THE first place I went to when the IRA called its first ceasefire, 25 years ago this coming Saturday, was to the Republican Plot in Milltown Cemetery.
On that momentous and deeply moving occasion in August 1994 I wanted to spend time with those young IRA volunteers I knew from the Short Strand, who had died on their own streets or other streets of Belfast, in the service of Ireland's freedom.
I traced my finger and let it linger over the names on the County Antrim memorial of those I grew up with and played with in the streets of the Short Strand/Ballymacarrett - days that in our innocence were fun-filled and carefree.
As I touched their names on the memorial their young faces smiled back at me: Gerard Bell doubled-over laughing with the broadest smile; Gerard Steele and his quiet private manner; Rab Dorrian and Joe Magee, married fathers, older than us, with children, who I knew of but did not know.
Joey Fitzsimmons playing his accordion and his impish smile; Jackie Mc Elhone in his Wranglers and boots and long hair; Martin Engelen, tall, angular, rushing about, keys jangling from his belt; Eddie Mc Donnell's sweet powerful rendition of Mary from Dungloe.
Joey Surgenor, a loner, fearless; Francis Fitzsimons, long-legged and a handsome father - a leader from a family of leaders; Paul Marlowe, who died with Joey and Francis, and who I knew only as a 'man of mystery'.
And teenager James 'Parlo' O'Neill, a member of Na Fianna Eireann on Belfast's New Lodge Road, our paths crossing fleetingly.
Brendan O Callaghan of whom I have so many memories, particularly he and his wife and their two young boys, holding the children's hands and Brendan's striking smile.
I also stood in front of the graves of Bobby Sands, Joe Mc Donnell and Kieran Doherty and thought of the other hunger strikers I had visited in the H-Blocks and prison hospital: Francis Hughes, Raymond Mc Creesh, Tom McElwee, Martin Hurson, Patsy O Hara.
The only ones I did not see in that grim prison in that tragic, incredible and heroic year of 1981 were Kevin Lynch and Micky Devine.
Ten men dead - and after the hunger strike ended every demand was conceded by a vindictive government only interested in revenge.
The IRA volunteers I knew were ordinary, decent human beings; the children of parents and grandparents who had been made to feel and were treated as second class.
Others from our district died, innocents, alongside the IRA volunteers, and at the hands of loyalists. Scores of republicans and supporters went to jail, or lived 'on the run'.
We paid dearly to live in freedom in our own country. We paid dearly to be recognised and treated with respect in the land of our birth.
The IRA bore a heavy toll - nor do I forget it extracted one as well, especially those civilians who died.
As did the other combatants: the British government and its multiple forces including loyalist paramilitaries.
And we live with the legacy of all of that - and for those hurt, an unbearable, unwanted and unremitting legacy of pain.
The IRA and its community in the Short Strand were a response to the oppression, injustices and humiliations, the crushing of civil rights, and to the conviction that we would not get our civil rights until we got our national rights.
It was also part of a historical response to British interference in Ireland and an indifference which has been met by armed uprising as circumstances demanded.
It is the lesson of Irish history. It is the lesson of world history.
On this special anniversary nationalists and republicans, and unionists and loyalists, have much to reflect on (I doubt if British politicians will), and to remember all the dead and pledge to them to learn the lessons from bitter conflict that honest engagement, dialogue and respect, is the only way forward.
The IRA's historic ceasefire of August 31 1994 changed things utterly and opened up a peaceful path to a new and independent Ireland, for which so many of my friends, whose names are etched on the headstones of Milltown Cemetery, laid down their young lives.
