On a grey morning, the people of Creeslough came together.
Under the leaden sky, the black clothes of the mourners stood out against the bright white of the chapel. It was as if grief had drained all the colour from the village and the only spark of light left was the 10 red candles still burning on the altar of St Michael’s Church in memory of the men, women and children killed in the explosion at the village’s Applegreen service station on Friday.
On Tuesday, they came to bury the first of the victims, Jessica Gallagher, a 24-year-old fashion graduate who had been visiting her boyfriend Conor McFadden in the apartment complex above the shop. She was the first to be recovered from the wreckage.
Jessica was, parish priest Fr John Joe Duffy told reporters before the funeral Mass, “beautiful, she radiated warmth, she was dynamic, she was just someone who had so much to live for and who was so full of life”.
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Slowly, the people of the village, the county, the country gathered, lining the roadside as they waited for the hearse which would bring Jessica to the beautiful church, modelled on Muckish mountain.
Jessica loved it so much, the priest said, that she had painted “moonlight scenes of Muckish behind us, which she could see from her family home” and which she put on Christmas cards.
Now her people waited in Muckish’s shadow as the dignitaries arrived.
President Michael D Higgins and Taoiseach Micheál Martin were represented by their aides-de-camp, and the Government by the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue; the North’s First Minister designate, Michelle O’Neill was present, as was her party colleague, Donegal TD Pearse Doherty, and the cathaoirleach of Donegal County Council, Liam Blaney.
In their uniforms, members of the emergency services filed in; the guards, the firemen, the paramedics who had been among the first on the scene on Friday, who had helped search for survivors and recovered the victims from the rubble.
As the crowds grew, the silence deepened. Since the tragedy many have said that there are “no words”; instead, there were gestures — an arm around a shoulder or a waist, a hug, a hand offering a tissue to wipe away tears.
First came the Garda escort, then the hearse; inside, a wicker coffin surrounded by flowers. The crowd blessed itself as it passed.
“Her parents. Oh god,” cried one man.
Jessica, Fr Duffy said in his homily, was a “wonderful gift” to her family and her boyfriend Conor and had been “loved so much”; she in turn “radiated a warmth” and left many “ripples of love” for them.
Everyone who knew Jessica, he said, “knew that radiant smile, that radiant smile that would light up a room with that infectious warmth”.
He told of a young woman who was a “superb swimmer”, a practical joker and a lover of animals, who was loved by them.
“Her cat would follow her to the schoolbus, disappear for the day and then reappear at the gate 10 minutes before the bus came back and she would carry the cat home wearing it as a scarf. The cat was there the last evening as well,” Fr Duffy said.
Jessica had “huge confidence” and was a hard worker; “strong” and “determined”, she was a firm believer in equality for women, loved to travel and had studied in Paris and Shanghai. She “could talk for Ireland” and “didn’t have a switch off button,” the priest added.
Her “real calling” was fashion; she used Donegal tweed in her designs, and a shirt she had been working on was among symbols of her life which were brought to the altar at the beginning of the Mass.
Yet for all she loved new places and new experiences, Fr Duffy said, the place she was proudest of was here family home — “her touchstone, her rock and her pillar”.
Just before Jessica’s remains were brought home for the final time, Fr Duffy said, her grieving father Anthony had told him he was “so very proud” of the community in which he lived and wanted to pass on the family’s gratitude.
“We are heartened this morning, in our sadness ... by that rallying of support from the very first moment of this terrible accident, that help that came to us from right across this island of Ireland” and from Northern Ireland, the priest said, “all working together hand in hand”.
He described how the families of the victims had supported each other in the days since the explosion: “Other families have been with you that have lost a loved one, and those who have a loved one in hospital at this time.”
They include Jessica’s boyfriend Conor, who remains in a critical condition in the burns unit of St James’s Hospital in Dublin.
As Jessica’s coffin was carried out at the conclusion of the Mass, Miley Cyrus’s The Climb — “Keep on moving, keep climbing, keep the faith” — echoed around the church.
Outside, rain had begun falling softly; there was none of the chatter that so often accompanies the end of a funeral service, only silence punctuated by tears.
“You think it’s a nightmare and you’ll wake up from it,” said one mourner, under his breath.
Instead, the reality was that, in another hour or so, there would be another funeral, that of Martin McGill, which took place on Tuesday afternoon. The funerals of James O’Flaherty, Catherine O’Donnell and James Monaghan will take place on Wednesday, those of Martina Martin and Leona Harper on Thursday.
In his homily, Fr Duffy tried to articulate the “pain that has been felt in our parish and in our neighbouring parishes ... I wish I as a priest could explain more fully in a way that words could explain it, but we do not have the words to explain it, for words would make no sense or couldn’t give it sense”.
Solace, he said, would be found in each other.
“I am part of you, part of this community, and it is together that we will make the journey and travel that journey going forward, supporting each other as so many people have been doing,” he added. “Our hearts are heavy, but our spirits are strong.”
