I knew from our periodic meetings that Cecil Paris’s health had taken a turn for the worse and when I was told he was at Mater Dei Hospital I went to see him. Other than looking rather frail, he seemed normal and his conversation was laced with his customary humour. I never imagined he would be gone so soon, after only a few days.

Our friendship goes back a long time, since we were schoolmates at the Lyceum and, over the last several decades, it deepened as he regularly dispensed sound medical advice to all my family and to me, especially, in the dark days of the 1970s.

The humane nature underlying his medical advice evidently endeared him to his patients as was very clear from the record crowd that braved the exceptional summer heat at his funeral Mass, a moving outpouring of love and respect from all who knew him.

He was a lovely person and he will be sorely missed by his family, patients and friends.

May he rest in the peace he so richly deserves and may God grant his family the equanimity to bear their great loss.