The Town Stands Still For Laura

Church Lane…

ll roads leading to St Patrick’s Church this afternoon were overflowing with parked cars, some reversed into vacant driveways, others finding a gap between a dare and a ticket…

Such sights act as a signal, a flare, to the strange, and strained, times Greystones has been living through over the past month…

Just as with Eric Archer‘s funeral on Saturday, and Matthew Kemp‘s on June 3rd, it felt as though the entire town had come out to say goodbye to Laura Dempsey this afternoon.

This bright, fun-loving 15-year-old girl was taken away from us mid-sentence, mid-laugh, still celebrating the end of her Junior Cert exams, and enjoying the first night of a family holiday in sunny Crete. And then, suddenly…

This afternoon, Laura’s parents, John and Nicky, and her sisters, Siofra and Caoimhe, were joined by family and friends from far and wide at St Patrick’s Church, but it was, understandably, the local kids who grew up with this outgoing and energetic teenager that made up the bulk of the crowd. Friends from Temple Carrig School, from the Greystones Sailing Club, from Laura’s hockey team, from her lifesavers club…

Amidst the hymns, the readings (by Karl Smith and Eoin Scarlett), the appreciation (by John and Dee Scarlett Smith), the photographs of Laura‘s life (as Ed Sheeran’s Photograph played overhead), and the songs sung by Emma Cafferkey (Dylan’s Forever Young and Sarah McLachlan’s Angel), it was the E.E. Cummings poem maggie and milly and molly and may, read by Siofra and Caoimhe, that, we reckon, best summed up the love in the room…

Maggie and Milly and Molly and May
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and Maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

Milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and Molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Laura’s family have asked that any donations be made to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust. You can do so here.