RANDALSTOWN crash victim Michelle McStravick “leaves a tremendous legacy of how she touched so many people’s lives,” mourners were told at her funeral.
Ms McStravick (35) died alongside fellow care worker Lorraine Clyde (56) in a car crash near the Co Antrim town on Monday July 25.
Requiem Mass for Ms McStravick was celebrated at St MacNissi’s Church in Randalstown this morning.
Fr Diarmuid Sheehan said the mother of one had “blessed the lives of many.”
Addressing her daughter, Cliodhan, Fr Sheehan said she was her mother’s “living legacy” and urged the grieving teenager to "realise the dreams" her late mother had for her.
He said: "Your mother I am sure had dreams and hopes for you.
"Like any loving parent, she wanted your life to be even better, happier, and more complete than her own.
"I'm sure she also had dreams and hopes for herself and looked forward to a long life.
"Cliodhan, by the way you live your life, by living with honour, compassion, and joy, you can realise the dreams your mother had for you and even the dreams she had for herself.
"You are her legacy, and a wonderful legacy you are and will be.
"Live your life well. With your grandfather and grandmother to help you, I know you will be supported in their great love for you."
The 35 year-old was a popular figure on the Northern Ireland bodybuilding scene.
Speaking to the congregation Fr Sheehan also said "a death like this slaps us in the face" and of the "struggle inside us along this road of grief".
"The loss tastes bitter in our mouths, in our hearts, and rightly we revolt against it, we demand an explanation, even from God" he added.
"Maybe we are told that what afflicts us, this grief that has attached to it a beloved name and face, is part of the human condition, evidence of a flawed universe, a world radically incomplete.
"We know this. But in all this we find precious little comfort."
Fr Sheehan also said the care worker had “blessed the lives of many”.
“She lived her faith through acts of love. She may not have worn a path down to the church but she lived the commandments of love. She responded to people in need and often went the extra mile, not thinking of the cost to herself,” he said.
Fr Sheehan quoted one of Ms McStravick's favourite expressions - "You have to take the good with the bad, smile when you are sad, love what you have got and remember what you had’”.
Lorraine Clyde's funeral is due to take place tomorrow at 12.30pm in St Comgall's Church in Antrim.