Finucane leads tributes in a traditional Irish farewell

NUALA O’FAOLAIN’S farewell was a resolutely Irish funeral, graced with Ireland’s finest traditional musicians, before a congregation hailing from Chicago to Borris-in-Ossory, ranging from the Taoiseach’s representative, Comdt Liam Drumgoole, to the man who wrote “Thank you for being somebody” in the book of condolences, to Nuala’s black Labrador, Mabel.

As people took their seats at the Church of the Visitation, Fairview, Dublin, Marian Finucane bore the demeanour of an athlete facing the race of her life. Rising from her seat beside her husband John Clark and their son Jack, she made a determined swipe at her tears, took several deep breaths and climbed the steps to the lectern.

After a “government health warning” of her disposition to being a “professional watering can”, she spoke eloquently and at length of “a woman of wit, of grace, of humour, a woman of brilliant mind and a steadfast friend”, a woman who, tragically, only recently and finally “had learned how to live”.

“She said: ‘I’ve found a family. It took me all this time to learn how to live . . . and now I have to learn how to die’.”

The intricate strands of their enduring friendship were evident in the involvement of Nuala and her then partner, Nell McCafferty, in Finucane-Clark family life. “When we lived in Westmeath, they were part of our extended family,” said Finucane.

On the first birthday of Ms Finucane’s daughter Sinead, at 20 minutes to six, the precise time she was born, Nuala – her godmother – and Nell appeared around the corner. “When they came in, the colours got brighter, the air got lighter . . . And they minded the family when our daughter was dying.”

Every morning, Nuala would arrive “and march me around the hills”. She would talk about things that few others felt able to do for fear that they would make her cry. “But Nuala would say ‘Cry away’,” Finucane said.

Then every year for 17 years, she would show up at the family home in Punchestown to mark the anniversary of Sinead’s death.

A steadfast friend indeed and yet, one cursed with a chronic insecurity about her friendships.

“I can’t tell you how many times she would ask ‘Please don’t abandon me, please don’t leave me . . . no matter how sour or bad-tempered I am.’ When she and Nell broke up, it was an enormous loss to our family.”

Every sentence in recent days had alluded to the laughter and fun there was when Nuala was around, said Finucane.

Yet she had “an amazing capacity for sadness and loneliness . . . I would go around to her and she would be sitting on the couch, depressed, saying ‘I’ve blown it again’, and yet we’d end up collapsed with laughter”.

She had a way of turning adversity into something positive. By getting thrown out of one school, she ended up in another, St Louis’s in Monaghan, where Sr David recognised and encouraged her brilliance. She got thrown out of UCD “for conduct unbecoming”, and as a result, ended up in two English colleges, including Oxford, which illuminated a larger world for her.

She “thought” her way through her troubles, said Finucane. She approached Luke Dodd and invited him to become what he called her “lodger” in Ireland and in America; she shared her house with her good friend Brian Sheahan. When Ireland seemed sexist and ageist for a middle-aged woman, she decided to move to New York. Marian Finucane also acknowledged the effect on Nuala’s family of her “ruthless truthfulness . . . What she wrote about her parents and her family must have been very difficult for her family and I salute them for the grace with which they dealt with that.”

The influence of Nuala O’Faolain’s five sisters and brother – who broke down while reading St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, “Love is patient and kinds . . . it is not arrogant and rude”, or what Fr Enda McDonagh in his homily called “the hymn to love” – was evident in every detail of the ceremonies.

The chief mourners included Nuala’s partner, John Low-Beer, her brother Terry, her sisters, Gráinne, Deirdre, Marian, Noirín and Niamh, nieces and nephews. Among the mourners were Nell McCafferty, her former partner of 15 years, her good friends, Luke Dodd and Brian Sheahan, Claire Duignan and Doireann Ní Bhriain.

The Arts Council was represented by Séan MacCarthaigh and the attendance included former minister for the arts Michael D Higgins, and writers Colm Tóibín, Anthony Glavin, Dermot Bolger, Theo Dorgan and Evelyn Conlon. Also present were Bríd Ní Dhochartaigh, formerly Sr David from St Louis, Monaghan, and media friends and former colleagues, including Noirin Hegarty, editor of the Sunday Tribune, John Horgan, Maol Mhuire Tynan, Wally Kirwan, Brendan Ó Cathaoir, Seán Mac Connell and Frank McDonald.

The Irish Times was represented by editor Geraldine Kennedy.