Omagh

Gerry Anderson

Having lived in Omagh for short periods over the years, I developed a sense of the people who lived there. They were and are articulate, convivial and musical people. And, in a sense, people well accustomed to being passed over and ignored by governments that had consistently failed them. Consequently, no place less deserved the tragedy that befell them.

I was in Omagh a few days after this terrible event when thousands gathered to hear, among others, Juliet Turner bravely communicate with the people through music. It summed up for me the spirit of the people. No other town in Ireland would have permitted a young girl to stand up and sing what amounted to a modern/pop song on such a day.

Shoppers were killed at random but it is no accident that many of their relatives were so capable of graphically articulating their feelings and had the spirit to fight doggedly through the years to ensure that those who planned and planted the bomb would pay for their crimes.

These were ordinary people who rose above themselves. This is the ultimate legacy of Omagh; that ordinary people couldn't and wouldn't rest until justice was seen to be done.

Eddie McCaffrey

When asked how they should be portrayed in a 'promotional' video, a year after the Omagh bomb, the people of Omagh overwhelming told me "tell the world we are ordinary, normal people". Remaining true to their own core belief, after all that they have been through over the last 5 or 6 years, is testimony to the 'extra-ordinary' qualities of the people of Omagh.

Adrian Dunbar

I got into a cab in Finsbury Park in London. The taxi driver, who was Irish and knew me, said: "that's terrible what's after happening in Omagh."

"What?"

"Massive explosion. They're saying a lot of people dead."

I couldn't wait for him to get me home. I got quickly to the phone. Two of my sisters, Roisín and Christina, and their families lived in Omagh.

"They are all okay," said my mother. "And so are Liam and John."

I didn't know it but my two brothers were also working in the town that day.

Two weeks later, my wife Anna and I visited Omagh. The shock in the town was still palpable. I looked into the river Strule and remembered as a boy how excited I was when told of the Swan mussels that lived there, and because the Strule was sandy, they sometimes contain pearls. I remember buying my first guitar, a Fender Jazz Bass, from Aidan McGuigan and the fun I had with Frank Chisholm and Ray Moore and Paddy Owens, on the road with Frank's Elvis show.

Omagh was west of the Bann, overlooked, high unemployment, screwed by the planners, and now this. I said a prayer for the dead and for the living. A couple of months later I was at a party in Omagh. Without warning, a girl broke down in tears. No one rushed to her, a couple of her friends dealt with her calmly. "She was in the bomb" I heard someone saying and that was all.

Like those scary adults of my childhood who had never recovered from the horror of the First World War, old men who would shout and cower in the street, I could see that the people of Omagh would live every day with this tragedy.

May love find them wherever they are.

Father Kevin Mullan

I know that part of my soul has been burned and left scarred by the deaths and maimings of August 15 1998 and by my shared experiences with the injured and with the relatives of the dead over the following days. It is where I have cried and ached and at times I don't know that I have any tears left to moisten the embers.

Other parts of my soul try to cover it over, but I know that small part of myself has died already; a small part of myself wants to go and be with the dead or to hobble through life with those damaged in mind or body.

I haven't yet found a way of contributing to life that doesn't at some stage want to ground itself in tribute to the victims and in solidarity with them and theirs. I allow myself to live only on condition that I remember.

I am inclined to impose this condition on others, and find myself being critical, judgemental, angry where I perceive them to have forgotten or not made life and memory an obvious organic whole. On more than one occasion I have been ashamed of myself for my own forgetfulness and consequent insensitivity.

Being frequently drawn back to the base line of grief and pity, and always humbled in the process I am aware of what I can only call births of beautiful resurrected life in so many of the people of this story. How many those many are I cannot say, for I am constantly meeting people who were affected on that August day whom I never knew about before. I must be careful to honour the sacred space of each individual by keeping a respectful distance and not intrude with presumption or a betraying revelation as the bombers and plotters did with their lethal weapon. But I have seen hearts that are trying to grant humanity and individuality and the possibility of redemption, even if in ever so small a degree, to what the legacy of history and religion and politics has made stereotypes of dark, conniving opposition and enmity, because a grief has been shared.

We have all seen the patient dedicated hope-giving work of medicine and therapy and the translation of that hope into belief as the maimed and injured and damaged allowed themselves to have a future and even be a help to victims of other times and places.

The lonely, persistent search for answers and for the acceptance of responsibility by those who are guilty, and by those who have failed in their duties at various levels, cuts across the complacency and defeatism of many, and the political expediency of others, to join the voices of victims across the world for an era of truth, honour, peace and justice. The silent suffering of those victims and relatives who just wish to be left alone to cope themselves humbles all of us and modifies the absolutism of our responses. We need to learn sensitivity towards the diversity of bearing the unity of pain.

Nearly six years on from Omagh's massive tragedy, there are relationships formed out of it, both within the community and with the outside world, that have not fractured. There is the icon of a reconciling community that may have dimmed but that has not blackened over. There is a mirror of justice and honour that questions our integrity and from which we cannot hide. But watching us from the horizon are the virtues of mercy and forgiveness: they would truly be births of resurrected life.

Robert Herron

I was not on the street when the bomb exploded in Omagh town centre, I did not lose a member of my family, I received no physical injuries, and I do not think I am suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But with everyone who lives in Omagh I have been 'wounded' by this bomb. At times even to think about the impact of the bombing takes me back in my emotions to a place I would rather not visit.

As we have shared our experiences and listened to one another's accounts I have discovered that each member of this community has a unique experience of the tragedy. It is nearly six years after the incident and I continue to hear personal stories that I have not heard before. Sometimes they are told by people who think that their experience was too unimportant to share with someone else.

I am painfully aware of the fact that I live in a community that is still responding to the effects of the bomb. We are all responding to our experiences in different ways.

There are four important questions to which we have not found satisfactory answers.

Even among those who have suffered most as a result of the Omagh bombing there are people who have chosen to see their story of the tragedy more and more as part of their personal history. These people are not betraying the memory of loved ones, nor are they against the investigative and legal processes, but they are simply hoping to find some measure of happiness in what remains of their life and the lives of their families. Those who have chosen this way of dealing with their circumstances have demonstrated tremendous courage and an unusual measure of grace. It could be said that they are living in a state of denial of what has taken place. My experience of such people is that they know only too well what has happened to them.

There are other people, bereaved, injured and traumatised, who have chosen other ways. Some seek justice, retribution, or revenge; some look for meaning or answers; some want understanding or just acknowledgement. Tragically there are people who are so caught up in private grief or suffering and pain that they find themselves unable to begin to come to terms with what has happened and have little desire for engagement with anyone.

Contained within and around Omagh is found the wide range of responses that reflect the wider Northern Ireland community as it tries to deal with the legacy of the 'Troubles'. It has become clear that the consequences of the tragedy of the Omagh bombing will be part of the life in Omagh for at least a generation and probably much longer.

My hope is that as a community and as individuals we can find helpful and creative ways of appropriately remembering and dealing with the tragedy and its consequences, whilst at the same time rediscovering the joy of life.