Geoffrey MacKechnie's call came just after midnight, last Wednesday. He was in hospital with the old problem of a mutinous aorta, writes Kevin Myers.
His wife, Mary Finan, and daughter Victoria had been with him earlier in the evening; he seemed in good form, full of the gentle humour and wry honesty which defined him.
They left at about ten, and Geoff began to prepare for sleep; he rose to go to the lavatory, lost strength, falling back on to the bed. And as he lay there, death stole in upon him, life draining from his body as a sun sets on a winter landscape.
We have no way of knowing for sure, but the chances are that survival from his chronic aortic condition would have required an extremely hazardous operation - the latest of many - which might then have been succeeded by paralysis. The idea of a dependent Geoff, with all the indignities thus entailed, is too unbearable for words: so instead, fate granted him the dignified end which he deserved. He fell asleep and never stirred again; and Mary and Victoria were beside him in minutes as his body settled into its new destiny, and his soul passed on to wherever it is that good souls go.
How many people crowded into the church in Donnybrook last Saturday morning, and gathered in the yard outside? A thousand? More? And could a single person in that throng have found find a single bad thing to say about him? The answer: No. He was simply in a class of his own: gentle, wry, amused, amusing, witty, clever, thoughtful, kind, intelligent, perceptive, attentive, loyal. He was like a really fine wine: his very English qualities were understated, and their full range was evident only to an educated palate. He rewarded thoughtful appreciation; moreover, any words of approval from him were something to be cherished, an ornament one would put away in the cabinet of precious memories, occasionally to be taken out and polished.
The last 10 years of his life were the time during which I got to know him best. They were the worst 10 years of his life and the best: the worst because he repeatedly went to the very edge of death, teetering upon the precipice, and the best, because each time - until last week - he always made it back, that small smile on his lips, the sparkle in the eye, the wisdom in his soul now that much sharper. He knew death well, and had politely but firmly rejected its overtures. He had an adored daughter to usher from adolescence to adulthood first; and with that job done, then who knows? Medical science saved him a decade ago, and it kept him alive in the years that followed; repeatedly his rib-cage was opened while inner tubes which might otherwise have popped were stitched and sewn, until he must have been more suture than Geoff - a living example of the quilt-maker's art. He took pain and fear of death without a single word of whinge or self-pity, concepts which were simply unknown to him.
He was used to adversity. As a young man he broke his leg skiing; back in Dublin, it was badly set. A simple fracture ended in amputation, and no more skiing. But more to the point, no complaints: none. Though medical bumbling had cost him so much, he bore no malice towards the people responsible - indeed, quite the reverse: he had a nice little fund of carefully observed stories about that time in hospital. Perhaps his only rival for gentle, measured anecdotes told at the teller's own expense was the late Patrick Campbell, formerly of this space.
He had a wizard of a brain; you could see it working through his eyes, thoughts whirring behind those pupils. Logic, ratiocination, knowledge - they meshed with a thousand different cogs as he visibly and measurably put his mind to work. He had fresh things to say, all the days of his life, new insights to give, unexpected observations to make. It was a mind like an Antwerp-cut diamond set in black velvet, its facets glittering with a rare and ingenious subtlety.
He was unshakeably calm and reasonable, a stoic in a storm. His beloved wife Mary Finan, chairman of Wilson Hartnell, was much better known than him; but for all her furious energies, her enormous range of interests, including her sleepless dedication to business, Geoff was the safe harbour to which she could always return. He could conjure serenity out of any chaos, see light in the deepest dark, find salvation when all seemed lost. His strength was as quiet as the ground upon which we walk.
He was an economist, but more than that, he was a scholar of humans. He understood the frailty of the flesh, and the vanity of ambition, the personal futility of greed. He lived well, in a fine house; but I suspect he would have been content in a shed, provided he had friends, a glass of wine, Mary and Victoria and, not least of all, no opera.
Lord, how he hated opera. He and his friend, the late Noel Carroll, would have hobbled the streets of Wexford coatless in the rain, and with tacks in their shoes, rather than join their wives inside the opera house. But his loathing for opera happily did not extend to all music, and the funeral Mass last Saturday was as much a concert of celebration as it was a ceremony of obsequies.
There is a time to die; and last Wednesday came Geoff MacKechnie's.