Their snapshot teems with life ...you struggle to comprehend the monstrous ending to their tale of love

DESPAIR is this morning draped like ominous, dark bunting over the Clare village of Barefield.

- BY ROY CURTIS

The reverberations of the gun shots which ended the lives of Vanessa Whyte and her teenage children, James and Sara Rutledge, 150 miles away in Fermanagh, echo in a haunting, incomprehensible volley across the 45-year-old's home place.

Even under the July sunshine, Barefield is a place without light, the mood, to borrow from a 1950s Deep South preacher describing the climate of horror during that decade of serial Mississippi lynchings, blacker than a thousand midnights.

A family wiped out, endless hopes and dreams expunged, heartbeats stilled in the heartbeat it takes to squeeze a cold trigger.

The flag of decency flies at half-mast. Parents, lost for words, hug tightly to their offspring.

Vanessa had studied veterinary medicine, a woman with a vocational urge to bring compassion into the world of struggling creatures, to ease their distress.

For many years she was a camogie player, most vibrantly alive when she stepped onto a rectangle of grass, hurl in hand, and felt that exhilarating dopamine rush of sporting combat course through the entirety of her being.

Her sense of place is self-evident in a beautiful photograph of James, Sara and herself attending a Clare hurling match, most likely one of the games on their run to 2024 All-Ireland glory, a milestone clinched a year to the week before the brutal tragedy.

Vanessa stands between her two children, a protective, affectionate arm draped around each of their shoulders.

The three of them, pillars supporting the others lives. A portico of love.

IDENTITY

All are uniformed in The Banner's saffron and gold colours. Sara wears a Clare training top, her flowing mane held back by one of the headbands which are a fashion item on big match days.

James, smiling blissfully, is blanketed by a county flag.