Dozens of people attended the funeral service for a women who spent many years homeless, including living under a tree in a park on the outskirts of Belfast.
Ann Hillman, who was 72, died in late November at the Hollygate Lodge Care Home in Carryduff, where she lived in the last years of her life.
Mourners attending the service included people who never knew her after care home staff and a funeral home issued an appeal for people to gather to send off a “quiet and discreet” character.
“Anne’s story was complex, broken and something of a mystery to almost all of us here,” the Reverend Steve Ames, who conducted Monday’s service at Roselawn Crematorium, told the BBC.
“To many people, Ann was nobody. Just another invisible statistic of homelessness.
“Today, she is every one of the 55,000 souls in Northern Ireland who have no place to call home.
“Today, she is every life that didn’t go according to plan, every powerless person on the margins struggling to find a way in”.
Ann was a fixture around the Cathedral Quarter for many years before she was moved to Dundonald. She was often then seen sleeping under the tree in Moat Park.
Hollygate Lodge staff told the Irish News little was known about her background, that her life story was something of a mystery and that she revealed little.
But it is believed Ann was originally from England, had been married and had a son and daughter.
The staff did reveal Christmas was her favourite time of the year and that Fairytale of New York was her favourite, which she had playing all the time.
