern Ireland have been touched in some way by the Troubles. You can’t go forward referring to the past.’
‘It was prayer that brought me back to life again.’
Lisa’s husband was murdered and she was seriously injured in the same incident. ‘It was a horrifying night. I remember everything that happened. I was never unconscious.’ Lisa was in hospital for many weeks and was confined to a wheelchair for five years. She has had 174 operations and still endures physical complications. ‘It has been very hard now, it has, because I had three of a family to bring up. Two of them were still at school.’
Lisa was in hospital when her husband was buried, so she couldn’t attend the funeral. Her minister and clergy from other denominations visited regularly. ‘At one stage, round my bed there was six people between ministers and priests, praying at the one time. There was always some ministers or priests at my bedside every day. They were very, very faithful to me. That’s what brought me here where I am now, the ministers and priests.’ Lisa believes, ‘It was prayer that brought me back to life again.’
On her husband’s first anniversary, her minister offered to conduct another service for him. ‘Presbyterians wouldn’t normally do a service for the first year. There was a very big turnout. I thought it was very nice of the minister offering to do that.’ Confined to her wheelchair and in considerable pain, Lisa didn’t attend church for about five years. ‘But my neighbours were all very good. The minister was very attentive. The Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian, and the priests – they never left me.’ Lisa also received counselling through a community organisation. ‘But I still do have nightmares and still waken up thinking about it and all the rest. It’ll never leave. But life has to go on for your family’s sake.’ The members of her congregation ‘rallied around me; they helped me all they could. I can’t say anything wrong about them because I would be telling a lie if I did.’
Despite ongoing struggles, Lisa isn’t bitter or angry.
I don’t hold any grudges, because no parent brings up a son or a daughter to go out and do the like of that. I wouldn’t meet them [those responsible for the incident], I wouldn’t face them but I wouldn’t go out looking for trouble. I know what I went through and I wouldn’t want anybody else going through it.
‘I didn’t know there were boys and girls who didn’t have all this going on in their lives.’
Jennifer grew up near the border and her father and grandfather were in the security forces. Her grandfather was killed when she was seven. ‘We also lost lots of friends of the family.’ A year after her grandfather died, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambushed the car when her father was driving Jennifer and her brother to school.
As bullets rained into the car, Jennifer’s brother jumped out and hid behind a hedge. He was not hit. Jennifer followed, but a bullet lodged in the back of her head. Jennifer’s father was not hit, so when the IRA sped away, he gathered the children in the car and drove back to the house. Jennifer remembers the blood, and how her parents held her on their knees as they waited for the ambulance. ‘They said the Lord’s Prayer, and I remember that as clear as day. It always stayed with me that prayer was the response. When I got out of hospital, I went back to school and nobody made a big deal of it. Life just went on.’
When Jennifer was a child, she thought everyone lived with such danger. One day at the kitchen table, her parents remarked that they were living through ‘terrible times’. Jennifer responded: ‘If Adam and Eve hadn’t have done that.’ She explains: ‘I thought the violence was because of sin in the world, and this was how it was manifesting itself. I didn’t know there were boys and girls who didn’t have all this going on in their lives.’
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