Family united in death

Five coffins at the joint funeral in Fontana yesterday marked the disintegration of one Gozitan family, a poignant picture that further emphasised the tragedy of the Għarb fireworks factory blast 10 days ago.

Lined up below the altar, the caskets held the corpses of a father, Nenu Farrugia, 67, his sons Raymond, 32, Noel, 31, and his wife of eight months, Antinette, 27, and his son-in-law Peter Paul Micallef, 35, a family united in death, leaving behind three distraught widows and two grandchildren to live a life of separation and suffering.

Mary Farrugia, whose family dwindled to one daughter in a flash on September 5, did not attend the funeral and neither did her granddaughter, who celebrated her fifth birthday on the day of the fatal explosion.

But from her balcony, Mrs Farrugia showered tears, cries and flowers on to the coffins that stopped to face her as the cortège passed in front of her house to a salute of petards.

No band marched ahead but mourners, prayers and applause accompanied the relatives from Our Lady of Pompeii church to Sacred Heart of Jesus Sanctuary, which the congregation squeezed into and spilled out of to take part in the Mass.

The funeral was televised live, with monitors and loud speakers set up outside the tiny sanctuary, playing out the sorrow of the relatives to the nation. Cameras were positioned everywhere, zooming in on their grief and adding a surreal feel to the harsh reality of the drama.

The broken relatives, Raymond’s wife, Tiberia, and their son, Luca, Marceline, Nenu’s daughter, and wife of deceased Peter Paul, his brothers, Antinette’s parents and other members of the family gazed at the portraits of each, which they later kissed passionately before saying their last goodbye.

Fr Ġorġ Bezzina, former Fontana parish priest, who had practically grown up with the victims and harboured many happy memories, said he was bidding them “arrivederci” not “addio” and that they would meet again, a thought that stimulated app-lause.

Heartbroken himself, having lost close friends and relatives, whom he had known ever since they were altar boys together, Fr Bezzina insisted in his homily on the gift of life and the responsibility to live it, rather than on death.

In their desolation, he re-minded them that “life is precious and beautiful” and that they could not allow themselves to ruin it, collapse and despair.

Despite the disaster they faced, the remaining relatives had to “get up” and look ahead to God, he said, insisting that the gift of life meant no one could abuse it, referring to drugs, alcohol, abortion, suicide, euthanasia and the many other “enormous tensions” of today’s society.

He encouraged them not to stop and stare at the coffins, or the dark graves they were being buried in but to think of their own lives and how to live them.

Eleven-year-old Luca had a long list of persons to pray for when he bravely read out his bidding prayer. He asked God to welcome his father, grandfather, two uncles and an aunt into heaven, a tall order for the little boy. But throughout the Mass, he kept strong, flanked by his distraught mother and her sister, clapping passionately when the congregation burst into applause.

The country’s highest dignitaries and representatives of the political parties also attended the funeral, as did the family of long-time friend Jean Pierre Azzopardi, 27, the sixth blast victim, who was laid to rest in Xewkija on Tuesday.

During the offertory, tight and emotional embraces were ex-changed between Fr Bezzina and the fragile relatives, as a collection was held for the needs of the three widows and the families of Mr Azzopardi and Antinette.

Fireworks, the cause of death, were mentioned only in poems, recited at the end of the Mass, which described them as “colours of hope”, through which the victims had shown their capabilities, never resting, feast after feast.

The joint funeral, originally scheduled for last Saturday, had to be postponed pending the arrival of the results of DNA tests on two of the bodies for identification purposes.

Three powerful explosions, which flattened the Farrugia Brothers Fireworks Factory, reigniting controversy on the dangerous manufacture of pyro-technics and resulting in a government-appointed board of inquiry to investigate the quality of chemicals and practices used in their production.

The same factory had exploded five years ago but luckily no one was hurt and it was rebuilt. This latest tragedy, the eighth in a year, raised the number of fireworks-related deaths in Gozo to 24.