WATCH: Richard gets incredible Sheelin send off

Family and friends gather to pay tribute.

The late Richard Ross Vetters would often stare up at the darkened sky overlooking Lough Sheelin. It was into that same sky his family and friends gazed when they gathered recently to honour his memory in a unique and poignant way.

The serenity of the late Saturday summer evening (June 8) that enveloped this close-knit lakeside gathering erupted momentarily in a burst of glittering blue and sparkling silver. As the last ember faded, a profound sense of peace settled.

Richard had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, aged 52 years, at Cavan General Hospital months earlier, on March 25, 2024.

An employee at Tara Mines, Richard reposed at St Joseph’s Chapel of Rest near Navan, before his family transported his earthly remains back to his native Scotland where a ceremony in celebration of his life took place before cremation.

It was his sister Suzanne McClenaghan, a funeral director by trade, who suggested loading her brother’s ashes into a specially-crafted firework shell.

WATCH: https://youtube.com/shorts/aMKy9RLEelc?feature=shared

“Richard and I had often talked about it [death],” explains Suzanne.

“I always said I’d want my ashes filled into lots of fireworks, because I’m like a kid in a sweetshop with fireworks, and he said that’d be ‘really cool’. So when he passed there was no question about what was going to happen.”

With half reserved to be blasted during ‘Hogmanay’, the Scot’s celebration of New Year, the other half of Richard’s ashes were carefully transported back to Ireland earlier this month for the planned Cavan get together.

One of a family of six, with three siblings, Richard first moved to Ireland from his beloved Bonar Bridge, a village in the Highlands on the north bank of the Kyle of Sutherland, around 24 years ago.

He started out as security at Tara, but quickly progressed and became a valued member of their exploration department.

He moved from Navan to Nobber, but lived the longest period of his life between Oldcastle and Tonagh, Mountnugent.

Richard was “one of a kind” says Declan McCabe of Sheelin Boats, who knew him well.

The deceased spent the last 10 years living at Sheelin Cottages and was “very popular locally”.

So well got was Richard that, after he died, seven friends from the local area travelled the same route by road that Richard would take twice a year. Three of them spoke at the Scottish memorial service.

Brian Meehan from Oldcastle had written a poem about Richard’s life, while Peter O’Dowd recited another. Martin Smith also spoke, and Declan carried with him the last photograph taken of Richard near his home just days before his untimely passing.

“Lough Sheelin, the whole area really, was very special to him,” says Declan of Richard’s affinity for living along the Cavan-Meath border.

A regular at Speedy’s, and an equally familiar face at Farrelly’s, Richard loved to debate the latest topic of the day and enjoyed the company of others.

“He was very straight talking, with a huge heart,” says Suzanne of her “big brother”. “He was my go to. If I wanted to be told something straight, he was that guy.

He’d do anything for anybody. He was my big brother. He was just always there.”

Despite years of trying to coax him back across the Irish Sea, Suzanne says after visiting Cavan, she and her brothers Scott and Robert realised Richard had found a “home” for himself here.

“It touched us completely, because I always felt I loved him more,” says Suzanne, her voice breaking with emotion. “To know how much they liked him, enough to take him into their hearts and homes, that was really touching for us as a family.”

Richard loved whiskey too, amassing quite the collection, and an extensive knowledge to go with it. He was considered quite the connoisseur and had in one corner of his home an ‘Infinity Bottle’ - a blend of various whiskeys Richard would find particularly palatable and worthy of being added to the mix.

After the fireworks were let off, Richard’s family and friends each had a shot from the bottle.

“It tasted lovely,” reports Suzanne, before laughing: “I could hear my brother in the back of my mind somewhere looking at us all swigging this and shouting ‘No! Sip it! It has to be savoured!’.”

Back at Sheelin Cottages, the honouring of Richard’s memory continued, with a singer organised by Declan who learned the words to Dougie MacLean’s folk ballad, ‘Caledonia’.

There wasn’t, Suzanne is confident to admit, a dry eye left in the house after.

“It was really beautiful. We all sang that.

We had a ceili, about 30 or 40 people came round.

It was really incredible to see the impact Richard had on the lives of all these people,” Suzanne reflects.

“It was lovely as well for everyone to say when they met him, their experiences, and for us to hear all this, because Richard would speak to us about all these people, and through him we already felt like we knew them.

To know he had the impact he had on us on other people, it’s wonderful really.”