“A coward” was how slain Dublin man John Pender’s wife described her husband’s murderer.
Speaking at the jam-packed celebration of his life on Saturday at Fitzpatrick Hotel, Killiney, Caroline McGuigan said:
"The only thing I will say about that man is that he was a coward."
The father of two, 53, was slashed in the neck while going to the toilet in an Irish pub while on the second night of a family holiday in the Costa del Sol two weeks ago.
And despite the callousness of his untimely passing, Caroline, his son Conor, 21, and daughter Amy, 18, who was draped in his jacket, made sure the service was “filled with joy and love”.
“I married some fella, he was deadly,” Caroline said.
“John never feared death because he said life is for living.
“If you said, ‘why, John?’ he would say, ‘why not?’
“He would say every morning, ‘I got to wake up’ and in the evening he would say, ‘I got a day.’”
Rob Carley, host of the two-hour celebration and family friend described him as a “man of peace”.
He added: "John didn’t have an angry bone in his body.
“He was a pacifist, he’d walk away from trouble.”
Mourners were asked to “dress colourfully” for the celebration for the charity worker and acupuncturist and they did so with gusto.
Such was his popularity, two ballrooms at the Fitzpatrick Castle hotel was jam-packed with multi-coloured mourners.
During the celebration, there were numerous karaoke-type sing-alongs to his favourite songs, including Rod Stewart’s I Was Only Joking, Fix You by Coldplay and Tennessee Whiskey by Chris Stapleton, while mourners were also asked to give each other a “John hug” during proceedings.
Instead of saying “amen”, attendees were asked to say, “Let’s do this for John”.
