‘I had to tell my kids mum wasn’t coming home’

“Nothing would prepare you to tell your children that their mummy isn’t coming home.”

Father of four Kevin McElvanna, who lost his wife in a car crash last year, has been speaking about the trauma of breaking the news of her death to their children.

His wife, Ciara, died following a four-vehicle crash in Markethill, County Armagh in November 2023. He was badly injured, breaking his neck in the collision, and two of his friends died.

Mr McElvanna, a surgeon, said he had broken bad news to people before, but this was different.

“My brother Paul drove me home, I had to prepare how I was going to break that news to them,” he told the BBC podcast The GAA Social.

“Probably a bit ahead of schedule in terms of my own injuries, when I would have been discharged from hospital, I left the hospital temporarily to come home to do that.

“Part of my medical training, I have broken bad news on a number of occasions in traumatic circumstances, so that maybe equipped me with some preparation or skills with how to go about that.”

Mr McElvanna said he knew what he was going to tell each of his children when he got home.

“I spoke to them individually and explained; that was probably the most difficult thing amongst everything.”

Mr McElvanna, who was part of the Armagh gaelic squad that won the 2002 All-Ireland senior football final and is very well known in the community, said it was that community that rallied around him in those dark days.

He said he vividly remembers the night of the collision that also killed his friend Patrick Grimley. Mr Grimley’s wife, Ciera, passed away a week later.

The couples had been returning from Mr Grimley’s 40th birthday party when the crash happened.

“From the moment the accident happened, we were wrapped up really by our family, our neighbours, our community to help us through it,” he said.

“Through what was the most difficult times of any of our lives; in the hospital, at home, during that very difficult two-week period where we had three wakes and three funerals on our road.

“The whole community, not just the GAA community, but the entire community mucked in. Nobody knew what to do, but everybody wanted to help,” he added.

“They helped in very simple ways. It was really remarkable the way everybody stood up in really adverse times and nurtured us through it.”

Mr McElvanna said his wife Ciara, who was a nurse, was a very generous person.

Her kidneys and liver went on to save the lives of three individuals and her heart was transplanted into a young girl.

“So she was giving right at the very end,” he said.