MOURNERS AT THE funeral of a mother who died in a murder-suicide with her seven-year-old son were urged to seek help if they find themselves in a “dark or destructive place”.
Sinead Higgins (37) was found dead with her son Oisín at their home in Ruislip, London last month following an apparent murder-suicide. Oisín was laid to rest in Co Wicklow on 23 December.
Higgins’s funeral took place in Aughagower Church near Westport this afternoon – some 300km from her young son. She was buried afterwards at Aughagower Cemetery.
Fr Charlie McDonnell told the congregation that there was always support for those in distress, and that nobody should find themselves in the situation that had been visited upon the community.
“Many of us find ourselves in dark places,” he said. “Sometimes people find themselves in destructive places. Sometimes staying in those places and being unable to reach out to the hand that is very often there – of friendship, of compassion, of love – leads us to even darker places. We know that today.
We need to care for ourselves and for each other. We need to learn that this is not a place to be. This is not a situation any of us should find ourselves in. In our communities, there is so much support if anyone finds themselves in that place.
Addressing Ms Higgins’s mother Mary, he said that he couldn’t begin to imagine the awfulness of the place that she was in. Sinead was the second of her 10 children to have died, having lost her son Cathal in a motorbike accident in 2004.
“It is not the first time that you have sat in this Church and laid a child to rest,” he said. “Like Jesus on the cross, you’re very entitled to those words: ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’”
No member of the Higgins family spoke at the funeral. Fr McDonnell stated that he did not know Sinead but had learned one thing about her over the past few weeks: “She was loved,” he said.
Ms Higgins, a qualified nurse and legal adviser, is believed to have killed her son before taking her own life on 13 December. Their bodies were discovered the next day after her former partner, Shane O’Driscoll, raised the alarm when Oisín failed to attend school.
The deaths are the subject of a murder-suicide investigation by police in England. An inquest opened at West London Coroners Court before Christmas and adjourned to allow for toxicology reports. No date has been set for a further hearing.
Ms Higgins was one of 10 children. She was predeceased by her 19-year-old brother, Cathal, who died in a road accident in 2004. The family was struck by tragedy again in 2014 when her father Tom passed away aged 68 just weeks after becoming ill.
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