Generations..

(these words all fell out of me earlier today, so I'm not going to bother fixing any of the grammar...)


It's amazing what you remember 20 years on….A phonecall from a friend broke the news in the middle of Christmas Day, and I remember going instantly weak at the knees, collapsing into the chair beside the phone, as she spoke saying words that I couldn't comprehend. The lights of the helicopter I watched hovering over town in the wee small hours was searching for them, and I still bitterly regret not saying hello to him outside McGarrigles a little over 24hrs before that news came through.

The only part of the next few days that stand out are their pictures on the fronts of all the papers as I stopped into PickNChoose - two gorgeous grins. How alike he and Sean were, despite the different hair-styles. How much he'd have hated the fact that they used the Young Scientist photo of him, taken when he was in secondary school. An array of papers, but the same pictures repeated on all. "Christmas Eve Tragedy"... Trying to ignore them as the queue moved forward, and the kindness of the lady behind the counter who instantly understood my choked-up request for 10 Silk Cut Purple and didn’t ID me, as I looked up from their faces to hers, trying not to cry.

A bitterly cold sleety evening outside a place lit up by brake lights and indicators as parents dropped their kids off. Rows of dark ripped jeans covering the tips of converse trainers and doc marten boots, which provided no grip on the snow-packed icey surface of the carpark. Black woolly hats and coat collars turned up against the sleet and snow.

Cigarette smoke wafting through the air as you wait in a queue outside, unsure of what to do or where to go. Nobody thinks to explain funeral home protocol to a 15 year old, so you talk and cry your way into a hot stuffy room with friends. Glasses fog up the second you reach the inner room, and you see people who must be their family sit ashen-faced as they shake hand after hand and occasionally lean into a hug. Numb faces all around the room as the newcomers make their way towards the two coffins in the corner. At a first glance, they could be twins, both dark haired boys with short curly hair, and you don't know which of them would laugh at you more for saying they almost looked the same age.

Shaking hands with a woman who must be their mother, the same frame around the eyes, and you want to just pause time for a while and tell her how cool you thought her youngest son was; how independent, how grown up, how gorgeous, how funny, how wonderfully kind and hilariously witty he was. How he tried to bring you and your ex-boyfriend back together by essentially locking you both in a room until you finally talked to one another after several months of no communication.

How his flat became your go to place for a gang of you during school lunchbreaks, and yet you never once felt like you were intruding on him, no matter what he had going on. How his bleach blondey short curly hair seemed to be immovable and yet totally flexible at the same time. How talented he was (did he really make that amazing looking electric guitar that hung on his apartment wall, or was he just messing...?!) how vast his CD collection was.

How you couldn't stop laughing as he and Cormac danced to the rather rude "Kyle's Mom" song from the SouthPark album. How he just exuded a kindness of soul that you, as a 15 year old appreciated so much in the short time you knew him. (was it a year, was it two?) How he just always seemed to be a part of your life as a teenager, but you can't remember when exactly your paths crossed for the first time..he was just always....there.

And how you'd love to meet him now for a pint and tell him of how his leaving life so early changed you, changed your friends. You'd love to tell him that it impacted in ways he probably never imagined it could. How it made every one of us appreciate each other so much during those years when we needed it most, how it made us look out for each other that little bit more; and how many of us carried that on in to our adult years...we're almost a generation away from him; and he is now dead longer than he was alive.

It made us understand that brutal lesson, so exposed in the anger that grief often brings, that life really is far too fucking short. It taught us that we should take the time to make the memories, the silly ones and the fun ones, and the inbetween plain ones…..because sometimes just sitting around on a couch talking about nothing and everything in between is a wonderful memory in itself.


He and Sean taught us that Death visits everyone, taking no heed of ages, nor the time of year or the devastation a bereavement will cause, and so, the only way you can fight Death, as best you can, is to just enjoy your life while you have it. Be kind, be silly, be an open soul and leave a legacy of fun-filled and love-filled memories that make those who knew you smile so many years after you have left. To quote from Terry Pratchett, "Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?'

Cronan and Sean's names are still spoken, and those memories, that legacy of love, and fun, lives on in all who knew them.