In London on Sunday morning I couldn't sleep. I hit the TV's remote control and a full-length picture of Princess Diana filled the screen. My reaction at 5.30 a.m. was to think: "When can I ever get away from this woman?"
Within a few short sentences I learned the awful truth. I woke my father and we shared the early television images of a defining moment of late 20th century popular history in western Europe.
The princess and I met briefly once in an elevator in Buckingham Palace. And I remember vividly being struck by her devastating beauty, a beauty that awed the world. And Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales and wife of the future king, was there standing beside me, sharing a pleasantry, a warm word and a generous greeting. I recall wanting to hold my breath.
For about 18 months in 1989, I worked part-time on installing a computer system in Buckingham Palace for a member of the royal family. It was the kind of job that falls in to your lap and you wonder throughout if it was supposed to be you.
It must be hard for Ireland to embrace fully the impact Diana's tragic death has had on British people.
It must seem odd, even if the compassion of much of her work is so closely mirrored by the thousands of medical, lay and religious missionaries who have ventured from Ireland's shores to bring love and the Gospel and practical medical relief to millions around our planet.
All this fuss over a royal, a divorcee and an English aristocrat.
It was also a long road for this Dublin boy - born in the Coombe, schooled by the Presentation Brothers in Bray and growing up in the wake of the Bob Geldof era in Dun Laoghaire - to seek a living in London and, finally, to be invited for a private dinner in Buckingham Palace.
His Royal Highness wanted to say thank you, the Irishman wanted to look at the wallpaper, meet the prince, maybe the family.
On Sunday, after watching with disbelief as the news unfolded on the television, I finally stood in the Abbey Church at the beginning of Mass. The monks assembled and the cross was carried while the entrance hymn was sung.
As I began to sing the first verse, my eyes filled and tears started to fall. It did not matter who was watching. It was the same feeling, almost, as having lost a much-loved family member. I began to feel strange.
Why should it be that from such a distance, and when I had at first felt this woman featured on too many front pages and television screens, that I should now wipe tears from my face and try to finish the hymn? How had she managed to get inside? What was she offering the world and each one of us?
The British royal family is a difficult institution to penetrate. The young Lady Diana Spencer took on the job of marrying and having children by the next king. And she put her heart into the project.
It is hard to avoid sounding pretentious and write that learning to cope with the public pressure is a task more daunting than many could possibly imagine. But once, briefly, I had a panic attack. I had arrived at the palace a few minutes early for work.
Perhaps 2,000 people had gathered on a summer's day at the front entrance for the regular morning changing of the guard. My car ventured into the scrum to try to get into work.
Dozens of people crushed up against every window, hoping to glimpse someone famous. I felt trapped. As if I were under water. It was a frightening and desperately lonely few moments. Finally I was rescued by policemen and ushered behind the railings.
I had experienced, perhaps, a fraction of what Diana, the young shy woman in her early 20s, had been exposed to oceans of while she fought to get to grips with her role as the newly-wed.
When the Windsors go cold, when a member of the queen's immediate family cuts you out, there is nothing more final or more isolating. It is, I imagine, as surgically effective as an Arctic wind. There is no shelter. And I felt it only from the fringes.
Moments after that panic at the gate, when we were about to start a morning's work, His Royal Highness came in to the kitchen to make us a coffee and noticed I was distressed.
He inquired. I explained. He laughed. "Now you know what we live with, what I have grown up with." I felt as alone as I had in the car, with all those strangers pressing against the windows. Why and how could he be so cold?
I reflected afterwards that if Diana, or any new member trying to become a royal was given so little help and so little understanding, then how could she possibly learn to deal with something she had not grown up with?
Diana, Princess of Wales, an icon of our times, will be loved by many millions who only knew her image. I realise that I know her to have been a woman of extraordinary inner strength, who must have had a rich inner well of compassion that offered love and something special to combat the obstacles put in her way.
She knew instinctively she had something the world needed and the people close to her might not always help her to realise her vocation. She walked beyond these boundaries.
Perhaps she made mistakes in her choice of friends. So have I. Perhaps she did things in private that we learned about from television. Most of us are spared this microscopic humiliation. Could I sustain such publicity? I am not so sure. I am not so sure, at all.
I think for those of us who imagine we understand the pressures of living in the public eye, there are only a handful who can deal with the reality.
And now she leaves two boys to such a fate. And yet they must go forward, without their mother, without the one woman who would surely unconditionally put her arms around them for the whole of their lives, whatever they did.
We must pray for them.
Paul Brady (34), grew up in Cabinteely and now lives in London. He has worked several times with Prince Edward, both inside Buckingham Palace and also with him in Lord Lloyd-Webber's Really Useful Theatre Company in Shaftesbury Avenue, London