RIP Michaela McAreavey

[Up The Middle]

Would like to pass on my sincere condolences to both families. RIP Michaela.

[ONeill]

BY DECLAN BOGUE
d.bogue@gaeliclife.com

IT was Con Houlihan who once made the observation that the atmosphere in a newsroom nowadays is comparable to a suburban pharmacy. It's a valid observation: the Internet has become the water-cooler of our times, and journalists no longer have to pump each other for information, it's all in the screen before them. It takes a remarkable event to electrify workers numbed by stale air and strip lighting.

This week however has been utterly different from any other. When news broke of the death of Michaela McAreavey on Monday, the shock paralysed all. As the week progressed, the horror of the details have appalled and sickened everyone.
In the tributes that have followed, two qualities are constantly namechecked - beauty and innocence. That her life met with such a disturbing and evil end is pitiful. The senselessness of everything has left the entire GAA community able to do very little except contemplate the horrific nature of this murder, and the fate of John McAreavey, upon discovering his wife and the weight he will carry through the rest of his life.

Most of us are aware of what it is like to lose someone in an untimely, unexpected and tragic death. But thankfully today, very few of us have to ever face up to thoughts of murder. As Mickey Harte said himself earlier, "A lot of people have had this experience before. We have tried to emphasise with them. But you can't get the feeling unless you have been there. And God save anybody having to go to this place."

In the closing scenes of 1996 movie, 'A Time To Kill', Matthew McConaughey's character Jake Brigance - in his role as Prosecuting Attourney - describes for the benefit of the jury the picture of a young black girl at her murder scene, which was motivated by race hate.
Then he asks the all-white jury to imagine her as white. It shunts them out of their comfort zone and brings their thoughts deeper into the scenario.

Anyone who has read about the scene in Mauritius will have had an epiphany of  somebody close to them in this horrific scenario - a daughter, a wife, a girlfriend. Only this is not the movies, this is real, it's unvarnished and it leaves you wondering at the natural order of the world, its' lack of fairness and the urges of greed.
If you give goodwill to humanity, the theory is that it will come back to you ten-fold. If so, the Harte family are due their share.

Michaela brought something different to the GAA. When Mickey was deliberating whether or not to leave his post as minor team manager in 1997, it was his daughter that outlined their goals for the next few years. Win the minors, win the Under 21s, win the seniors. Possibly with Father G. They did it all. Together.

In the last century, women played their role within the Association, but it was largely in the background, in a catering capacity, or consigned to the sidelines playing camogie, whioch has always been a minority sport. Michaela was visible, young and buzzing with energy. Her peers and younger saw that it was perfectly normal to have an interest in GAA and immerse yourself in the Irish culture. She dragged the notion of women in the GAA into the 21st century.

In doing so, she also set the example of being a true individual. A colleague this week was discussing Sean Cavanagh's tribute to her, and wondered what other young woman in University would be spending their time baking buns? And when you think about it, it has to be someone who knew their own mind and never even detected peer pressure on their radar.

Her relationship with her father was one such example. Some people felt uncomfortable with it, that she would want to share so publicly his hours of triumph. They couldn't have been aware of the goals she set for him, or how astonishingly he was in reaching them. Nor would they be aware that the day after Tyrone lost their replay to Down in the 2008 Ulster Championship, she presented him with a Father's Day card with a message inside, 'no matter what happens, you're the man.'

Her role in 2003 was so profound, you wonder if Tyrone followers ever consider how deep her influence was. It was Michaela, along with brother Mattie, who compiled the team CDs that they listened to on the way to matches, listening out for the words that inspired them. She also took it upon herself to present the players with miraculous medals, blessed by a local priest, and woven through with red and white thread the day before the All-Ireland final.

It might have been Adrian Logan who told Mickey Harte of the great pride he and his late brother had of belting out Amhrán na bhFiann before Tyrone games, and suggested that the players might learn the anthem themselves, but it was Michaela who printed out the words in phonetic English for the non-gaeilgeoirs of the squad. The vision of a team from the north belting out the Anthem louder than their southern opponents was an invaluable psychological edge.

Above all, her positivity and radiance helped grease the wheels of the entire operation with Tyrone. Every squad needs a good-vibes man, for example the Irish rugby team have been bouncing off the bonhomie of Paddy 'Rala' O'Reilly, their kitman for the past fifteen years. Tyrone had a good-vibes girl.

While Mickey Harte searched the earth for inspiration and found it in the likes of Bart McEnroe and George Zalucki, he also had the strength of character to recognise the talents of the people in his own living room. And that relationship is captured in the very last couple of paragraphs of 'Kicking Down Heaven's Door', Mickey's diary of the 2003 season with Kieran Shannon, when he says:
'Paddy [Tally] has talked about having this ceremonial fire to get rid of so many of the motivational tools and techniques we used this year. He has new plans. I have new plans. And you know what, Michaela has a new one too...'

We don't do public emotion in Ireland, but that's also changing. Examples like the love between Mickey Harte and his daughter, and the ease they had in each other's company, give us something to aspire towards.
Should Tyrone's game against Fermanagh go ahead this weekend, the likelihood is that Brewster Park will expect heaving crowds. In their own way, people will not be paying their respects exactly, but with everything in limbo they need a forum to congregate and talk through this. And that's nothing to be ashamed of.

[RedandGreenSniper]

Great piece by Bogue there. Although I wonder about quoting Matthew McConaughey in any serious piece!

[Any craic]

This tribute has been shared around on Facebook more than 300 times but not in any papers so I thought I'd share it here as well.
http://www.jeromequinnmedia.com/-blog/Mickey--Michaela_31

[blanketattack]

What was Sean Kavanagh's tribute that they mention?

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

A few words of his appeared in the press in the immediate aftermath, about how much Michaela'd been a part of the team, and about how he often saw her on her way to work in the morning, and he on the way to his.

[venter]

Very shocking and sad! RIP Michaela.

[Tatler Jack]

My sympathies to both families. A truly shocking tragedy for any family to have to deal with. My thoughts and prayers are with them.

[derrymarty]

I would just like to stress my sincere condolences to both families also. RIP Michaela

I joined the forum to try and get into GAA wee bit more but I would also like to ask at this point, does the members think it would be wrong of me to visit St Malachys to pay my respects as both myself and my wife wanted to attend the wake but were unable to due to work commitments, I feel as if I knew Michaela, strange as it may sound and since her death I cannot stop thinking about her, her father and also John, I have shed a few tears watching the news reports and on Monday I just felt numb in work thinking about the funeral.

Do you think it would be wrong of me to do this or is it the right thing to do.

Thanks
Marty

[MR99]

I would just like to stress my sincere condolences to both families also. RIP Michaela

I joined the forum to try and get into GAA wee bit more but I would also like to ask at this point, does the members think it would be wrong of me to visit St Malachys to pay my respects as both myself and my wife wanted to attend the wake but were unable to due to work commitments, I feel as if I knew Michaela, strange as it may sound and since her death I cannot stop thinking about her, her father and also John, I have shed a few tears watching the news reports and on Monday I just felt numb in work thinking about the funeral.

Do you think it would be wrong of me to do this or is it the right thing to do.

Thanks
Marty

You wouldn't be wrong at all, I know plenty of people who have been to the grave already.  I'm sure the McAreavey and Harte families would appreciate every prayer that has been said for them whether it be at home, at the wake or at the graveside.

[IolarCoisCuain]

Brenda Power has a genuinely beautiful tribute to Michaela in the Sunday Times this morning. Said Michaela represented everything we thought we'd lost as a country in terms of values and beliefs. Very powerful piece.

I can't like here because of the Times paywall but anyone who sees the paper ought to read it.

[Minder]

Brenda Power has a genuinely beautiful tribute to Michaela in the Sunday Times this morning. Said Michaela represented everything we thought we'd lost as a country in terms of values and beliefs. Very powerful piece.

I can't like here because of the Times paywall but anyone who sees the paper ought to read it.

Here yis are........

Brenda Power: Michaela was the All-Ireland girl we all could love

Of the three most powerful institutions in this state's history — the church, Fianna Fail and GAA — only one now still commands respect



Faith, family, loyalty: as Michaela McAreavey was being carried to the chapel last Monday, she shared the headlines with the Fianna Fail heave. There was a time when the GAA, Fianna Fail and the Catholic church formed the three cornerstones of any rural Irish community. But however strong their lingering fidelity to the faith of their fathers, it's unlikely that many of the thousands of mourners at Michaela's funeral gave a thought to the death throes of Dev's party, and even less likely that they cared.

Faith, family and loyalty: these were the three cornerstones of Michaela's evidently luminous and delightful existence, and the words were inscribed on the missalette for her funeral mass on Monday, underneath a picture of the newlywed and her husband on their recent wedding day.

There are many reasons why her murder in a honeymoon hotel suite didn't just shock the country, but genuinely depressed and saddened people who had never met her. There was the sheer misfortune of the timing. A minute either way and she'd have missed the men who, police believe, went to her room to rifle her purse.

If the couple had spent a little longer over lunch, if the kitchen had been a little slower serving their meal, if the tea that required the biscuits had come just a moment later, the thieves would have been gone. A day or two afterwards, perhaps, she'd have counted the rupees in her purse, thought there should have been more, and put the shortfall down to an error with unfamiliar currency.

Judging by the profile of the suspects arrested, it seems the police reckon that the practice of sneaking into guests' bedrooms with the aid of an illicit key, and taking a small sum from a purse or pocket, may have been a common one. The theft of a purse would be noticed and reported, and any staff member involved would lose his coveted job, but pinching a few notes from a stuffed purse and leaving the scene undisturbed was a sustainable strategy.

If thieves entered the room and quickly grabbed the purse, though, they would have left by the time Michaela arrived. And she'd have thought that the loss of her spending money and jewellery was the worst thing that could have happened on her honeymoon. Out of such a near miss with normality a tragedy was made.

The proximity of one of life's happiest events, marriage, to its most distressing seemed almost deliberately cruel. The family's rare closeness, prominence and palpable decency and her dad's extraordinary eloquent expression of his heartache conspired to make Michaela McAreavey's murder a nationally unifying sadness.

But there was another reason why the whole country shared in genuine grief at the death of somebody else's child, sister and wife, and it's not a million miles from the unedifying antics unfolding elsewhere in the week of her funeral. Of the three most powerful institutions in this state's history — the church, Fianna Fail and GAA — only one still commands respect, and the Michaela McAreavey most of us only got to know after she died embodied everything about it that deserves that respect.

She represented everything about us that the convulsions of the past few years have failed to quench. She personified everything we feared we'd lost, and the irony was that we discovered it only after she was gone. Of all the pillars of Irish society, the GAA is the only one that remains unimpaired, and the Michaela McAreaveys of the country are its backbone.

Faith, family, loyalty. On All-Ireland Sunday mornings, the priests in my Kilkenny parish still pray for victory for the county team, and even club matches get a mention. The GAA is probably the only sporting organisation in the world which expects God to take sides. The players, from primary school to inter-county standard, give their time and talents freely for nothing more than the joy of the sport, the glory of the parish, the club and county.

There was a time when political loyalty was a shared household conviction — your parents' voting choices determined yours — but family allegiances are now splintered by cynicism and despair. But there's rarely much dissent about the GAA team a family supports, and family involvement is essential to the association's countrywide network. Fathers and older brothers coach the youngsters' teams, mothers and sisters wash jerseys.

Michaela McAreavey was a Celtic tiger cub, one of those relatively well-heeled teenagers who came of age just as the country began to grow prosperous. These are the twentysomethings, we've been told, who lack the resources to deal with the downturn, who've known nothing but instant gratification and enhanced expectations, whose moral compasses have been knocked out of kilter by affluence and the decline in traditional values.

The most persistent carp about the Rose of Tralee festival is that it purports to showcase the kind of Irish girl who doesn't exist any more: the wholesome, God-fearing, GAA-loving, devoted daughter and sister who is so modest and demure she needs a chaperone for a week away from home.

And yet, it turns out she exists after all. Michaela McAreavey, a former Ulster Rose, was a bright, popular, stylish and beautiful girl who lived a fulfilled and loving life according to old-fashioned values. She didn't smoke or drink or live with her boyfriend before they married. She loved her brothers, confided in her mum, adored her dad. She was madly, passionately engaged in the local GAA. A page from her diary as a 12-year-old, published in her father's recent memoir, spelled out in childish script her ambitions for the county team that year. And she had a deep faith.

She chose a career that allowed her to share both her beliefs and her love of Irish culture with the next generation. She married the kind of fellow any parents would be thrilled to see their daughter bring home, and she rounded off a perfect wedding with a trip to a paradise island. But for all the appeal of the exotic, she was content with the simplest pleasures: a half-finished packet of Rich Tea biscuits, still wrapped in the cling film that kept them fresh in a faraway hotel room, was carried to the altar at her funeral mass.

A diverting little spat has broken out between RTE and TV3 over Mad Men. RTE has secured the rights to broadcast the series, but is broadcasting it in a midnight slot, far too late for most viewers. TV3 complains that it would have run Mad Men much earlier if it had bought the series, and adds that this is another example of RTE using its clout — and the licence-fee revenue — to deny a commercial rival a popular show for which the national broadcaster seems not to have enough room in its schedule. TV3's claims might cut more ice, though, if it had actually bid for the series. RTE says that it was the only broadcaster to show an interest when it was for sale.

Speaking of Mad Men, TV3 bosses do have a point when they grumble that RTE is muscling in on Vincent Browne's territory by screening a late-night political discussion against his Tonight programme. So much for offering viewers a choice. Taking Browne on may prove unwise, however, because like Mad Men, he's got something of a late-night cult following himself.

brenda.power@sunday-times.ie

[ross matt]

Well done on spotting and posting that article by Brenda Power lads. Exceptional piece of writing.

[ziggysego]

By Ciaran Woods

c.woods@gaeliclife.com

THERE'S now a calm and still over Glencull and over the humble little church at Ballymacilroy, which just a few days ago became the focus of the world's attention.

The cameras and journalists have all departed, and what is left are the memories of a precious wife, daughter, sister and friend who no more will grace us with her beaming presence.

Over the course of last weekend, 7,000 people travelled to line up, shake hands and pass on their condolences to the family of Michaela McAreavey.

I was one of them.

I knew Michaela to speak to and have football banter with. I spent seven years at school in Omagh CBS with her older brother Michael. Mark too was at the school when I was earning my education, and his wife Sinead is from just up the road from where I grew up. Michaela's younger brother Matty moved in the same circle of friends as my own brother, and of course I've had many dealings with Mickey through work and through football. It was something I felt I needed to do, and I certainly wasn't alone.

Joining me on the same shuttle bus, early Saturday morning were Tommy Carr and Bernard Flynn, the pair having departed from Mullingar at 8.00am to come and pay their respects. Stepping off another bus at the same time was Frank McGuigan senior, while inside the marquee as we queued was another Ulster great in Tony Scullion. Mickey Moran was there with Leitrim officials, while Armagh captain Stevie McDonnell and his manager Paddy O'Rourke were also there.

It's just a snapshot of the sort of GAA greats who made their way from across the country to pass on their condolences. Every other half hour over the course of the weekend brought a similar picture but with different names.

They mixed with community leaders, Tyrone supporters and most importantly neighbours and friends as they all came to show their support for the family whose lives had been shattered by the tragic loss.

My lasting memory of Michaela will be from 2005. Myself and my now wife Shauna were in RTE on the eve of the All-Ireland final for the recording of 'Up for the Match,' where Michaela and Jack O'Connor's daughter were guests on the show. Afterwards we chatted and joked in the green room about the filming and about the match which was to follow the next day.

"Anyway, I must go on here... I have to tuck the boys in before they go to sleep!" she joked as she left. She knew that people questioned her involvement, perhaps through jealousy more than anything else, but she was bigger than any of that. She just laughed it off because Michaela, and her father, knew how important her presence was in the Tyrone setup.

Throughout Tyrone's successful All-Ireland runs in the first half of the decade, Shauna worked through the summer in a fashion outlet in Omagh. Prior to each Tyrone game, Michaela would come in search of something to wear for that weekend's game. There was only one essential criteria; It must be red and white. She didn't wear the team polo shirts or tracksuits, but the colours alone showed that she was very much part of the team.

Her positivity was contagious, and for those who were close to her there is now a huge void which will be impossible to fill because Michaela Harte was a one-off.

ditches of the roads around Glencull cut up by the traffic, the trampled grass around St Malachy's church where the mourners watched the funeral ceremony on screens, will through time heal themselves. For her family and friends, the process will be much slower.

The Polish poet Aleksandra Lachut put it well in a piece written more than two decades ago. She may have been writing about a very different situation, one of newly-discovered love, but it's one which could just as easily have been penned her words this week following a visit to that tight-knit little community deep in Tyrone.

I love you in silence
because in silence
I find no hurt

I love you in silence
because in silence
I find no doubt

I love you in silence
because in silence
I find no jealousy

I love you in silence
because in silence
I find no regrets


But most of all...


I love you in silence
because in silence
I know you are mine


As the Hartes and McAreaveys set out on the long and difficult road which is the rest of their lives, they do so safe in the knowledge that Michaela is still theirs.

And in those difficult moments of silence, they will feel her presence there to guide them through.
And all our thoughts and prayers will continue to be with them throughout their testing journey.

[Puckoon]

A pair of fine pieces there. Cheers lads.