At Tom Cavanagh’s funeral, on a clear New England winter day, the eyes of mourners gathered at the cemetery were drawn upward by a remarkable sight.

Two rainbows had appeared in the sky — one inverted in the shape of a smile.

As people pointed to the vision, some gasped, some cried. Others cheered.

“It was like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said Rob Riley, Cavanagh’s last coach. “It was a cold morning, and it formed as the service was ending. It was just surreal.”

To Joe Cavanagh, the grieving father, it was a sign.

From all appearances, Tom Cavanagh was a young man with everything. A Harvard graduate. A hockey player who briefly reached his sport’s pinnacle by playing with the San Jose Sharks. A friendly, engaging personality.

“It was impossible not to like him,” Sharks defenseman Jason Demers said. “He was always such a happy guy. That’s why this came as such a shock to everyone.”

On Jan. 6, Cavanagh locked his car at a Providence, R.I., mall parking structure and jumped from an upper level to his death. He was 28.

Only later did people begin to realize the most amazing thing about Tom Cavanagh. He had accomplished so much in his short life despite waging a battle with mental illness that he managed to conceal almost entirely.

Even though he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and suffered a series of psychotic episodes that required him to be institutionalized four times in his final months, Cavanagh still was playing pro hockey last fall. He was considering law school. And, in the words of his father, he was trying so hard to comprehend what was wrong with him.

“My son was a good boy,” Joe Cavanagh said. “He was everything you would want if you were a coach or a teammate. He was so smart and capable, and yet to see him struggling so much just to function in life “…”

His voiced trailed off.

“As tragic as this is, it’s a relief to know that he’s out of this torment. He’s not suffering anymore.”

Honest player

Back home in Warwick, R.I., he was just Tommy. The middle child of nine, he was part of a large extended family with two central tenets in their lives — their Catholic faith and hockey.

Cavanagh might not have been born with a stick in his hand, but it was close. Joe Cavanagh, a prominent attorney, starred at Harvard and is a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. All five of his sons are hockey players, but Tom was special.

A left wing, the 6-foot, 200-pound Cavanagh had followed in his father’s skates to a stellar career at Harvard, where he also lived down the dormitory hall from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Cavanagh wasn’t the best skater, and a college knee injury robbed him of another step, but the Sharks already had seen enough to make him a sixth-round pick in 2001. Perhaps they sensed something that his future teammates have said repeatedly since his death: He was an honest hockey player.

“He might have beaten the odds a little bit just to play up here,” said Sharks assistant captain Ryane Clowe, who played a season with Cavanagh at San Jose’s American Hockey League affiliate in Worcester, Mass. “He wasn’t a flashy player. But you could tell he really cared about the game and would do anything.”

Several other Sharks played with Cavanagh in Worcester, and they remembered him as a quiet but witty teammate who seemed to know something about everything.

“Sometimes with hockey players, we don’t have a lot of other interests,” said defenseman Mike Moore, who has shuttled between San Jose and Worcester this season. “But you liked hanging out with him because he had a way of starting conversations among the team on anything like current events, politics or history.”

Cavanagh remains Worcester’s all-time leading scorer — 138 points in 202 games. But no hockey player wants to be a minor league star. And Cavanagh got a chance to live his NHL dream in 2008-09 when he played 18 games for the Sharks.

“When we were trying to convince San Jose to call him up, I told them that his will exceeded his skill,” said Roy Sommer, the Worcester coach. “That’s Tommy Cavanagh in a nutshell. He was an ugly skater. He had some hip problems. His shot wouldn’t break a pane of glass. But he found a way because he was a determined kid. He was just a winner.”

Cavanagh, who had one goal and two assists with the Sharks, made a bigger impression off the ice. He volunteered at the Oakland Ice Center to work with children who normally couldn’t afford to play hockey.

“He genuinely seemed to appreciate the chance to help kids,” said Melissa Fitzgerald, general manager of the center. “We still have kids running around the facility with sticks and clothing that he signed. He really inspired them.”

After the season, the Sharks did not re-sign Cavanagh. Sommer thought that Cavanagh’s time in San Jose, rather than being a career highlight, somehow had left him a little bitter. That wasn’t the Tommy he knew.

“What’s so hard to understand now is I had no idea that he was having these mental issues,” Sommer said. “None. That’s why when I first heard what happened, I thought: ‘They must have the wrong guy here.’ “

Signs of illness

Joe Cavanagh began seeing subtle changes in his son around age 13 or 14. He was a little too quiet, too self-contained. While he thought Tom might have mild depression, he also chalked it up to his son’s humble nature. Tommy was always humble.

“In a hockey family like ours, brothers and cousins wanted to hear all about his experiences and what it was like in the NHL,” he said. “But he just wouldn’t share them.”

For those closest to Cavanagh, his illness became apparent in November 2009 when he suffered his first psychotic episode. He was briefly institutionalized and, in what would become a pattern, responded well to medication and was released. He even joined the AHL’s team in Manchester, N.H., later that season, playing in 17 games before suffering a shoulder injury.

He was hospitalized again in April after becoming violent and breaking furniture in a doctor’s office. But he was well enough to begin this season with an AHL team in Springfield, Mass.

“It’s amazing how he was able to perform at such a high level, knowing what we do now,” said Riley, Cavanagh’s coach at Springfield. “But God only knows what he was dealing with outside the rink.”

Cavanagh’s hockey friends still had no idea what he was battling. When Springfield played an exhibition against Worcester, Cavanagh and former teammate Steven Zalewski talked after the game.

“He seemed pretty normal and fine,” said Zalewski, who roomed with Cavanagh in Worcester. “He was just the guy I’ve always known.”

Springfield’s first game of the year was in Providence, and the Cavanagh family turned out to watch.

“He played terrific, but I didn’t care about hockey,” Joe Cavanagh said. “I was just concerned about his mental health.”

Cavanagh had another episode in November. He walked through the Springfield team offices with no clothes and was mumbling to himself on the street before returning inside, his father said.

He had played his last hockey game.

In his final weeks, there was more erratic behavior. Once, as a passenger in his brother’s car and for no apparent reason, he opened the door while the vehicle was moving. In December, he tried to hurt himself in the family home and was hospitalized again.

“He would tell me that he can’t feel any emotion, that he can’t engage with people, that he felt disassociated and that this was the way he felt his whole life,” Joe Cavanagh said. “At one point he asked me: ‘Dad, would you kill me?’ Another time he said: ‘Why is God doing this to me? Why is my mind like this?’

“But that was schizophrenia. He was starting to hear voices and commands. Here’s a boy who is as tough as can be and knows right from wrong, and he fought so hard to keep it under control. But it got to the point where he just couldn’t function. It was so hard to see him deteriorate.”

The day Cavanagh committed suicide, he had an afternoon doctor’s appointment scheduled. Joe Cavanagh phoned the doctor to say that Tom had seemed especially depressed in recent days.

The doctor called back that evening to say Cavanagh had not shown up. He also missed a dinner date with his girlfriend. Later that night, a Providence police lieutenant broke down as he delivered the news to Joe Cavanagh.

His son had killed himself at 10:30 that morning. The Rhode Island state medical examiner said Cavanagh died of “multiple traumatic injuries due to blunt force impact.”

Cavanagh’s doctor sat with the family later to explain why Tom might have done this. He told them how the schizophrenia can manifest itself in males in their mid to late 20s. It can be, he said, a raging fire that grows out of control.

“He painted a rather dismal picture of what the future is for someone with this disease,” Joe Cavanagh said. “That’s why we’re happy that he didn’t hurt someone and he’s not in jail.”

Paying respect

At the wake, people waited in line for as much as 3﻿1/2 hours in subfreezing weather. Hockey teams, including Worcester and Harvard, brought buses filled with their players.

“The line snaked around the building, down the side and out into the back parking lot,” Moore said. “The whole town came out. That just showed how many people he influenced in his time here.”

One of Cavanagh’s uncles, Father Dave Cavanagh, who also played at Harvard, officiated the funeral Mass.

In the ensuing days, Joe Cavanagh reflected on his son’s impact. The people with frozen hands from waiting outside because they wanted to say what Tom had meant to them. The letter carrier who said he has never seen so many cards and letters delivered to one house. The testimonials from coaches and people who played with Tom.

Those rainbows that seemed to appear from nowhere.

To Joe Cavanagh, they were a sign.

“Tommy’s at peace now,” he said.

Contact Mark Emmons at 408-920-5745.