The late Irish journalist and author Nuala O’Faolain was a steadfast friend and a woman of wit, grace and humour, mourners at her funeral heard today.
In her eulogy, broadcaster and close friend Marian Finucane paid tribute to the
[Nuala] was a woman of wit, of grace and humour, a brilliant mind and a steadfast friend. - Marian Finucane
68-year-old writer, describing her as a great scholar with a brilliant mind.
Ms O’Faolain died on Friday after being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year.
Just weeks ago she talked of her terminal illness in a frank radio interview with Ms Finucane, for which she won widespread acclaim for her honesty in facing death.
Today, in bright sunshine, hundreds of people including writers, journalists and Ms O’Faolain’s former partner Nell McCafferty packed the Church of the Visitation in north Dublin for a simple service.
“[Nuala] was a woman of wit, of grace and humour, a brilliant mind and a steadfast friend,” Ms Finucane said.
“Nuala was a woman of great scholarship, medieval English, 19th-century English in Oxford, and yet all of us know that her real gift was taking complex ideas and expressing them in the simplest of 20th and 21st century English in a way that was accessible to one and all.”
Ms O'Faolain had worked as a pioneering producer for RTE and BBC but was best known for her stark 1996 memoir, Are You Somebody?She had also penned the novel My Dream of Youand a second memoir Almost There.
She had been living in New York prior to her death - most recently commentating on the US presidential election race for RTÉ radio.
Speaking on RTÉ in early April, the author said she had shunned chemotherapy to spend her last days travelling with friends and talked about facing death.
Nuala O'Faolain
“I had no idea, nor did she, of the profound and spiritual effect it would have on so many others,” Ms Finucane said of that now famous interview, which she added had touched thousands of people.
Referring to her own tragedy, the death of her daughter Sinead in 1990 of leukaemia, Ms Finucane said Ms O’Faolain, along with her then partner Ms McCafferty, offered her grieving family constant support.
“A very large part of my friendship with Nuala was when she was with Nell, and they were part of our extended family, and they would visit all the time.
“She (Nuala) talked to me the way others wouldn’t because they would be afraid I would cry and she would say ‘sure cry away, and talk through it,'" Ms Finucane noted. “She was a steadfast friend.”
Giving a hint of the late writer’s complex personality. Ms Finucane talked of Ms O’Faolain’s at times solitary life as well as her desire for friendship and fear of being alone.
Family and friends - including Irish TimesEditor Geraldine Kennedy, author Colm Tóibín and Labour TD Michael D Higgins - were at today's funeral.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen was represented by his aide-de-camp.
PA