REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT TUAM CANCER CARE CENTRE TUESDAY, 11 JANUARY, 2011
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT TUAM CANCER CARE CENTRE TUESDAY, 11 JANUARY, 2011
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh inniu.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a day for Tuam to be proud of as we gather to officially open the new Tuam Cancer Care Support and Information Centre. I am grateful to Lucia Canavan for inviting me to be part of today’s celebrations for it gives me a chance to congratulate and thank all the people who worked together to develop this Centre from its early days in rented accommodation to this terrific purpose built Centre, so carefully designed to be a place of welcome, reassurance and help for those living with cancer in this region.
St Francis of Assisi once said that ‘A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.’ Twenty-five years ago a group of women, all of whom had been diagnosed with cancer and all of whose lives were lived under its dark shadow, decided to insert into their lives the sunbeam of structured mutual support and practical help. From that small support group there has grown an integrated range of services available to all cancer patients. Sometimes people need help to cope with the dread, a place to speak freely of their fears for home is the place where those fears are so often stoically suppressed in order to reduce the distress of loved ones. Sometimes people need practical information, counselling, financial advice or assistance or simply a cup of tea and someone to listen. Sometimes simply sharing the journey with others who understand its complexity makes it easier to cope.
There are many families in this area for whom cancer of one sort or another is now part of their everyday life. There are families who will face a diagnosis of cancer, today, tomorrow or some day in the future. When they do, life will alter. Now there will be doctors, treatments, survival statistics, there will be degrees of hope for some from high to low and unambiguous bad news for others, there will be a growing familiarity with the language of cancer and its treatment, growing familiarity with hospitals and the gnawing anxiety of wondering about mortality and the implications for family and loved ones.
No one will be able to hand their lives entirely over to another human being to live for them. No one, no matter how determined can live another’s life for them. The best we can do is accompany them, be with them and be there for them, to reassure, to support, to love, nurture, comfort, care and encourage. Not every individual or family has the appropriate and necessary coping skills immediately to hand and so a Centre like this can become their rock, their guide through uncharted territory.
Here is a place that has some idea what they are going through and what might help. It is an important antidote to the busy world outside that is so utterly preoccupied with things that may now seem relatively unimportant to the person facing the grief and loneliness of serious illness. This Centre is preoccupied with the person, the unique human being who has crossed the threshold and reached out for help. It is good to know that when that help is needed it is here - and that it is here is thanks to the wonderful volunteers whose generous gift of their time and their energy allows this place to exist, to function and to grow. Many of the volunteers came into this work because of their own life experience with cancer. They are wise to the twists and turns, ups and downs, the joys and disappointments that lie ahead and they appreciate deeply the importance of helping people with cancer to live fully with space for joy. Fear, tiredness, pain, depression, interruptions to working life, worry over money and a host of other things can conspire to overwhelm the capacity for joy in life. In this Centre, little by little, a balance is restored and the door to the future is opened again, allowing people to believe in life again or to embrace dying and death with newfound courage and determination.
The openness and honesty called for in the Centre is of a nature most of us manage to avoid in our everyday lives if we can, for its intensity and intimacy makes demands of us that test our character, our resources and our tenacity. That is why this place is fundamentally grateful to those who seek its help for they are literally its life blood. Everyone who uses the Centre’s services adds to the sum total of what we know about cancer and coping with cancer. Everyone creates a stepping stone that will help another to understand themselves more deeply and experience life more richly while coming to terms with their own cancer. So thank you to the users of the Centre, to the community of Tuam which contributes to the Centre’s support, to those who work here, those who make the work happen and to all those who are working hard as nurses, doctors and researchers to treat cancer and to find cures.
My congratulations and heartfelt thanks to you all and I wish you every success in the future. May 2011 be a good year for the Centre.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.