‘I would always say we’ll get out of this situation somehow, someway’

Sometimes Brendan Thornton wonders how he made it. How he got through it all.

Recently he marked his 76th birthday. It was, no doubt, a happy occasion for him yet when he looks back on times past, when pain and uncertainty dominated his days, he could be forgiven for asking: Was there somebody up there looking out for me?

He's sitting on a picnic bench at the front of his house near Tullaghanstown cross on the road between Navan and Athboy. With him is his son-in-law Stephen Ball a man known to many for his community work especially around Bohermeen.

Brendan - or Barney as others refer to him - is enjoying the early summer sunshine. Fully vaccinated against Covid, he's comfortable now to be out and about; to be sitting and talking like the old days.

Life is returning to some kind of normality, although Brendan knew about the realities of lockdown long before it became such an integral part of our language. He knew what it was like to step away from normal life, nurse his wounds, and get back up and going again.

Everyone has certain chapters in their lives that have a profound effect on them; milestones that leave their mark in more ways than one.

Undoubtedly the most profound for Brendan Thornton occurred in 2001 when he received the grim diagnosis that he had lung cancer. “That was a fair drop,” is how he describes it as he looks back on those days when his life hung in the balance. “I thought it was the end.”

Brendan ended up losing one of his lungs but he made it through helped, he thinks, by his naturally willingness to look at the glass half full rather than the other way around. “I would always be optimistic, I would always say we'll get out of this situation somehow, someway. I felt I would somehow recover from the cancer even though it was a grim diagnosis.”

Brendan is full of stories taken from his life and times, some sprinkled with a liberal dose of humour. Even from the bleakest of tales he can distract some little nugget of humour, some capricious little twist of fate, that causes this most affable of men to break out in a smile.

“A mate of mine had come up to me on Sunday morning when I was in intensive care. I don't think he had some faith in me coming home except in a box, at least not at first. Anyway I had the operation on a Friday and he saw me on the Wednesday night. I had an auld dressing gown on me and it fell off. He saw the slit down my back they had made to get at my lungs and he said: “Jaysus look at that, it's healed up already.' He felt I had bounced back in those couple of days. I think he felt I'd make it then. I was already bouncing back.”

CARLANSTOWN

Brendan Thornton never drank although he did taste alcohol. Once. Like so many youngsters of his generation he was required to leave school after he was just 14; to help around the house (he was one of eight in his family) and when the chance came, to go out in the world and earn some money. Originally from Carlanstown he landed his first proper job as a barman in a local pub. It was the days when pubs bottled their own porter. During the procedure Brendan, inadvertently, swallowed some of the dark stuff and rather than giving him a buzz the alcohol caused him to be sick.

“I got several mouthfuls of fresh porter straight from the barrell. I got as sick as a dog and I could never look at it after that. A fellow told me one day I made one mistake at that time. 'You didn't go right back and take another sup of porter because it would cure you,' he said although I'm not so sure about how that would have worked!”

Throughout his working career Brendan Thornton was to embark on a variety of jobs. After his stint in the bar he found work in John Hogg's furniture factory in Navan, which in the 1950s and '60s, was arguably the furniture capital of Ireland. The factory later was taken over by Crannac, the well-known furniture brand.

Looking to broaden his horizons Brendan moved to a furniture outlet in Dublin before landing a job as a lorry driver in the city. Later he got a job as a bus driver back in Meath with Mattie Rogers. All the time he was smoking away, 30, perhaps 40 cigarettes a day.

In 1970 - the day Dana won the Eurovision - he married Laois woman Margaret Gorman. They settled in Tullaghanstown and went about the considerable task of raising their family of four - Martina, Lorraine, Brendan junior and Jacqui.

Life was busy, full on. Sometimes driving the bus, Brendan would be away for days but that's just the way it had to be, the long distances and the boredom punctuated by a cigarette every so often. A smoke could be soothing, a little distraction.

OPERATION

Then in 2000 it all went a little crazy. “I got a chest infection went into the doctor and he gave me tablets for it but it didn't clear up. I went back to him and he said: “We'll have to go further'. They did a scope on me in the hospital in Cavan and it showed I had cancer in my lungs. I was 55,” he recalls. “It was a bit of a shock all right,” he adds with more than a hint of understatement.

It was during a visit to one doctor he took a step in a new direction. “The doctor said give the cigarettes up the minute you go out that door. I said that's easier said than done. Well, it's like this he said you might get away with it this time but you won't get away with it next time.

“When I came outside the door I thought to myself 'now you may do something' so from then on I gave up smoking. I had to give it up.”

He describes how a doctor explained to him that when “they went in to get the cancer” there was no guarantee the operation would be a success. He understood that.

When he got the grim diagnoses he was nervous, fearful of the worst, but practicalities took over too, his reaction to the news a blueprint of his philosophy on life. “You just have to take life as it comes and do the best you can. I had a wife and family, I had to do the best I could, in the situation I found myself. There was no point in kicking up a stink.

“You just have to say to yourself, you have a wife, a couple of kids, you have to try and do the best you can to keep going.”

And so he dug in. He looked at the people who looked after him and felt very confident in their abilities, their expertise. He greatly appreciated their help, the nurses and doctors, the great people in hospitals. He really appreciated their support and guidance, all the time sustained by his innate optimism; the belief that tomorrow can be a better day.

There have been other challenges along the way. There were the two hip replacements for starters in latter years, operations that ended years of pain and discomfort. Then there was the strange case of how his trachea was twisted causing breathing problems. The problem with the trachea was sparked by his heart which, he explains, moved. Measures had to be taken to put all that right too.

Each time Brendan has bounced back from his health scares. The lung cancer meant he effectively had to retire in his mid-fifties but he has always sought to keep himself busy with welding work or making flower boxes. It's vital to keep busy he says.

He was a driving force behind the setting up of a local Men's Shed. He loved meeting up with his buddies each Wednesday for a chat and a cup of tea - and can't wait until the green light is given to open up again.

Brendan clearly enjoys a laugh and a chat. He clearly savours every minute of a life that even he thought himself was drawing to a conclusion 20 years ago - yet somehow he has made it through.