Alex Warnick, the 42-year-old homeless man whose body was found in the Grand Canal, Dublin, two weeks ago, lived a “carefree and wild life”, a friend told a service in the Glasnevin Cemetery chapel on Tuesday.
Often breaking down as he delivered a short address, Garreth Kirwan said that in his first weeks of homelessness he had met Mr Warnick on the boardwalk in city centre Dublin “and he learned me how to survive [but] he certainly didn’t teach me to get through this. I never thought I’d have to say anything like this. I miss the man I loved to pieces.”
Mr Warnick, he said, “was a gentleman, a diamond, and an absolute Godsend in my life. All I can say is, rest in paradise, I love you.”
Another of Mr Warnick’s friends, Nick Hilton, from London, remembered how they met in a skating park in Clapham in 1998 when they were both teenagers and became friends. When they were older they started to make music together and travelled around Europe. “We had a great time,” he said.
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‘We will leave when we die. We will have the real life after that’
We had sex maybe once a month. The constant rejection was soul-crushing, it felt like my ex didn’t even like me
But then, he said, “life, unfortunately, got in the way” and they lost contact. It was, he said, “such a shame. He was my best friend. The nicest guy I ever knew.”
Brian “Beezer” O’Reilly spoke of Mr Warnick’s skills as a chef and as a musician and how he had been listening over recent nights to Mr Warnick’s latest album, Delirium of Disorder.
“We had this phrase, homeless, not hopeless, and we tried to live that way, and Alex was a big proponent of that,” Mr O’Reilly told the approximately thirty people at the service.
“No matter how mad I got at him, or any of us got at him, he would find a way to make you laugh, or smile, or do both, right when you wanted to punch him in the face,” he said. “He is one of the best people I ever met.”
Mr Warnick’s body was found in the canal along with that of Donal Scanlan (49), close to two pop-up tents where they had been staying.
“His last act in life was a selfless act, a heroic act,” Mr O’Reilly said. “A man who he just knew socially, who was also on the streets, he saw that man struggling. Alex’s last act was to put his own self-preservation aside and jump into that canal and try to save that man’s life.”
Chris Drennan told the service that he and Mr Warnick had been friends for about five years, two of which were spent on the streets “with nothing ... We lived back to back. We looked after each other, like brothers do. But we had our heads held high, right the way through it.”
“You were more than my friend, you were my brother,” Mr Drennan said. “We would drink sometimes until we forgot what day it was. Sometimes, in my heart, they were the best times. I just hope you are at peace now.”
Mr Warnick was from Oregon and his father, who was listening from the United States, thanked those who had attended the service. He then became upset.
“I don’t know if I can really go on,” he said. “I am ripped apart.”
A woman, speaking from the body of the chapel, said: “Thank you for having him and bringing him into our lives.”
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