Their daughter Avril, and grand-daughter Maura

TEN years after losing his wife, daughter and grand-daughter in the Omagh bombing, an 83-year-old Omagh man has spoken for the first time about the horror of losing three generations of his family.


Mick Grimes's wife Mary (65), daughter Avril Monaghan (30), Avril's youngest daughter Maura (20 months) and Avril's unborn twins were killed by the Real IRA bomb in Omagh on 15 August 1998.


They had gone on a shopping trip to the town to celebrate Mary's 65th birthday. "We are away now, bye", were Mary's final words before leaving.


Mick, her husband for over 40 years, had bought her flowers for her birthday but she never came home to see them waiting on the kitchen table.


"For a while we clung to the hope that they had gone to some other town but as time passed that hope faded. No words could describe the feeling of helplessness that set in as we watched and waited for the car to return," he writes in a new book.


At the inquest into their deaths, the coroner said that he could not remember any family suffering such a loss in the history of the Troubles. Grimes never spoke about his horrific loss until last week.


Some years before her death Mary Grimes and her daughter Avril gave him a professionally bound book containing all the poems he had written for their local parish newsletter for a number of decades. Mick later dismissed his wife's suggestion that he should write a book about his life containing his poetry.


Almost 10 years since his wife was killed in the bomb, the retired dairy farmer from Beragh in Tyrone will launch his book Till We Meet Again, fulfilling his late wife's wish in Omagh tomorrow.


He explained, "On different occasions over the years, Mary sometimes hinted that I should try to write a book. But I knew in my heart that it was beyond my capability. Then in the years after the atrocity in 1998 the fact that I had made no effort to comply with my wife's request sometimes caused me concern. About 18 months ago I decided to make an attempt. No doubt some readers will frown at my endeavour but I like to think that somewhere beyond the great divide there is one who smiles."


A web of stories, humorous anecdotes, poems and observations, the book tracks Grimes life from "the hungry Thirties" through wartime Ireland and up to the present day. He gives a poignant account of the horrendous loss his family suffered after the 1998 atrocity and how he has coped with it since then.


Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, Grimes explained, "The book takes in from the day I went to school in 1932 through the story of my farming life as I lived it. Not many people have written about life in the 1940s when there was no oil and no electricity and everything was done by manpower. The book goes through all my farming life right up until the last chapter that ends with that day of the atrocity in 1998.


"About 75% of the book is about country life, before it finishes with that day in August 10 years ago. In the last 10 years I never got involved in any of the groups that were looking for justice. On 15 August there will be a commemoration in Omagh and I will have to attend but I am not looking forward to it."


Grimes is a humble man and spoke modestly about his poetry, "I call them poems but maybe the professionals would not call them that. There are over 25 poems in the book and I just like them to rhyme as well as they can."


'Till We Meet Again' is priced £10 and available at selected Easons bookshops


http://tillwemeetagain.synthasite.com


The Fifteenth Day of August


The fifteenth day of August,


Nineteen ninety eight,


Tears still sting my tired eyes


As I recall that date.


It was on that day of slaughter


Our daughter Avril lost her life,


Along with her three children


And Mary, my dear wife.


Many others were bereaved


As friends and neighbours died.


Strangers too, when told the news


Just bowed their head and cried.


Three children from Buncrana died,


And two from far off Spain.


The little twins awaiting birth,


Were all amongst the slain.


Some few were just teenagers,


Whose lives were still a dream.


And others were beloved folk,


Good citizens, the cream.


Hundreds more were injured,


Some suffered dreadful pain.


In many homes that evening


Tears fell down like rain.


That morning we had promise,


Of happy days ahead


But ere the sun had sank in the west,


Thirty one lay dead.


Dozens more lay injured,


Hundreds cried with pain,


I ask, who planned this cruel act,


Or what did they hope to gain.


Most who died were shoppers,


Doing what most folks do,


Buying some essentials,


Or gifts for me or you.


We had thirty years of the troubles,


More than three thousand died.


Many homes were torn apart,


Too many tears were cried


Let's hope we've learned a lesson


And at any time again,


We'll not be tempted to go to war


Or to start inflicting pain.


In this old world there is enough,


And always some to spare


If every man would be content


When he has got his share,


If we could ask all those who died


I'll bet all would agree


If we choose to live in Peace


Then it's Love that holds the Key


© Mick Grimes