After their son died, Martina and Denis Goggin agreed to donate his organs. Now they're setting up a website to help promote organ donation
Martina and Denis Goggin never willingly sought the limelight. When we meet in a hotel on the Clare/Galway border, it's not a comfortable experience, and their grief is all too immediate.
This is their first public interview since their only child, Éamonn, a sound engineer, was killed in a car crash in 2006. Aged just 26, his family followed his wishes in donating his organs before he died, a difficult decision at a hugely trying time.
That singular act has led both parents on an unlikely journey, and in the coming weeks, they hope to raise awareness for organ donations, by launching a website and releasing a version of the Waterboys' song, Strange Boat.
The song holds particular poignancy for the family. A few months prior to Éamonn's death, he had suggested to singer and friend Eleanor Shanley that she should record the song. Shanley never got around to it; the first time she sang the song was at Éamonn's funeral.
A year after his death, she went into the studio to record the version to be released next month. Strange Boat is also the title given to a website the Goggins have set up to present a more personal side of organ donation, both for the donors and the recipients.
It also allows families who have lost loved ones to tell their stories and share common experience. The project is supported by Hibernian Insurance with backing from the National Organ Procurement Service at Beaumont Hospital, and also the Irish Kidney Association.
"I suppose the background to all this is the fact that our son was in a car accident in July 2006," Martina says, "He was a passenger in a car, where no one else was injured and he suffered a head injury and lay on life support for five days.
"At that stage, someone in the hospital approached us and asked softly would we consider organ donation. That conversation wasn't a problem for us as I always carry an organ donor card and Éamonn and I had discussed it. Therefore we knew his wishes.
"Having said that, it's still a devastating time of course, because on the one hand they are telling you that your loved one will not pull through, and then they are asking you to consider this other life-giving act.
"Four lives are now being saved because Éamonn's organs were donated. It was also probably the thing that gave us the most light in a time of great darkness."
Both agree that they took solace from the act of donation, and feel it helped them face an otherwise bleak future.
"It was a huge consolation to think that Éamonn's last act was going to be reflective of the way he lived his life," says Denis. "There was a giving dimension to that last act and that was of tremendous consolation. We almost felt there was a continuation of Eamonn's life by virtue of the fact that his heart was sustaining life in someone else.
"That is the great comfort of donation, I think."
The launch of the project will coincide with Organ Donor Awareness Week, which runs until April 5th.
Although the Republic has one of the highest rates of organ donation per capita in the world (a total of 3,500 transplants have taken place here), there are currently in the region of 600 patients awaiting transplant, with heart and lungs the most difficult to source.
There are three transplant centres in the State - St Vincent's, the Mater and Beaumont, and while the Goggins are quick to praise the work of organ donor co-ordinators, they feel there is a need for a more co-ordinated approach to organ donation in this country.
"The process here is not very organised or methodical," says Denis, "it's done in a very soft, human way. In our case, a surgeon introduced the subject and there was this loveliness to his approach.
"Having said that, if you look to Spain, where they have the highest organ donation rate in the world, they have a system of approach in place in every hospital, with specific people trained to be organ co-ordinators in each facility.
"Here in Ireland, it's done on more of an ad-hoc basis, and the majority of our co-ordinators are based in the three specialist hospitals. In our case, if the staff hadn't mentioned it, then it might never have happened, so I think perhaps that's something we need to examine."
While organ donation information is available in Ireland, Denis and Martina struck upon the idea of a website to present a more personal approach to the subject.
"There are several factual websites in operation," says Denis, "but we wanted to set one up to give a bit of colour to the subject. We wanted it to be determined by both a compassionate and inspirational approach."
Martina agrees, and says the site also intends to offer a means of communication between donor families, which doesn't exist at present.
"We felt we have a connection with all these people and no way of communicating with them. I never met anybody who had an involvement before we became a donor family, so I think we felt there was a need to alter that," says Martina.
The two main objectives of the Strange Boat project is to give personal comfort and support to any element of the organ donor movement that needs it. Alongside this, Martina and Denis hope to give voice to that community and articulate their needs.
The project goes live on April 4th, when the single and website will both be released. Also on the single, will be a track called Sound man Éamonn, written by Charlie Lennon as a tribute to Éamonn Goggin. Other contributors include Mike Scott, Sharon Shannon, Alec Finn, Eddi Reader, Paul O'Driscoll and of course, Eleanor Shanley.
For further information see www.strangeboat.org
