By Cate McCurry, PA
The funeral of a woman whose husband and two sons died in a suspected murder-suicide shooting at their Co Cork home last year has taken place.
Anne O’Sullivan (61) was praised for her courage in how she fought her battle with an illness and dealt with the tragic death of her family.
She died on Wednesday following a serious health condition.
Her funeral took place at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Kanturk on Friday, the same church where the funeral mass was held for her son Mark (26) in October.
Her husband, Tadg (59), and son Diarmuid (23) died at their family home at Assolas near Kanturk over what is understood to be a tragedy caused by a dispute over an inheritance.
Mourners on Friday heard how “darkness came into Anne’s life” when she lost her family in very sad and tragic circumstances, and when she lost her battle with the illness she had fought “so courageously”.
Father Toby Bluitt told the requiem mass that Mrs O’Sullivan suffered tragic loss.
“I know that we are conscious of the fact that Anne’s untimely passing was not the only tragedy in her life,” he said.
“We here in our community are well aware of the recent painful and tragic loss that Anne suffered – a tragedy that affected us all.
“I suppose in an ideal world we would like to think of ourselves as living long and happy lives with friends and family to support us to the end.
“It would seem like a great gift from life to be thus blessed, to go to our forebears fulfilled and content that our work was done, that we had played our part in life’s great rotation and that our own cycle had come to an end. We had no more to do.
Anne O’Sullivan at the funeral of her son Mark O’Sullivan. Photo: Andy Gibson/PA
“Like I said, in an ideal world. We don’t live in an ideal world, that’s the problem.
“Illness can come and challenge us and defeat us.
“Tragedy, and serious tragedy, can come and haunt us and change our lives irreparably.
“The clouds that can, and do, settle over our lives sometimes rob us of fulfilment and peace, of an ordered and easy existence.
“They bring a darkness into our lives that we feel cannot be shaken. We feel helpless and, even perhaps, afraid.
“Darkness came into Anne’s life when she lost her family in very sad and tragic circumstances, and when she lost her battle with the illness she had fought so courageously.
“All of which brings us face-to-face with the mystery of life: of its meaning, of the sense of it, and why, sometimes, life troubles us and troubles us deeply. We can find ourselves in a dark place. We can be troubled.
“Yet, in the face of all darkness, even that of death itself, Christians never lose hope. We are people of hope even when trouble comes our way.
“The fact is that when someone dies there is this great sense of emptiness, this enormous sense of loss.
“And we have an added sadness, I think, that for Anne, for one family, life didn’t work out the way it might have. So, that we are in fact troubled, we are at a loss.
“A nurse by profession, Anne brought an attitude of care and concern towards those who were entrusted to her.”
