RTÉ's Tommie Gorman reflected on cancer battle during Moate talk
The much-loved RTÉ journalist Tommie Gorman, whose funeral took place last weekend, spoke publicly about his battle with cancer during a visit to Moate in recent years.
Mr Gorman made a speech in St Patrick’s Church in Moate as part of its 150th anniversary celebrations in April 2018.
Patsy McCormack kindly provided the Westmeath Independent with a transcript of Mr Gorman's address at the time, which was eloquent, moving and wide-ranging.
It touched on the peace process in Northern Ireland, his own Catholic faith, the late RTÉ broadcaster and Moate native Colm Murray, and Moate Community School's 2014 success in the All Ireland Schools Choir Competition, among other topics.
Discussing his longstanding battle with cancer, Tommie Gorman said he was "caught up in this ongoing mystery of life…and healing".
He told attendees it had been 24 years, at that stage, since he had first been diagnosed with a cancer condition.
"I was working in Belgium at the time. I was admitted to hospital for emergency surgery for what we thought was an appendix problem. It turned out I had a midgut primary, secondaries in my mysentery area and then lots of secondaries, known as mestasteses, on my liver.
"The worst moment was when my wife came bouncing in to see me with our nine-month daughter. There was a little prayer room in that hospital at Ottigny, outside Brussels, and I remember going there in the days immediately after my surgery.
"A sense of inner peace came from those moments: I came to understand that all of us are going to die. Nobody gets out of this place alive.
"My wish then was my daughter would have some sense of how much I love her before I passed away. Moya is 25 now. Our son Joe is 21. I’ve been given all I could ever hope for and more.
"I consider these grace notes years. I still have my disease. Over 30 tumours on my liver. I take an injection every 28 days. I’ve had several bouts of treatment, to keep the weeds cut. I get checked every six months. My next bout is in four weeks’ time.
"In a way it is like driving a car, knowing you have no spare tyre," he said.
"There are many days when I'm grateful for the cancer condition because it keeps me aware of what really matters. In a way it is liberating. It is a kind of a gift. You never know what is around the corner."
He spoke about the loss of his younger sister Paula, in 2016, and of how he always associates Moate with the late Colm Murray, his wife Ann, and their two daughters.
"Colm taught me something and it was an invaluable lesson. How you live can be a force for good. But how you die can also be a great gift, a great memory, a great legacy. Just as Colm taught me how to live, he taught me how to die.
"Nothing was held back by the quartet in the Murray family home during that final phase of Colm’s life.... And as with my sister, Paula, the presence of Colm stays with them, because love never dies," he said.
The full text of Tommie Gorman's talk in Moate in April 2018 can be read here:
"This day, a fortnight ago, across the porous border, the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement was being celebrated. Guess what age Bill Clinton is? 71. David Trimble, 73. John Hume 81, Seamus Mallon will be 82 in August, Bertie Ahern is 66, Tony Blair will be 65 next month. Among them George Mitchell really is the elder statesman. He is 84.
As they gathered in Belfast, in a way they reminded me of the 12 Apostles, having a reunion. The sense you got from them was they understood they had been party to a miracle. It is not an exaggeration to use the word when describing what has taken place on our island. The miracle of peace. Greatly helped by that group of people who gathered a fortnight ago. On their watch, the awful, senseless killing stopped.
Many of you here this evening will remember that feeling of helplessness and shame we experienced, day after day, when we heard that one more life had been taken. By a bullet or a bomb. And then we knew what would follow. The funeral, the grieving family lost for words and the sense that, sometime soon there would be an effort to settle the score ...to kill one from the other side.
I saw many of those key players up close a fortnight ago. Sadly, the illness that has affected his life for over two decades now, the way in which he carried our troubles like a cross, meant that John Hume couldn’t be there. But Bill Clinton fought the jet lag to cross the Atlantic. And so too did George Mitchell.
They mingled and they chatted with the likes of Monica McWilliams, John Alderdice and the others who sat around the table at Castle Buildings two decades ago. And although they’ve all had setbacks and disappointments in their lives, the overall sense you got from them was one of relief ... Together they had done something meaningful in their lives. It will probably amount to their greatest achievement. Together they were involved in what is a process of healing.
This place we are tonight: this institution is, in a way, involved in its own sort of peace process. I’m not going to try to establish what stage that process is at … how long it will take… or predict what if anything will emerge from it. But there is little doubt that it is underway … or is there any question that it was needed.
I’m a Catholic. I was brought up in a Catholic home. One of my aunts was a nun. We had two priests in the family. I was educated by Mercy nuns, then by Marist brothers and then at Summerhill, the diocesan college, with its quota of priests, in Sligo. I’m drawn to the ritual of mass every Sunday. Sometimes when walking I say the rosary. When I’m really in trouble, I pray and seek help. At its most basic sense, I like the values. They keep me between the ditches. They sometimes save me from myself and my excesses.
That beautiful guideline …’forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ They help me to make sense of things. And if after this life there is no life, that will be fine too. The principles and values have helped me throughout this life.
Many of the man-made structures within our church are under scrutiny. My view is bring it on. It is overdue. And whatever emerges, it will be a healthier place for it. But while it happens, I think we have to be very conscious of those who keep the doors open and keep the lights on.
Those who turn up to say the requiem masses at our funerals, who go home to their empty, often cold houses, night after night and get out of their beds, each morning, to begin a new day. Idealism encouraged them to make their vows; they were guided, then and now by a desire to do good for good’s sake. Their commitment is absolute; it is a life sentence: a vocation. And that level of dedication is extraordinary. They are believers in the values of healing.
In my own case, I’m caught up in this ongoing mystery of life…and healing.
It’s 24 years since I was diagnosed with a cancer condition. I was working in Belgium at the time. I was admitted to hospital for emergency surgery for what we thought was an appendix problem. It turned out I had a midgut primary, secondaries in my mysentery area and then lots of secondaries, known as mestasteses on my liver. The worst moment was when my wife came bouncing in to see me with our nine month daughter. There was a little prayer room in that hospital at Ottigny, outside Brussels, and I remember going there in the days immediately after my surgery.
A sense of inner peace came from those moments: I came to understand that all of us are going to die. Nobody gets out of this place alive. My wish then was my daughter would have some sense of how much I love her before I passed away. Moya is 25 now. Our son Joe is 21. I’ve been given all I could ever hope for and more. I consider these grace notes years. I still have my disease. Over 30 tumours on my liver. I take an injection every 28 days. I’ve had several bouts of treatment to keep the weeds cut. I get checked every six months. My next bout is in four weeks’ time.
In a way it is like driving a car, knowing you have no spare tyre. There are many days when I’m grateful for the cancer condition because it keeps me aware of what really matters. In a way it is liberating. It is a kind of a gift. You never know what is around the corner. But nobody goes through life without a quota of hay makers. This day, two years ago, my baby sister, Paula, died. She was 53. She suffered a brain haemorrhage in the bathroom of her wee house by the sea in Sligo one Sunday afternoon. Neighbours found her. She was a smashing human being. She ran a Resource House in Cranmore, in Sligo, and the people loved her. She rescued dogs.
Every Halloween night she ran an open house for the children of North Sligo. Her removal and funeral ceremonies were like those of Big Tom. I never thought she would die before me. I’m the third of four. We were brought up to be very close. I miss her dearly, but her life has reinforced the view that the good we do in life, the healing we attempt to foster, is worthwhile for its own sake.
One of your own, Colm Murray, certainly believed in that principle. We loved him in RTÉ, just as he was loved and admired by so many who had contact with him during the different phases of his life.
I had many private conversations with him about illness and the fight during the early stages of his diagnosis. He was such an example to us in the RTÉ workplace, how he fought and fought to continue exercising his craft. MND is such a relentless, crushing condition, but it couldn’t break Colm. I sometimes called to see him at his home in Clontarf with colleagues like Ed Mulhall and Declan McBennett. The love in that house, involving Ann and their daughters, Patricia and Kate, was extraordinary. It really was the real deal.
Colm taught me something and it was an invaluable lesson. How you live can be a force for good. But how you die can also be a great gift, a great memory, a great legacy. Just as Colm taught me how to live, he taught me how to die. Nothing was held back by the quartet in the Murray family home during that final phase of Colm’s life. I know that Ann is this very day, over visiting their daughter, Kate, who is working in Vietnam. And as with my sister, Paula, the presence of Colm stays with them, because love never dies.
There is a final, very personal reference, I wish to make about the principle of reaching beyond ourselves, about the concept of seeking out the positive and putting our faith in the value of good.
Just as I’ll forever associate Moate with Colm and Ann Murray, I will always link it with your community school. As our contribution to the dynamic of the peace process, in RTÉ’s Belfast Office, we came up with the idea of organising and television a Choirs Competition for second level schools. We’d run in on an All-Island basis and we’d work in association with the Co-Operation Ireland charity.
It was a sensible, almost defensive kind of a reaction – to get from the routine work and to promote what is positive activity, north and south among a post Good Friday Agreement generation. It turned out to be a fascinating adventure. We got into schools in all corners of the country. We got to see the wonderful work going on in the education sector.
We’d have four televised regional finals – two in the beautiful chapel in Maynooth, one in a venue North of the border and one at the School of Music in Cork. And then, each year, we’d stage the Grand Final, a one hour live programme, presented by my colleague and pal, Anne Cassin, at the Titanic Centre in Belfast.
It was a magnificent night – a hot ticket because the guests of honour were the likes of President McAleese, President Higgins, Northern Ireland’s first and deputy first ministers, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Peter Robinson – they all came. It was a great, happy, event each November.
Part of that adventure brought us to your local school, run by Tom Lowry and his colleagues. It was such an attractive place to visit because it was very welcoming.
We came across so many wonderful choirs during our travels. The strongest schools in Dublin were often the fee-paying ones. Like King’s Hospital, and Alexandra College and our overall winners Wesley College. In Northern Ireland, Methodist College, Belfast was exceptional. There was a consistently good choir from St Mary’s in that most musical of cities, Derry. We met a smashing choir in Mercy Roscommon and in the Ursuline in Sligo. Presentation Kilkenny had a great choir, we heard a wonderful choir in Fermoy, there was a great all boys choir in Waterford and the girls from Ballyphehane won the competition outright, too.
And it was here, in your community, that we met Lorna Duignan, and the choir of Moate Community School. They got a taste for the competition and then they went at the challenge with gusto. The way that Lorna applied herself to the task, you’d never have any sense of how busy she and her family were in other areas of their lives.
To my dying day, I’ll never forget the performance they gave on the iconic stairs in the Titanic Centre, the night they won the Grand Final, live on television. When they finished their performance of ‘John the Revelator’, the applause was such that the roof nearly came off the building. It was such an astonishing example of what can happen when we dig within ourselves and combine our talents towards the collective good.
We didn’t know it that night, but a whole series of events followed. Work became very busy, a sponsorship deal with the Bank of Ireland collapsed, then came Brexit to further complicate our working lives. As a result we haven’t found ourselves in a position to stage the competition since so, fittingly, perhaps, Moate Community School, under director Lorna Duignan, are our reigning champions.
I have a CD of their music in my car. It came with me down the road this evening and it will bring me back over the border to Belfast tonight as testimony to the healing power of good and an example of the goodness we have within ourselves, when circumstances force us to go looking for it."