It was a bright summer morning when John McClory disappeared 21 years ago and the sun spilled from a clear blue sky as they buried him yesterday.
He was only 18 when he was abducted and killed by the Provisional IRA. He was handsome, charming and wild. Many of his childhood friends who gathered outside his Andersonstown home are now in their late 30s and 40s.
They joked that if he was looking down, he would laugh at them - married with children. They wondered if he ever would have settled down.
His mother Mary, who recently suffered a stroke, was supported by relatives as she made her way into the Holy Spirit Church. She was relieved that "this horrendous nightmare" was finally ending, her family said. For years, she had refused to accept John was dead.
Floral tributes saying "Son" and "Brother" lined the hearse.
John McClory was killed with his friend Brian McKinney. They were accused of using a Provisional IRA gun in a robbery. Their bodies were discovered in bog in Colgagh, Co Monaghan, two months ago.
Sinn Fein Assembly member Mr Alex Maskey, a relative of the family, helped carry the coffin. Several hundred mourners attended the Requiem Mass. Father Gordon McKinstry said the Provisional IRA was "satanic" in hiding the bodies of the "Disappeared". He said John had set out in life with enormous potential. "That great promise was brutally destroyed by an assassin's bullet. Murder most foul!
"The concealment of the body for all these years with its attendant agony for the family - a crime of satanic proportion. May those who did this deed repent before their God."
Father McKinstry said the suffering of John's family had not been eased by the length of time since the murder. "There is the pain, the aching sense of loss, not mellowed by the passing of years, which hovers all around us and which is important to recognise and admit.
"But I say to you all, John lives on. He knows you and he loves you still. He will walk in your shadow."
Among the mourners was Ms Margaret McKinney, mother of Brian McKinney, who will be buried today.
"This is, thank God, the beginning of the end," she said. "I'm so glad we are now able to bury the boys. All our prayers have been answered."
A member of the Garda team who helped find the bodies also attended the funeral. John was buried in Milltown Cemetery. The search for victims of the IRA whose remains have not yet been found will reopen shortly, according to one of their relatives.
Mr Seamus McKendry, whose mother-in-law, Mrs Jean McConville, was among those abducted and killed, said the Provisionals claimed to have returned to the sites and pinpointed where the bodies were buried. Just three of the nine bodies of those the IRA has admitted to killing have been found.