Down by the shoreline of Eanach Mheáin in south Connemara, a small white sign for "reilig" points to one of the most tranquil resting places on the Atlantic coastline.
Within that tiny graveyard, sheltered by lower Camus and Cill Chiaráin bays, the ashes of a young Connemara-born US soldier were laid to rest over the weekend.
"Ciara na Gruaige Rua" reads the cut-stone rock to Ciara Durkin (30), who was shot dead in unexplained circumstances at a US military base in Afghanistan a fortnight ago. Ciara of the "wild red hair" was also the theme of a poem written by one of her sisters, Áine, and read at Saturday's funeral Mass at the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Leitir Móir.
A week before, Ms Durkin had received full military honours at a Mass in Boston, USA, where she and many of her extended family had been living since emigrating there over 20 years ago. However, there was no visible military presence, no uniforms, and no spare seating at the service held by Fr Michael Brennan in Leitir Móir, where the congregation heard her brother Pierce talk of her love of life, of people and her happy smile.
Chief mourners were her mother Angela, and brother Pierce, who had travelled with her ashes from Boston, siblings Owen and Angela from Eanach Mheáin, sister Áine from Donegal, and her best friend Haidee Loreto. Three sisters, Maura, Deirdre and Fiona, all living in Boston, and brother, Tom, living in Long Island, New York, were also remembered at the service.
Thanking the community of na h-Oileáin in south Connemara for its support, Pierce Durkin recalled how his sister had done so much for others, and how she had "lit up a room" on a visit to a unit for sufferers of Alzheimer's disease. Fr Michael Brennan recalled how she had been baptised in the very church where her funeral Mass was taking place, and described how she had been a great inspiration to all who knew her.
Large photographs of Ms Durkin in civilian and military dress adorned the church, and family friends heard how she had been credited with saving the life of a contractor who fell from a ladder last April at the military base in Bagram, Afghanistan.
There was silence, broken only by bird call, as her ashes were laid beside her father, Tomás, in Eanach Mheáin Cemetery. Her family placed freshly cut lilies, tulips, roses and irises on the gravel.
Ciara Durkin joined the National Guard in Massachusetts two years ago. She was serving in the finance unit of the 26th unit's Task Force Diamond in Afghanistan when she was shot. Part of her ashes are to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC.
The US army has said it is investigating her death and the Department of Foreign Affairs is said to have raised the issue with the US embassy in Dublin and with the authorities in Washington, at her family's request.
