Brendan Hoban: Ashling’s inexplicable death left us stunned                   

Western People  5.12.2023

Despite sharing the most common surname in Ireland (and a popular girls’ first name), Ashling Murphy’s profile now seems indelibly etched on the public consciousness. Her short life and her death, gruesome and inexplicable, has stunned the people of Ireland. It seems as if the very ordinariness of Ashling’s time and space in the world has disturbed, frightened and captivated the attention of the people, (especially, the parents), of Ireland. 

There’s no need to explain who she is. Probably because we all know Ashling Murphys. Because in such a short time Ashling Murphy has become almost an adopted member of every family in Ireland.

Probably, even more so, because there’s a young woman like Ashling in every extended family in Ireland. So she is now a representative figure whose death and especially its grotesque and brutal manner has overnight come to stalk the fears and nightmares of living parents. 

The most monstrous and spine-chilling of family fears set against the very ordinariness of the life Ashling lived seem to have brought its frightening possibility home to almost every parent and kitchen in Ireland.

Picture it. An athlete going for a run after her day’s work. A sportswoman intent on progressing her physical fitness. A teacher beloved of her young charges. A young woman in love beginning to dream of a future of making real the outlines of everyone’s, everyday dream of living and loving forever and a day. 

Going for a run in the idyllic circumstances of the Canal beat near Tullamore had become a natural, normal, everyday extension of the life Ashling was so familiar with. What could possibly go wrong with that? The odds of a disastrous sequel to her usual run along the canal seemed millions to one.

There are hundreds of Ashling Murphys in Ireland.

Going to primary school overwhelmed by that inevitably awkward school-bag on their backs, caught between an excitement of the first day in school and the lingering fear that the parent who never let them out of their sights before this may not return to bring them home. 

Going to secondary school and indulging that grown-up sense of a grown-up place in the world with multiple subjects, teachers and classrooms. And finding after six years that they had somehow transformed chrysalis-like into adults.

And then on to college, now the semi-official birth-right of the Irish young, and the opening up of a wider world where they continue life’s journey of presumption  and progress until graduation beckons and possibilities are measured, tested and decided. And until in time the inevitable picture of a happy newly-fledged graduate with proud parents graces the sitting room at home.

Sometimes then a gap-year to Australia to ‘find themselves’, to measure the weight of their progress against the possibilities ahead, savouring relationships that help them assess what’s real and what isn’t, what’s passing like ships in the night and what has the making of something more permanent.

Countless families in Ireland have been there and done that (or are in the midst of doing it) and the dreadful experience of Ashling Murphy makes the blood in their veins run cold. Which is why they turned out in their thousands to mourn Ashling  – as if they understood as never before an experience that passed their children by or they hoped would still pass them by. It was as if, in embracing Ashling’s memory and supporting her parents and siblings, they were in deferred gratitude-mode for the might-have-beens that bypassed their own Ashlings or prayed that such a dispensation would not afflict their Ashlings still at risk.

Parents worry. It’s what they do. It goes with the territory. And every teenager headed for college or the bright lights of far and near can list the parental guidelines – even sometimes put them to music! Don’t over-drink! And, if you do, don’t let your drink be spiked! Don’t walk home in the dark! And if you do, don’t walk home alone! Don’t bring any shame on our home! And if you are tempted, well, you know what to do!

And children, of all ages, tend to reserve the right to resist the proffered advice – even though when they themselves become parents they end up repeating to their own children – almost verbatim  – the litany of parental advice still ringing in their ears on that weekend bus back to college.

Parents will always see their children (of all ages) as, well, children always. We never grow up in our parents’ eyes. And children, even when as adults they endlessly admonish their own children, can somehow almost reserve the right to ignore their parents. As Ashling Murphy did in rejecting her mother’s plea of not going for a run on that fateful day. And there, but for the grace of God, go so many others.

Family is like that. Its limitations frustrate and exasperate us. Parents irritate us, until one day we realise (as if in a momentary intuition) the scale of their love and care becomes impossible to quantify. And, if we are honest enough, our awareness of the wisdom of their unsolicited advice.

May Ashling Murphy rest in peace and may her parents, siblings and all who loved her, find solace in her  absence.

My new book, Holding Out for a Hero- the Long Wait for Pope Francis, is now available at €18 in the usual outlets and from https://www.mayobooks.ie/Holding-Out-for-a-Hero-9780992902353?search=Brendan Hoban