Alex Kane: Noah has touched us all and brought us together

That’s all I could think when I saw the photographs of Noah Donohoe for the first time a few days ago. They were beautiful photographs of a beautiful boy. A boy with an entire life ahead of him. I happened to have a copy of Dr Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! beside me (I’ve been reading Seuss to my son, Indy, lately) and was immediately drawn to these lines:

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

any direction you choose.

You’re on your own. And you know what you know.

And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

Noah will never have the chance to live those lines.

Even though I know that over 5,000 young people between the ages of 12 and 17 are reported missing every year in Northern Ireland I consoled myself that the overwhelming majority, more than 90%, are found within two days (most within 24 hours). Yet every one of those hours is like a lifetime for those waiting at home.

And even though I had never heard of Noah before last Monday I found myself checking news sites every couple of hours to see if he had turned up safe and well. Judging by the traction on social media it was clear that hundreds of thousands of others were doing exactly the same thing.

Isn’t it extraordinary that with so much else going on right now – particularly with the pandemic and fears of another wave – so many us were thinking about Noah? It’s that concern, compassion and sheer hope of a good outcome that really touched me. Hundreds of people out looking for him. Tens of thousands tweeting and retweeting his photograph. Who knows how many parents giving their own children an extra hug; or how many older children thinking for the first time that this could have been their own friend or sibling. The very palpable sense of collective grief when the news came through that a body had been found.

I couldn’t understand why I was so deeply moved. So gut-wrenchingly upset. I didn’t know Noah. I don’t know his mum or any member of his family. I don’t know anyone that knew him. And yet I was still wiping my eyes on Saturday morning. Looking at my own children (21, 10 and almost three) and wondering how I would cope – how I would even begin to cope – if I knew I would never see one of them again. Looking again at his photograph was an almost unbearable experience: yet I owed him that look. I owed him those moments of reflection because he has touched my life and my emotions.

I think Gail Walker summed up brilliantly the collective feeling: ‘The ceaseless rain in Belfast tonight seems apt; a sad city mourning a fine, handsome and brilliant boy. Let’s draw a scrap of comfort from how even in our petty divisions we came together to search without flagging; how in the face of senseless tragedy we mourn as one.’ Gail is right: caring about the whereabouts and safety of a boy unknown to almost all of us tells us something about ourselves.

On his way to and from school, or just getting on with his everyday life, hundreds, maybe thousands of us will have seen him without noticing him. Just another teenage boy.

Today he is remembered as a very specific teenage boy. A teenage boy getting on with his everyday life last Sunday: but who never came home again. And there isn’t a mum or dad in Northern Ireland who doesn’t want to go and give his mum a hug right now.

There is nothing worse than the loss of a child. We have lost four through miscarriage and there is rarely a day when we don’t think about them. The smallest thing can bring them to mind. There is a song which still reduces me to tears because it’s what we played when we cremated our miscarried 17-week-old son, Conan. That sort of grief is crippling but, to be perfectly frank, I’m pretty sure it couldn’t even begin to compare with the grief of losing a child you have loved and looked after for 14 years.

I think that’s why the story of a missing child will always dominate headlines: nearly all of us are parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles or friends. We know how the loss would hit us. And while few of us could put ourselves in the shoes of those who have lost a child, there’s not one of us isn’t aware of the hammer-blow such a loss would be. My 10-year-old, Lilah, walked into the room just as I wrote that line. I felt a welling in my eyes. I can’t imagine life without her.

I’ll finish with Tom Krause’s poem about the death of his son, Fingerprints:

Your fingerprints are on my heart.

Fingerprints that teach me about caring.

Fingerprints that teach me about love.

Fingerprints that teach me about courage.

Fingerprints that teach me about hope.

Fingerprints that bring me closer to my loved ones.

Fingerprints that bring me closer to myself.

In the time I cared for you my whole life changed – never to be the same again.

All this from tiny fingerprints that touch my heart.

You will live in my heart forever – never to be forgotten.

I will always love you.

You are my child.

I think some of Noah’s fingerprints are on us right now. He has managed to touch us all. And in a world which is too often cold, brutal and cynical it’s actually heartening to know how much the life of one boy can bring us together.

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