Doc went through his life without a mote of malice or cynicism...he made lives better

Peter 'The Doc' Roche was indisputably the best of us

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FROM a tap piped directly to his huge, generous heart, he filled his days dispensing acts of kindness, good humour and the priceless treasure of his gentle, lived-in wisdom.

Dublin and many from a great deal further afield - knew him as The Doc, and it might have been in recognition of how he medicated the psyche of anybody who entered his orbit with the antibiotic of his unique, sunlit personality.

Upon hearing the not unexpected yet still crushing news of Peter Roche's passing, I found myself searching for a half-remembered line from Donal Ryan's moving and lyrical novel about loss, Strange Flowers.

Here it is: "[He] felt such a wave of love wash over him that he was nearly knocked to the ground by it, and he put out his hand to steady himself..."

Many of us felt that concussive rush of emotion hit like a wrecking-ball in recent days.

To describe Peter as just a great friend to those whose lives he so profoundly touched would be the equivalent of itemising Everest as a small hillock, a mere bump in the road.

Doc towered over the landscape in the fashion of that Himalayan leviathan, a mountainous though never a brooding presence, a second father or a beloved sibling to what seemed like half the city, a once-in-a-lifetime trafficker in the narcotic of benevolence.

A special and beautiful and irreplaceable man.

Somehow, he advanced through this troubled world without a single dust mote of malice or cynicism landing on his jacket lapel. He lived to make lives better.

Little wonder, then, that on the flagpole of many souls, the standard flies at half mast this morning.

Doc was at once a gentleman and the gentlest of men. Interesting and interested. Charming and always charmed. A great conversationalist. An even better listener.