JOHN SCALLY pays tribute to his friend and colleague who died in June

 

A heavy wave of sadness swept over me recently when I heard that former RTÉ journalist Tommie Gorman had died at the age of 68. He was a native of Sligo and educated in Summerhill College.
I am left with three enduring memories of Tommie. Firstly, was his courage. In January of 1994 he was given a diagnosis that would change his life. “I was working in Brussels at the time and had been home for Christmas,” he told me.

“I had what I thought was an upset stomach. At the time, I was doing a lot of early mornings and late nights, travelling a lot, so I put it down to lifestyle.”
When he returned to Brussels, he saw his doctor and was admitted to hospital with a suspected ruptured appendix. “I went into surgery thinking I had an appendix problem and I woke up with a primary tumour in my intestine, and multiple tumours on my liver.

“I’m not a very religious person, but I remember there was a little oratory in the hospital,” he recalled. “I remember going there and making a deal with whoever is up there, asking them to give me a few years to tidy things up.”

The shadow of serious illness put things in perspective for him. “Suddenly, everything makes sense. You realise that we are all only passing through and you get a completely different perspective on life. You realise that there hasn’t been a person since the beginning of time that hasn’t experienced this at some stage. It’s a journey we are all on.”

Tommie had a strategy to live well, with cancer. “You have the disease, but the last thing you want is that the people close to you, the people who love you, get entangled in the process and that they get damaged by it. It’s one thing dealing with your own illness, but if you have the sadness of your condition affecting someone you love is when the second wave of trauma can destroy you.

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