This article is from page 10 of the 2006-03-21 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
LITTLE Alanna Fox stands up on her seat. The two-year-old looks around her and smiles. She receives a cuddle from a relative. But Alanna is oblivious as to why she is in St. Mary’s Church, Feakle.
Alanna is surrounded by hundreds of people, who have turned out to mourn her four-year-old brother, Karl. While her parents Noel and Linda, her sister Claire and brothers Gavin and Philip mourn ‘playful’ Karl at the front of the church, little Alanna is cared for by relatives at the back of the church.
Karl’s little white coffin is placed to the front of the altar where Fr Michael Hogan is saying Mass of the Angels, in memory of a little boy who was taken from his family all too suddenly.
Mourners gaze at Karl’s smiling pose in the photograph which stands on his coffin and hear Fr Hogan speaking about the tragedy.
Fr Hogan speaks of Karl’s shortlived, but happy life. The sleepy village of Feakle became his home when his parents moved, under the Rural Resettlement programme, from Tallaght four years ago.
“All of us, gathered here in Feakle this March morning, have been brought together by young Karl. We too feel the pain and the darkness of your pain and intense grief,” he tells the Fox family.
“We are present here to acknowledge, honour and celebrate the short, but vibrant life of a young, smiling, adventurous, curious, loving and lovely boy, Karl Fox. Karl was a light who brought life and light to his parents, family and school friends. We are grateful to him for his warm, affectionate ways, his winning, trusting and mischievous smile which made him popular in and out of the school,” adds the priest.
“Karl loved life, loved cars, loved his tractor, his bike and his hurley and, dare I say, Karl loved his soothers! . . . He would ask questions of teachers and, even if the answers were not satisfactory, would continue to ask another question, or two, or three. He brought light and life wherever he was,” he adds.
Karl’s siblings play their role in the special mass. His sister Claire reads a prayer while his brothers Gavin and Philip bring the bread and wine to the altar.
As the little coffin is brought from the church to the hearse for his final journey to Dublin for cremation, you could hear a pin drop. Shock is mingled with anguish as the people of Feakle try to come to grips with the death of an innocent child. Parents try to explain to their little ones that Karl will not be back in school again. Schoolfriends of the Fox children line the streets of the village in a guard of honour. Mothers, fathers and children hold back the tears, before a chapter in the life of a little boy who will forever remain in the hearts of the people of Feakle is closed.