Hundreds of people packed a north cathedral yesterday to pay their last respects to a football-mad young chef.
And they were urged to remember the “funny and sensitive” person Lachlan Simpson was rather than the tragic circumstances of his death.
The 21-year-old from Embo went missing after failing to return home from the Sutherland Show dance in Dornoch.
His body was found more than a month later in an Aberdeenshire harbour.
Mourners at Dornoch Cathedral yesterday heard that he was a keen sportsman with a love of football – and particularly Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
The Rev Susan Brown said Mr Simpson had described attending the club’s historic Scottish Cup final win on May 30 as “the best day of his life”.
And in a poignant tribute, she presented Mr Simpson’s family with a pennant signed by Caley Jags players.
Among the floral tributes, was one shaped like a T-shirt in the club’s colours.
Mrs Brown said that Mr Simpson’s death was a reminder of the “fragility of all our lives”.
But she urged the hundreds of people packed into the cathedral to think of the “funny, sensitive and daft” Lachlan, instead of how he died.
She said: “We cannot understand why this has happened, but happened it has.
“What we can do is remember him as he lived.
“We can understand and remember the person that Lachlan was.”
The service opened with the playing of the song Candy by Paolo Nutini, which Mrs Brown said was one of many songs Mr Simpson enjoyed singing.
She said that during his schooldays the “always sporty” Mr Simpson had coached younger pupils, before moving away to study coaching at college.
He returned to the Highlands to train as a chef.
Mr Simpson was described as “brightening up many school days with his daftness”, and as someone who was always available for a night out and “could never say no to his friends”.
Following the service, Mr Simpson was buried at Proncynain Cemetery on the outskirts of Dornoch.
His body was recovered from the harbour at Whitehills near Banff on Wednesday, September 2 after being spotted by a local resident.
It brought to an end a huge search operation which had been launched following the 21-year-old’s disappearance in the early hours of Sunday, July 26 at the show dance.
Hundreds of local residents helped police, coastguards, mountain rescue teams and the Search and Rescue Dog Association scour the countryside near Dornoch in the days after he was reported missing.
At the funeral service Mrs Brown paid tribute to everyone who took part in the searches, saying “God was in everyone who put on a welly boot.”
She also thanked the people in the north-east who found his body and “brought him home”.
Albert Ritchie, who spotted Lachlan’s body close to his seafront home in Whitehills, said he was “relieved” for the family.
Chief Inspector Iain MacLelland, who led the search operation, said he hoped the discovery of his body would bring “some form of closure” to his friends and families.