Doreen Toolan's husband, Terry, was shot dead in Ardoyne by British soldiers on July 14th, l972. He was an electrician, 37 years old. One of his best friends, and one of the first people to call on his widow when he heard the news of Terry's death, was a policeman.
Mrs Toolan was left on her own with six children to rear, the eldest a girl of 13 and the youngest a baby of six weeks. Her husband's death changed her whole life and, she believes, deprived her children of their childhood.
On Tuesday night, Doreen Toolan's pain and her desperate hope that the future would not be squandered exploded onto the television screen. It was during David Dunseith's Let's Talk programme on BBC Northern Ireland and she was a member of the studio audience.
She told the panel "Sometimes when I sit and watch discussions like this I just want to smash my fist through the television screen. Politicians and experts talk and talk. It's too late for me. It's too late for my children. But I've got 20 grandchildren. Will you, for God's sake, just get on with it and find a solution so there is a better life for them?"
I have, as they say, an interest to declare, because I was a member of the panel. Given that this was the day following Rosemary Nelson's tragic murder, it had seemed a relatively hopeful and good-tempered discussion. We had been talking about the "choreography" that might be taking place to resolve the problem of decommissioning, whether a solution might be found this week in Washington or would take rather longer.
Then, suddenly, we were shaken - and humbled - by the raw urgency of Doreen Toolan's appeal. Here was a stark reminder of how much is at stake in the present crisis.
There is a legacy of grief and bitterness which festers at the heart of the peace process and which will take many years to heal. But there is also the more immediate fear that the present imperfect peace could unravel and make a return to violence inevitable.
Mrs Toolan was not the only member of the audience to speak in this way. A woman whose son, a policeman, had been shot by the IRA described how unbearably difficult it is for her to know that the man who killed him has been freed early from prison.
A relative of Robert Hamill's asked how he could ever trust the RUC, knowing that his cousin had been kicked to death and that no policeman had gone to his aid.
These are terrible wounds with which the people of Northern Ireland have hardly begun to deal. But for them to be able even to try we will have to find a way around the present obstacles that threaten peace itself.
Twenty-seven years separate the violent death of Doreen Toolan's husband, Terry, and the barbaric murder on Monday of Rosemary Nelson. A fearless defender of people's civil and legal rights, she will be buried today in Lurgan. There will be television reporters and politicians at her funeral to pay their respects to a life of courage and integrity. But, at the end of the day, her husband will be left to try to explain to three young children why their mother came to die in such a fashion. Only one thing is certain, that the pain of this week will never completely fade away.
We have said so often in the past that an atrocity of this kind must not derail the search for peace. We have even dared to hope that an event like the Omagh bomb might draw people closer together and concentrate the minds of the politicians on the task in hand. We must hope that this will be the case in the days immediately ahead.
Rosemary Nelson's murder was deliberately planned to provoke retaliation and to plunge the peace process into deeper crisis. It was an attack not simply on an individual, but on the whole system of justice in Northern Ireland. Ms Nelson took it on herself to defend unpopular causes and individuals. That is why she was first threatened, and then killed.
There are fears of further acts of violence by dissident groups on both sides. The marching season is already looming. Yet it could be that the death of this brave woman will provide a space for politicians to take some of the steps necessary to build peace. At the moment, all eyes are focused on Washington and the difficult problem of decommissioning. But there are other steps that can be taken to promote confidence in both communities.
The Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, has reacted wisely in bringing in outside experts to help to investigate the circumstances of Ms Nelson's death. David Trimble indicated yesterday that he may meet some of the people whom Ms Nelson represented, namely the residents of the Garvaghy Road, to try to resolve the continuing dangerous differences between them and the Portadown Orangemen? Such a meeting would send an important message to the whole community in Northern Ireland, the overwhelming majority of which desperately wants to see the Belfast Agreement work.
In this of all weeks, it is important to stress that all is not bleak in the political landscape of Northern Ireland. Huge advances have been made since St Patrick's Day last year, when it was very difficult to see how the political leaders would be able to sign up to an agreement.
A year later and those same politicians are working together on a daily basis at Stormont. They have been joined in committees by other parties which boycotted the negotiations and argue that the Belfast Agreement is a doomed project, but still want to be part of the machinery of any government which results from it. The Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein will probably continue to insist that one side, their own, has made all the concessions and gained absolutely nothing in return. But the evidence is increasingly against them.
It is understandable that those who have lost loved relations over the long years of the conflict should feel an angry impatience with the politicians. At times they seem determined to draw on bottomless resources of discord and recrimination. But they are also talking, and must continue to do so until the choreography finds a way around the present difficulties.
The peace is far from perfect but it offers the only possibility of a better future for the children and grandchildren of all those who have suffered over the past 30 years.