'The perfect match': Double funeral for devoted Buncrana couple of 63 years

Two coffins sat side-by-side at the altar of St Mary’s Church in Cockhill on Holy Thursday.

As they were in life, through almost 63 years of marriage, Charlie and Mary McLaughlin, were together in death.

Mary McLaughlin, née Gill, passed away on March 27 at her home in Miltown, Buncrana. Her beloved husband, Charlie ‘Twin’ McLaughlin, on the evening of his 89th birthday, died at Letterkenny University Hospital on March 31.

The couple were laid to rest in Cockhill Cemetery after a service in the Church on Thursday afternoon. With the service held outside the context of a Mass, a funeral Mass will be celebrated on Easter Sunday morning.

“While it might at first seem sad that we bury them both in the one ceremony after almost 63 years together, there is something right about it too,” Buncrana parish priest Fr Francis Bradley told mourners at the service.

It was in this same church where they were married in 1964.

“A lifetime or three ago,” Fr Bradley said. “Two years ago, they celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary; not many achieve that. 

“They were the perfect match. They doted on each other. She cared for him uniquely and, to him, her presence was all that he needed.”

Fr Bradley recalled how Mary asked their daughter, Fiona, to buy a birthday card and a cake for Charlie only last week.

On the evening of his birthday, Charlie passed away. “I’m not sure if he answered Christ’s call or Mary’s call,” said Fr Bradley.

They are survived by their son Declan, daughter Fiona and a circle of family and friends. 

A photo of the loving couple was brought to the altar, resting alongside a statue of St Rita of Cascia, a photograph of popular singer Declan Nerney and a packet of cigarettes. 

Fr Bradley said Charlie ‘The Twin’, one of a family of eight, was a “devoted husband and father” who worked in Birmingham and later in Cassidy’s Pit and McGonagles as a machine operator.

“A ‘digger man’ as it is called locally,” said Fr Bradley. “He lived and breathed work. He was a hard goer and just loved everything to do with diggers.”

On a visit around the sick and housebound, Fr Bradley told how he visited a lady who has dementia. The lady heard Charlie ‘The Twin’ had died, she immediately responded that he had dug the foundations for her house, “much to the amazement of everyone in the kitchen”.

Mary Gill was the eldest and only girl in a family of four who moved to Birmingham where she worked as a housekeeper for priests in the Holy Rosary Parish. After returning home to Buncrana, she worked in Clubman and then in Nazareth House in Fahan.

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“She was great fun and, could we say, a straight talker,” Fr Bradley said. “She loved bingo and played six nights a week.”

Fr Bradley told how Mary “loved company” and “thanks to her family and friends she was never alone”. 

He said how one neighbour told him that the Covid-19 lockdown would have been “unbearable” were it not for Mary.

The McLaughlin home at Miltown was, Fr Bradley remembered, “neighbourhood watch and community alert rolled into one”.

Not even death could part them.