Hospital marriage seven hours before Tullamore man?s passing
Instead of marrying the love of her life as planned today (Friday), Kilcormac native Brenda O?Neill is remembering the good times they and their six children had together before 45-year-old Sonny?s life was cut short by cancer.
Diagnosed with cancer after Christmas, Tullamore man, Joseph - or Sonny as he was known - only got three of the six to nine months he was given to live.
After his illness was diagnosed, the couple decided to marry and were due to do so today (Friday), but with his condition deteriorating, Sonny and longtime love Brenda got married in Tullamore hospital just seven hours before he passed away on Monday, April 7 last.
“His best friend Ger kept saying: ?Don?t cry?,” Brenda says of the emotional wedding ceremony that took place at Sonny?s bedside in the hospital, “but when I looked back even he was crying.”
Having undergone four rounds of chemotherapy, Sonny?s final days came when pneumonia hit both lungs.
“He had three wishes,” sister Martina says of her older brother Sonny. “The major one was to get married. The second was to see Tristan make his first communion in May, and the third was to go on a family holiday the first week in June.”
Now Brenda and her six children - Josh (13), Tristan (nine), Travis (seven), Thawny (six), Tammy (five) and Tia (four) - have to come to terms with the fact that Sonny won?t get to see his other two wishes come true. Instead, Brenda says she will look back on the happy memories of times past when she and Sonny would take the children to Charleville to play football, or to Lilliput for picnics.
Together for 14 years, Brenda says that now she is just living each day as it comes.
“I reckon if I hadn?t the kids I?d be lost,” she says. “We were never apart from one another, only when I was in having the kids. It was his first time away from me when he was admitted to hospital.”
Having not wanted to leave his children to go to hospital for Christmas or New Year, Sonny was eventually admitted on New Year?s Day. “I don?t think he expected to have cancer in the lung, but when he saw the x-ray he knew,” Brenda says.
Rallying at first, a cancerous lump on Sonny?s shoulder almost halved in size after his first bout of chemotherapy. In late March however, infection hit and he was hospitalised full-time soon after.
Knowing what was coming, Sonny and Brenda decided to organise their wedding. The day itself involved a mad dash to Tullamore courthouse to get everything in order, as Sonny had previously been married and divorced.
“It was his wish, so I was happy,” Brenda says of her bittersweet wedding day.
The memories live on however, and Martina says she will always remember her brother as a great character.
“He could walk into a room full of people and I guarantee he?d have the place in knots in minutes - he was just that type of person,” she says.
No flowers featured at Sonny?s burial, and instead donations were made to the oncology unit at Tullamore hospital. Last Tuesday, his family presented €1,000 to the unit.
“The doctors, the nurses and all the staff were fantastic so it was something we felt we had to do,” Martina says. “Hopefully it?ll help someone along the way.”
Sonny?s six children returned to school last Monday, and Brenda says they are adapting well to the situation.
“They come back with pictures of Mammy and Daddy, with Daddy up in heaven,” she says.
