Deaglán de Bréadún salutes a small, vulnerable nation, which lost its president in a plane crash.
There is a forlorn little note in my pocket diary for February 26th. It says, "Seven to Nine p.m. Conrad Hotel. Macedonians: Prime Minister Crvenkovski." Like others, no doubt, I had received an invitation to celebrate Macedonia's formal application for membership of the European Union, which was to be lodged with the Taoiseach earlier that day.
The fact that the small Balkan state was in a position to apply to join the mighty EU at such an early stage caught me a little unawares. My attention had been on other places since I covered the nascent war in Macedonia three years ago.
Happily that conflict failed to ignite but it was a close-run thing.
Like Northern Ireland, Macedonia is a divided society. The ethnic Albanian community was excluded from power and the state was essentially controlled by politicians and civil servants of Slavic background.
Since the fires of war were quenched, substantial progress had reportedly been made in integrating the two communities and ensuring political power is divided between former enemies. It all sounded very heartening, although there are doubtless the usual obstacles on the path to full integration.
But a country on the brink of war three years ago was now on the brink of applying for EU membership. Whatever one may think of the EU, this has to be seen as a token of Macedonia's self-confidence and hope for the future.
Macedonia's application wasn't lodged on the intended date. The hotel reception didn't take place. Instead of a smiling Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski standing with the Taoiseach, we had a photograph of empty chairs and an unattended podium at Farmleigh. An official said: "The President of Macedonia's plane has gone down over Bosnian airspace."
Overnight the news had come in that the aircraft carrying President Boris Trajkovski and his entourage of eight people had disappeared off the radar as it was taking the group to Bosnia for an investment conference.
The multi-ethnic Macedonian delegation flew home at once. No less than 22 leather-jacketed, heavy-smoking journalists had come to relay the news about the EU application to people back home. They, too, headed back to Skopje.
Macedonia will rise again. There will be another date for the EU application. The memory of President Trajkovski will be honoured and someone else will come forward to lead the country into a future that looks a little bit less certain than before.
Nations are out of fashion in modern political parlance. The word has been largely consigned to the discourse of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We tend to forget that nations are more than a state apparatus or an aspiration to have one.
Nations are made up of people and, like human beings, they can fare well or ill, depending on circumstances, resources and, sometimes, sheer luck. Macedonia deserves a bit of luck from here on in. I hope it gets to make its application within the term of Ireland's European presidency, as planned, and look forward to raising a glass in its honour when it does so.