Veteran journalist William Graham, former political correspondent of The Irish News, remembers the day when the Troubles came close to his own door. In one of the many "forgotten" killings of the Troubles, a 20-year-old Catholic woman lost her life in a no-warning IRA bombing in the town of Warrenpoint, Co Down
THE mother of Joanne Reilly, who died in a bomb blast 25 years ago this Easter, has said she just "wants peace" for Northern Ireland and for future generations.
This is the story of parents who lost their only daughter, one of the "forgotten victims" of the Troubles.
This is the first time that Joanne's parents, Ann and Paul, have spoken to the media either at the time of the IRA bombing or over the past quarter century.
I was privileged to sit in their home on Good Friday afternoon and listen to their heartbreaking story about "the forgotten". They only requested one thing - that the interview not be used for political purposes.
Ann did the talking.
She said that when it comes to Joanne's anniversary around April time she feels it in her bones.
"I find the anniversaries get harder as I get older now. I find it tougher. It takes a lot out of me. It makes me feel unwell," she said.
Joanne's mother and father were not allowed to see her body after the bomb blast, nor before the funeral. She died at the bomb site, found over the office safe, in the hardware builders office where she worked beside Warrenpoint police station.
The Provisional IRA had left a bomb in a stolen van in a yard beside the station. It went off without warning, killing Joanne and injuring nine police officers and more than 30 other people. More than 200 nearby houses were damaged.
Her parents were told: "You can't see her... you have to remember her as she was."
The day of the blast Ann remembers running backwards and forwards in the area around the police tapes desperately searching for news of Joanne and sometimes stumbling and falling down on the street crying.
Ann, with tears in her eyes, recalls her only daughter. The family have two sons.
"She was a lovely girl... a great girl... with a great sense of humour," she said.
"She had not much of a wage but at Christmas and Easter she always bought presents. She always made sure her bed was made in the morning. In many ways she was an innocent 20-year-old.
"Joanne often helped carry groceries for people. And she always had a biscuit for the dog on the hill. A very kind girl."
At this stage Mrs Reilly points emotionally to a present in the room that Joanne bought her, a mother's day gift two weeks before her death - a beautiful wooden planter for flowers.
Ann said: "Every morning I awaken on a downer. But I have to get up and work and keep going."
Then I put to Ann the most difficult question perhaps - what did she think about the word forgiveness and how did she feel about the bombers?
She replied: "I have always said to people if the fellow knocked the door I would take him in and ask, how did he get involved in this?"
Ann, however, acknowledged that she had suffered a lot of anger over the death and that anger had taken a lot of years to fade.
"If somebody knocked the door and said I did it... I would ask him
'Did you know Joanne? How did you get involved? Did you really know what you did?"
She added that nobody has been charged with the killing.
"I would say Joanne is one of the forgotten and we feel sometimes we are just brushed aside. Nobody came back to say, in 25 years, anything. The police did not come back to tell us anything or about any leads.
"When the grandchildren came along that lifted our mind and took us through a lot.
"But for them we just want peace. For young families... I think they should draw a line under everything and focus on going on instead of going back and back. We prefer for these children to have a future.
"It was a mad 30 years that should not have gone on so long.
"Our faith. Paul has great faith. The night after Joanne was buried Paul started to say prayers for the ones who killed Joanne. He has still great faith.
"Where are you to turn to if you don't have faith?" she asks.
Ann urged that "the political people try to get their acts together".
"We are all here only a short time. We are all only human beings and all we want is peace. We have great faith in the man above.
"Joanne is in a better place now. But I want her here. It was a living hell. My brother died of a heart attack three months after Joanne with the whole stress of it."
* ANNIVERSARY: Main picture, Paul and Ann Reilly have spoken publicly for the first time about the death of their daughter Joanne, top, who was murdered in a no-warning van bomb explosion in Warrenpoint 25 years ago. Inset, the scene after the blast. Above, the memorial to Joanne
MAIN PICTURE: Cliff Donaldson