While Irish people everywhere celebrate their national feast day this weekend, for one Donegal family heartache will be the dominant emotion.

It will be 30 years on Sunday – March 18 – since six-year-old Mary Boyle, A distant cousin of Daniel O’Donnell, vanished mysteriously off the face of the earth during a visit to her grandparents’ home in Cashelard.

Her mum Ann, her surviving twin, Ann, and other family members, along with a host of relatives and friends will attend a special Mass in Mary’s memory at St Mary’s Church, Kincasslagh on St Patrick’s Day.

Apart from the poignancy of a 30th anniversary it will be extra heartbreaking for Ann, who lives at Keadue Lower, near Burtonport.

She will also be mourning the tragic loss of her husband Charlie. He drowned while fishing in the sea near his home in July 2005.

Ann said: “I miss Charlie so much. He was always such a comfort when we grieved together for Mary.

“At least with Charlie his body was recovered and I got some closure with that. It’s different with Mary. I don’t even know what happened to her although at this stage I accept that she is dead.

“There’s not a day passes that I don’t think about the two of them. At least Charlie now knows what happened to Mary.”

Ann added: “I have a mass said every year for Mary. Although she disappeared on 18 March we are having the mass on St Patrick’s Day.”

After the mass Ann will do what she does almost every week – pray at a special shrine to Mary set in the wall at the side of the Kincasslagh church.

She said: “I talk to Mary all the time. I talk to Charlie, too. I ask them where Mary is. I ask God where is she. I ask Our Lady to let me know what happened.

“I still hurt as much as I did in the days immediately after Mary disappeared. A child walked out the door and hasn’t been seen since. To me that’s unreal.”

Ann looks forward to visits from her granddaughter and great-grand-daughters. The granddaughter is named after missing Mary, and her daughters are five-month-old Leah Marie and 18-month-old Charley Shannon.

Mary vanished within three months off her seventh birthday. She was last seen following her uncle Gerry Gallagher across some boggy land as he carried a borrowed ladder back to a neighbour in Cashelard

Gerry was the last person to see Mary alive. He has told how when hestill had 70 yards to go to the neighbour’s house little Mary turnedaround to head back on her own to her grandparents’ home.

She never arrived back at the house. Intensive investigations over theyears failed to establish what happened.