Farewell to Donal

We said farewell to Donal St Leger at the Sacred Heart Church in Lyndhurst NJ today, to the skirl of a piper playing 'The Curragh of Kildare', writes Brian Byrne.

The piper was a family friend, and he was there as the funeral cortege arrived, where also had waited a group of Donal's friends from Lyndhurst, conversing softly. Remembering the times when he was there, and times when he wasn't.

"He'd be missing a few days before we'd notice, and then we'd find he had gone back to Ireland," one told me. "Or maybe he'd gotten into his car and driven down to South Carolina, a place he also loved."

Another recalled how he had been at the 80th birthday party thrown for him in Fallons last year. "We were in Dublin at the time and went down to Kilcullen for it. That was some great party �"

His coffin was welcomed into the church on Ridge Road and then on to the ritual familiar to Catholics the world over when one of their own has passed into the next world. The organist sang hymns and Irish lament, notably the 'Ave Maria' and 'Danny Boy'.

It was a nice church, a quietly moving ceremony. "Donal has now faced the one Truth that we all will face," the celebrant said. The prescribed final prayers were completed, and then it was time for the pall-bearers to carry Donal shoulder high from his last gathering in the New Jersey he had called home for some 57 years.

The piper was again waiting outside, and Donal left the church to the strains of 'Amazing Grace', followed up with 'The Minstrel Boy' and finally 'The Curragh of Kildare' as the hearse drove down Ridge Street, leaving us all behind. Probably none without tears welling.

Afterwards in Casa Giuseppe a few blocks down the road, family and friends gathered to talk and recall the stories that are part of the comforting richness of an Irish funeral anywhere in the world.

There will be another one, because Donal called two places 'home', on opposite sides of the Atlantic. His ashes are being brought to Kilcullen for a second farewell on 6 January.

I thank his son Brian and daughter Kathleen and their families for their welcome and hospitality today. It felt good to be part of the farewell as a representative of the home town he loved so well, alongside Frances Brennan from Old Kilcullen, who is the point of contact in Manhattan for all from Kilcullen.

I wish them a Christmas that will of course have the particular sadness of the loss of a loved one so close to a festival of celebration ... but it should also have its happinesses in the recall of a father and grandfather who so loved and was proud of his family, and who was respected and loved by so many.