A trickle of close friends walked up the driveway of Terenure College ahead of Donal McCann's coffin. The occasion was intimate, almost private.
Terenure College was the alma mater - he acted in his first serious role there and played rugby on the first team - and there he was, being waked, courtesy of the Carmelite community, before today's funeral Mass at noon. His body is due at Monaseed, Gorey, Co Wexford, at around 3.30 p.m. today for burial.
Dr Donal Lamont, the former bishop of Umtali, and about a dozen fellow Carmelite priests were at the door to await the arrival of one the school's most distinguished past-pupils.
People spoke in hushed tones. A former neighbour, Paul Moore, recalled that Donal was picked to play on the Leinster cup-winning side in 1958, but injured his toe. Yet McCann remained sanguine. "You can't do much about a burst toe" was his predictable response.
Also awaiting the hearse was Brendan Brady, Donal McCann's favourite bookmaker: "He was a great man for the horses. He placed his bets by phone and always came up with the money. Every year he sent a Christmas card with his photo in it - and always tickets to his plays, often the best seats in the house."
In front of the waiting clergy stood ballad singer Jim McCann, film producer Neil Jordan and poet Paul Durcan.
Michael Mills, former Ombudsman and erstwhile political correspondent of the Irish Press, recalled McCann's first efforts at acting: "We would not normally cover a college play, but I was sent out to write up Terenure's Hamlet that year. Donal was playing Polonius. He was magnificent. I think it all started from that."
His sister Margaret and his nephew and godson Jimmy Berney were among the mourners. Also present were close friends Ms Beau Marie St Claire and Kate Sweetman, who nursed him for five months at her Co Meath home after his major operation in December 1997.
Paul Durcan recalled that it was from Ms Sweetman's that he made the regular weekly trips to St Luke's for treatment: "He knew from that time that he had cancer of the pancreas - and that there was no hope. The doctors knew their man. They laid it on the line - chemotherapy was unlikely to do any good at all, they told him."
But Donal was a gambler. He would take his chances on his own terms. He went for chemotherapy - and suffered no apparent sideeffects, indeed experienced a period of remission: "The hair remained as black as ever to the end!"
Just after Christmas, the poet recalled, he began to feel low. Three weeks ago he was x-rayed for the last time: "He was told it would be very quick. Donal was very religious. He had a sense of inevitable relief about it all."
He remained undaunted to the end, said Durcan, as he watched the British Grand Prix on television and shouted into the phone to a friend: "Schumacher has just crashed!" Next day, Monday, he was preparing to go into the hospice.
Inside the church, Father Eltin Griffin led the prayers and afterwards delivered a short homily. Terenure College was a second home for Donal, said Father Griffin: "It was extraordinary to see how readily he absorbed knowledge and life - and was absorbed by life. He got to the core of things."
As a teacher, he first encountered Donal in the junior college, where he was in the same class as Mike Murphy. In contrast to the broadcaster, however, Donal McCann rarely put his hand up.
Later, Donal phoned his former teacher to tell him that he'd been offered a part in Juno and the Paycock: "I said, without hesitation, `Take it, it'll be the making of you'."
Playwright Sebastian Barry said Donal was "the loveliest man to work with". His portrayal of Thomas Dunne in the internationally-acclaimed The Steward of Christendom was unique in every sense: "I didn't see him in that role at all, at first. He seemed too young." Then he received a phone call from Donal, who growled: "You've been stealing my childhood thing!" The young McCann, it turned out, had spent some time at his mother's place in north Wexford and it had left an indelible mark.
