At exactly 4.20am on October 15, 2014, Peter and Niamh Dolan’s lives changed forever. They were suddenly awakened by a knock on the door – unaware of the tragedy that would follow. That knock set in motion a nightmare that has haunted the family ever since.
Two police officers stood at their door with devastating news: There had been a collision on the Malone Road in Belfast, and a fatality.
It was believed that their 18-year-old son, Enda, had been killed.
Just three weeks and two days after moving to Belfast to begin studying Architecture at Queen’s University, their child was gone.
Peter vividly remembers the moment, saying, “It’s a point in time that I’ll never, ever forget.”
Niamh recalls her immediate reaction: “The first thing I asked was if Enda was dead. My heart still pounds thinking about it.”
“They didn’t answer me properly,” she continued.
“They said that there’d been a road collision, that there had been a fatality and they believed it was Enda. Those were their exact words. It was just horrific.”
Peter and Niamh decided to break the news to their older children. “Peter woke Dervla up to tell her that Enda had been killed,” Niamh recalled. “Her screaming… We then told Ben, who was just 12. It was awful.”
Within an hour, the Killyclogher couple were being driven in the back of a police car to Belfast to identify their son.
The last time the couple saw Enda alive was just a few days beforehand, when the family had gone out for Niamh’s birthday, before Enda travelled back to university in Belfast.
Niamh had sent him a message on night of the collision, but didn’t get a reply before she went to bed.
On the way to Belfast, she turned on her phone and saw Enda’s reply: ‘I’m in the Halls of Residence and not going out’.
For a moment, she hoped the police had made a mistake.
“I kept thinking they’d got it wrong, and that he was still in the Halls… until we saw him lying there in the Royal,” she said.
Enda had gone out for a Chinese with a friend. Walking on the Malone Road, he was struck by a van. The driver was later found to be over the limit on drink and drugs.
Enda was carried on the van’s roof for about 800 yards before the passenger got out and pushed him off. The Dolans learned from witnesses that the passenger then shouted ‘go, go, go’ before the van sped off. That moment has haunted Niamh ever since.
When Peter and Niamh returned from Belfast that Wednesday morning, their house was filled with family, friends, and neighbours.
By that stage, little Adam, their youngest, was still asleep. Peter had the agonising task of waking him with the devastating news.
Enda’s other younger brother, Andrew, aged eight, was told of the tragedy by Peter’s mother.
In the days, weeks, and months that followed, the family tried to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
A constant stream of visitors helped the grieving process.
Niamh says, “It’s a bit like counselling, and that was our counselling: People let us cry, nobody got embarrassed or tried to stop us from crying.”
Yet, life for their other children had to continue. Niamh recalls a turning point amidst the overwhelming grief:
“Peter and I were sitting at the kitchen table crying one morning, and Adam arrived. He was standing there looking at us, saying he needed breakfast. Peter jumped up, went over to the cupboard, and asked him what he wanted. Suddenly, we had to clock out of sitting there in the depths of grief.”
Soon after, their son Andrew came downstairs asking for clean clothes.
That moment made Niamh realise they had to get back to some form of normality for their children.
“We thought of how their lives had been shattered already and that they needed some sort of normality.
“We have four other children, they need their parents, and they need their food.”
Gradually, everyday life resumed.
Lunches were made, the children went back to school, and routine helped the process of healing.
“Slowly but surely, we got back into a new normal. That’s the best way to describe it. We were busy with the kids, and then the weekend would come, and it was back to it again,” Peter added.
During those early months, the Dolans found comfort in their community.
“The beauty of a local community is that the more you talk about it, the easier things seem to become,” Peter said. “We took it one day at a time.
“There were small steps. Going to the shop the first time was hard, but it got easier the second time.
“Things become normal again.”
For Peter and Niamh, supporting each other was vital.
“For some reason, if I was having a bad day, Peter would be alright,” Niamh recalled. “He might come home at lunchtime, and I would just dissolve. He’d put his arms around me, we’d have a good cry, and then pick ourselves up again.”
Niamh also said they grieved when the children were at school.
“The grieving was done when they were away,” she stated.
“Then, when Adam came home at 2pm, I switched back into everything being fine.”
They knew they couldn’t fall apart in front of the children, as that would send the wrong message.
“If we fell apart, what message would we be giving them? Was Enda more important than them? We couldn’t do that. They’re all as important as Enda was, and we just couldn’t pack everything in because Enda is gone,” Niamh said.
Next week marks the tenth anniversary of Enda’s death.
As they have done each year, Peter and Niamh will take a trip to Donegal to keep busy and avoid dwelling on the tragedy.
They will remember Enda, and the things which made him unique.
“He was your typical teenager, enjoying a good circle of friends. He loved playing a bit of football and running,” Peter recalls.
“Every evening, he’d come home from school, take out his guitar, and practise a song repeatedly. It was quite repetitive, and we heard this noise for a long time until he achieved what he was working on.
“Academically, he was bright and talented.
“You could talk to him – he was good at that.”
Niamh echoes this sentiment, remembering her son’s ability to connect with people of all ages.
“We saw that after he died; when we heard all the stories. Enda wasn’t someone who only spoke to people his own age,” she said.
“He was very good at art, achieving full marks in his A-levels.
“But his true passion was music.”
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