Young faces fill church in farewell to 'awesome dude'

Sebastian Creane’s peers paid tribute to his style, creativity and contagious enthusiasm

HUNDREDS OF young people were among the overflowing congregation at the funeral yesterday of Sebastian Creane, the 22-year-old student who was stabbed to death at his Bray home on August 16th.

His assailant, Shane Clancy, who took his own life after the stabbing, was buried last Thursday.

Row upon row of young faces, pale, tearful, bewildered, filed into the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer on Bray’s Main Street, in their formal black suits, casual bright hoodies or shirt sleeves to say farewell to a friend they characterised as calm and gentle, an “awesome dude” with a “ridiculous” sense of humour and a magnificent moustache.

The clothes they had chosen reflected the part of Sebastian’s life they shared. Purple Converse trainers – some obviously brand new – were worn by several of his fellow students from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, a collective homage to the distinctive “basketball squeaking” of Sebastian’s own well-worn Converse on the photographic studio floor.

Others saluted his bohemian style with their purple hoodies and black and white scarves.

The simple wicker casket, wreathed in garden flowers and foliage along with the single red rose placed there by Sebastian’s girlfriend Jennifer Hannigan – who was wounded in the stabbing incident – bore photographs of a characteristically ebullient Sebastian, “radiant, forever young”, in the words of chief celebrant, Fr Brendan MacHale.

More than an hour before the 10am Mass began – heralded by Bridge over Troubled Watersung by Tommy Fleming and accompanied by Phil Coulter – many of Sebastian's old friends from St Gerard's, Bray, and from college in Dún Laoghaire, huddled in the porch around the scrapbook of memories, tributes and photographs they would later present as offertory gifts.

The offerings also included a guitar – “a symbol of his love of music, one of the many bonds between him and [his brother] Dylan”; a camera; and – symbols of the “fun times” – a Nintendo console and a collection of photographs, including one of Sebastian sky-diving with his mother, Nuala.

Phil Coulter followed these with his own offertory gift – a specially composed, sweet piano lament.

Later six of Sebastian’s friends walked to the lectern to offer prayers for the faithful, thanking God for their friend’s creativity, for his “contagious enthusiasm”, for his willingness to take time out for those around him, for his music, skateboarding and photographs; they honoured his brother Dylan’s courage “in coming to the aid of Sebastian”.

Fr MacHale added a prayer for the family of Shane Clancy, making a brief reference to that time “when beauty disappears and only the demonic takes over”.

In his homily, Fr MacHale referred to Sebastian's parents, James and Nuala, as people who summed up "very vividly" the depth of the psalm The Lord is my Shepherd.

“On Thursday, James said ‘It’s like I’m in a tsunami but I’m okay’. And then here on Saturday, as we prepared this liturgy . . . Nuala said ‘I grieve, I don’t suffer, I don’t believe we’re sent here to suffer.’”

Fr MacHale described Sebastian’s love of music as his act of thanksgiving and quoted from the writings of the poet and philosopher John O’Donohue:

“Though your days here were brief,/ Your spirit was alive, awake, complete:/ Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,/ As close to us as we are to ourselves.”

Sebastian’s music lives on from inside that rhythm of life and binds him to his parents, to Dylan, Laura and Jen and all his friends, Fr MacHale said, quoting another John O’Donohue prayer:

“Let us not look for you only in memory/ Where we would grow lonely without you,/ You would want us to find you in presence.”

One of Sebastian’s closest friends, Daragh Coulter, read from the Book of Wisdom: “Length of days is not what makes age honourable, nor number of years the true measure of life . . . They have been carried off so that evil may not warp their understanding or treachery seduce their souls; for the fascination of evil throws good things into the shade, and the whirlwind of desire corrupts a simple heart.”

The second reading from St Paul urged its listeners to “fill your minds with those things that are good and deserve praise, things that are true, noble, right, pure and lovely and honourable”.

At Communion, Something Inside so Strong, the Labi Siffre song written about Nelson Mandela and apartheid, was sung by Tommy Fleming, followed by a recording of Neil Hannon's Songs of Love, during which tears fell freely:

“So while you have time/ Let the sun shine down from above/ And fill you with songs of love.”

At that point, Nuala Creane, accompanied by her surviving son Dylan, who was also severely injured in the incident, rose to deliver a eulogy rich in faith and encouragement, much of it clearly directed at the many young people in the church.

“The light that shone in Seb shines in you also, in its own special way. Let it shine and be at peace,” she said.

To the strains of Phil Coulter and Tommy Fleming singing Steal Away, the coffin was borne from the church and from there to Sebastian's final resting place at Leigue Cemetery in his parents' native Ballina, Co Mayo.