They say that a week is a long time in politics.Whatever about the truth in that it surely is in the death and burial of ordinary and extraordinary people,which Tommy surely was.
Last Sunday after Mass I spoke to James Brady and Oliver Carty about the health of Tommy Farrelly.For those who don't know James was the very best friend of Tommy in his illness and constantly available to do whatever it was Tommy wanted.
It is stated that a friend inded is there when you are in need.And James was that friend in spades.His mother and mine were first cousins.
James told me that Tommy would be getting radium treatmenr during the week in Dublin,that he was not allowed to carry him up and that a taxi would be sent for him each day.
Well Monday went according to plan.On Tuesday he didn't want to go and it was only on James' coaxing that Tuesday would be his last day that he reluctantly went.
He came home later and his brother Seamus and his wife Mary made him tay and such like in his house and returned to their own house alongside his satisfied that he was o.k.
A few hours later Father Brendan Madden ,a good Dub.and a Dunderry resident, popular with all here who know him ,called to see him..He was minutes late.Tommy had died in his armchair ,no distress.
Was his reluctance to go to Dublin that day the result of a premonition of some sort.We will never know in this life.
I last saw Tommy a few months ago when he was supervising the construction of the Bench to honour Eugene Smyth ,the late Lord Mayor of Dunderry.Tommy was his wing man in the early eighties when he and Marie Dowd ran fund raising events to raise money to pay for the GAA PITCH.
Against such influential opponents as Michael Callaghan,Pat Smith and the Darcy Clan they raised thousands and handed it over and thus garnered Eugene the right to call himself Lord Mayor.
There was something unsaid for decades between Eugene and the GAA Club and Eugene would never let me know what was at the root of it.
I questioned Tommy about it after Eugene died and came to understand Eugene's silence on the issue.And this was it.
When the GAA Pitch was opened in 1988 ,an event I attended with my uncles Joe and Tommy Mc Cormack,all the people who helped to put it there were invited well in advance ,except Eugene Smyth.
I t was only the night brfore the opening ,when a final meeting was called to discuss strategy that the question was raised was anything overlooked.
Tommy spouted up "that ye forgot to invite the man who made all this possible .Eugene Smyth"and the penny dropped.
Eugene was invited after Mass the next day a Sunday for the opening a few hours later.
In fact he had planned to leave his son Mickie to Dublin Airport to emigrate to England that Sunday and had to make alternative arrangements at short notice.
It is easy to understand just why Eugen and indeed Tommy were miffed at this oversight,a feeling they carried afterwards for life.
Tommy was the third child of his mother Rose Rattigan and his father, Tommy also.His older brother Seamus and Seamus's wife Mary and their kids did all humanely possible to make his life bearable in his final months and indeed for as long as he was sick.
AS did his sister Nancy ,her husmand Seamus Farnnan.and their 7 kids,6 boys and 1 girl ,Nancy and her husnband Seamus being practically daily callers.
Tommy was well loked after and well loved,gruff and all as he could be.
His mother Rosie and his uncle Pat lived next door to my mother's people the Mc Cormacks in THE Curragh Boreen.
I came on holidays to the Mc Cormacks from about 1955 and have a continuous presence here since then.
I knew and loved Pat Rattigan,Tommy's uncle , as though he was one of my own.
Himself and the Mc Cormacks were inseperable friends.A day never passed without Pat calling to Mc Cormacks,save the last two days of his existence in the early 1980's when he wasn't seen for two days.He was dead in bed and at the Mc Cormacks note of his non appearance the Gardai were called out and the house broken into.
At the time there were reports of break ins to the homes of elderly people and Pat was found with a shotgun in the bed for fear of robbery.The gun was not discharged .Pat died in his sleep .
As a matter of historical fact a neck purse which Pat wore around his neck and which was known to contain a considerable wad was never found
ANOTHER OF LIFE'S MYSTERIES.
Pat Rattigan was a man of huge strenght and the best man to tell a white lie.His great loves were Football and Hurling ,Horse racing and shooting, his land housing the run for the raising of pheasants for the gunclub.
The kitchen of his two roomed house was covered in newspaper clippings od GAA people and horses and jockeys.
Johnny Fucking Roe was his favourite Irish jockey and Lester Pigott his favourite English one .
He built his house about 1961 and skied the recently made stilts of myself and my brother Robert to make the window sills.
We got revenge by using his prized geraniums as target practice for a pellet gun a fact that didn't become apparent until the stems split several ways with further growth.
"You see you tuesdays "he would roar at us "ye destroyed me Geraniums.
The reason I mention Pat Rattigan at all is because ,a bachelor,he was hugely proud of all of Rosie's kids ,especially Tommy to whom he left the place in his will.
There is also the indisputable that Tommy was the spit of Pat in appearance and mannerism.
Both used colourful language,.both walked with the same gait,both told white lies and both were bachelors.
Both were hard workers,Pat being one of the first around to secure a job in the building of the China Mission at Garlow Cross So many people died at the building of this place that it became known as the "White Man's grave and Tommy being described to me as former employer Eamonn Kane as a superb worker.
Tommy had a great interest in his forebearers,especially his mother's people.
At one stage four old women from the Curragh Boreen survived,my mother ,Molly Mc Cormack my aunt,his mother Rosie and Mainin Herbert.Even though they lived close ,with the exception of my mother,they wouldn't have met in decades.
He wanted my mother and Molly to meet up for one last time.
I worked on it and ewventually brought Molly over after a 7.30 Saturday Mass to Farrelly's Now these women were well in their seventies then and I watched gobsmacked as Molly said "Well gersa ,how have you been this forty years.And so it went.
Umfortunatelt death took my mother and Rosie before they could meet.I don't know about Mainin Herbert.,but she lived to a great age.
Tommy had too much time to think about the hereafter..
Tommy M c Cormack did not have much time.
A room in his house had to be converted into a simile of a hospital ward to enable his dignified death at home.IT still brings tears to my eyes to look back on how all the neighbours turned up and did the job without recompense and to such marvelllous effect in days.
Tommy painted like a demon and used his furniture contacts to get a hospital bed .
I will never forget his kindness.
Around Dunderry you are no one without a nickname.Tommy walked like a cowboy ready to draw his pistols from his holsters ,if you can visualise that,.He was called the black crow ,before he got grey and then the grey crow.When he injured a leg he was called the injured crow.But never to his face.
He was a sociable man and loved a pint and his fagsMany's the pint and smoke I had with him of yore.He was an honest man and manly.You would know how you stood with him..If he didn't like you he would just not talk to you..If he did like you he would talk to you in as colourful a language as you could imagine.
His Olympian super chastisement was "well wheelbarrow fuck you".Bate that if you can.
One of my sons Evan lives on the Curragh Boreen..His wife Aoife ,a runner in from Navan, had a set routine for driving to Dunderry and carried Tommy a few times.As he got into her routine he used arrive at the head of the Boreen as she drove bye.She always stopped and carried him .Maybe hundreds of times,,She reckons he was a perfect gentleman.I agree.
Tommy was not a mean man.If anything he was too trustifull and to my certain knowledge was taken
advantage of a couple times."BAD CESS TO THEM" AS HIS UNCLE PAT WOULD SAY.
Tommy was a great man to attend funerals and never missed the digging of a neighbour's grave.
The sight of loads of people forming a mannerly and socially distant queue ,timed so that only two people at a time could evacuate his grave,one in thre grave throwing the soil up to the top and another two metres away throwing the soil into a suitable heap ,would have pleased him as would the socially seperated mourners who lined the route to the graveyayd ,where he was interred beside his uncle Pat .
To his gear brother Seamus ,who I would say kept a benevolent eye on Tommy during his 69 years on this earth.Seamus.' wife Mary who was caring itself,his Sister Nancy ,his nieces,nephews and wide circle of friends and great neighbours I offer the condlonces of myself and my family.
AR dHEIS dE GO RAIBH A Hanam dilis.
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