In his Leaving Cert year, Mark O'Shaughnessy wrote an article called "A Parting Note" in the school yearbook.
He wrote that he would always remember joining the auxiliary fire service "probably because I'll be a member for many years when I leave school".
The 25-year-old did not get that wish. He died with colleague Brian Murray while fighting a fire at a disused factory in Bray, Co Wicklow, last Wednesday.
At his funeral yesterday, Fr Finbarr Mullane recalled those words and said Mark had squeezed "many years" into his short time with the Bray Fire Service.
Thousands packed into the Church of Our Lady Queen of Peace in Bray for the funeral of the fireman from Sidmonton Road. Busloads of uniformed firefighters came from all over the State, as did Civil Defence members. Mark had worked with the Civil Defence for several years before joining the Bray Fire Service. Members of the Murray family also attended the funeral.
At the Requiem Mass, Mark was remembered as a loyal friend and brother, a rock in hard times and someone who was full of life.
The mourners were led by his mother Marie, brother Eamonn, sister Niamh and girlfriend Hazel O'Brien.
Fr Mullane said Mark and Brian were two young men who had made "the ultimate sacrifice of their lives for the safety and the welfare of our community in Bray". In recent days, Bray had become "very small, very united in our sorrow for the victims and in our concern for the welfare of the families".
A friend of Mark later recited the Fireman's Prayer which ends with the lines "and if according to your will, I am to give my life, please bless with your protecting hand, my children and my wife".
Mark's brother Eamonn told the congregation that Mark had been "the best friend any man could ask for. Today you are all his family," he said. He recalled how happy the family were when Mark met his girlfriend Hazel. "They were so much in love and so good for each other," he said. Hazel gave the first reading from the Book of Wisdom, faltering once when she spoke of souls being at peace.
Eamonn said that although Mark was the youngest sibling, "he was always making sure we were okay. He was our rock, he was our rock in hard times.
"If you ever needed him, he would drop everything to be there for you without hesitation."
Mark's best friend Keith Gordon recalled years of fun and mischief with "Shaughers", singling out the day the pair borrowed Mark's sister's car.
"Not only did you manage to crash the car, but you crashed the car in your own garden and into your own house," he said.
"But it was the days when we were five or six, playing guns in the long grass in the back garden, that I will cherish forever. You were more than my best friend, you were my brother, my closest confidant, my co-conspirator, my most trusted loyal adviser."
He said the song Two Little Boys would always remind him of Mark. It tells of the friendship between two boys who grew up to be soldiers and how one saves the other's life on a battlefield years later.
As the coffin left the church, organist and tenor Joe Bollard segued from You Raise Me Up into the music of Two Little Boys.
Then piper and fireman Barney Mulhall played a slow lament as a fireman and a Civil Defence member carried a firefighter's helmet and beret and gloves.
As a bell tolled, the coffin was placed on a red fire service vehicle. Hundreds of firefighters and Civil Defence members walked behind it as it took Mark to his final resting place in Springfield Cemetery.
Brian Murray will be buried at the same cemetery today.
