Offering solidarity to Manchester, 12 years after Navan's May tragedy

This morning, we awoke to the news of an explosion and fatalites at Manchester Arena during a concert by pop singer Ariana Grande.
This artist I had never heard of until a teenager I know told me some time back of her concert in Dublin and how much he was looking forward to it. This concert took place last Saturday.
On hearing the news this morning, I sent him a message expressing shock at the tragedy. It was then, looking at my phone, that I realised what date it was - 23rd May.
As I listened to news reports of parents searching for missing teenagers, not knowing where they were, if they were dead or alive, or what hospital they had been brought to, I realised its significance.
On the same date in 2005, the people of Navan were going through a similar experience. It wasn't a terrorist attack, but the crash of a bus carrying school children home from the town.
The numbers were smaller, but the outcome was similar – teenagers were missing, injured, had died, and parents didn't know if their children were among the walking wounded, the seriously injured, or the dead. It was horrific. Of the 51 students on the bus, five girls lost their lives.
The tragedy hit international headlines, with messages of sympathy received from the British prime minister, amongst others. Lorna Carty, a local nurse who went to aid the victims of the crash on site in 2005, was to die 10 years later in a terrorist attack on a Tunisian beach, bringing the spectre of terrorism closer to home for us all.
Five years on from that bus crash, on 23rd May, another young life was lost when Meath minor footballer, and Skryne player, Liam Tolan died in a car crash close to his home. Liam was an up and coming young star, also starring for his school, Ashbourne Community College, and the date is ingrained in the minds and memories of his family and friends.
In our own family, the date is also one of significance, as we lost a grandmother on 23rd May 2009. But hers was a life lived, and at 100 years of age, she was ready to go. Only in ill health for a week after an injury, she knew her time was up, and as Leinster were celebrating winning their first Heineken Cup in Murrayfield against Leicester, she decided and told us that it was time to for her to depart, and quietly slipped away.
Like 007 star Roger Moore, whose death took place today in his 90th year, hers was not the tragic deaths of Liam Tolan, Navan schoolgirls Clare McCluskey, Aimee McCabe, Deirdre Scanlon, Lisa Callan and Sinead Ledwidge, or the 22 who died in Manchester last night and this morning. Both she and 'Bond' made it to the last decade of a century, a chance which has been denied those innocent victims of a terrorist bomber in Manchester.
So from a town who has some idea of what the families of those young people in Manchester and England are going through at the moment, we extend our heartfelt sympathies, solidarity and support.