Your first name doesn’t match the ticket, Sir. The nice lady at Dublin airport told me when I was trying to check in for my flight to Sanya via Copenhagen and Beijing. I said that couldn’t be and asked her to double-check. There was little time left to check in. I had just made it to the airport. And I had to be in Beijing the next day to make it to the opera. She insisted. The ticket showed ‘Reinhard’ as my first name, whereas my passport showed ‘Pádraig’. She said I had to get a new ticket or try and change the name on the ticket I had. In any case, I could not fly.
I had been in a hurry to get my stuff together at home for my big trip to China, and I had taken Pádraig’s passport instead of my own. Rather than wondering why a person like I was trying to travel on the passport of a 23 year old, they just noted the different name. And – what about the picture in the passport? I decided that this wasn’t the time to go there. I rang Pat to go home, get my own passport, and try to get back to the airport.
There were a few more twists and turns, but eventually, I made it. I got to Beijing to the opera. I made it to Sanya. I gave my talk about Skyfall. Together with Chris, I won the quiz. Just after 1am I got the call that no parent ever expects to get, the call about the accident that changed our lives.
Tonight, I met Chris again for the first time since I left Sanya.
Pádraig was good today, they had removed the second drainage, taken the x-ray, done a bronchoscopy, and all looked ok – some effusions on the lung, some infected-looking secretions in his bronchi, but nothing to worry about. A dentist had been with him to organize a replacement ‘bite bar’ for his lower jaw they had lost during one of the too many operations. And they will ring Eilbek on Monday to see would they have a suitable bed to take Pádraig back.
The story about the passport remembered my of Pádraig always being worried about loosing or forgetting something. He was paranoid about it, and he had reason to be paranoid: stuff just kept getting lost.
Hospi-Tales 
Another touching story of your symbiosis with Padraig! I think Padraig has a talent for losing stuff, important stuff! But it always seems to work out. He was justified in being paranoid about it! A Zen of losing pedestrian (but ‘important’) stuff! He was a master at recovering from losing ‘stuff’.He would just sail along, apparently! As
a friend of mine put it, “Stuff doesn’t get lost or found: it just gets moved around!”
DELIGHTED to hear that the move to Eilbek is back on the cards for real!! Oh my heart is so with him!
Zen. Exactly. No ‘stuff’ does ever get lost. So why spend half of your life worrying about it? (As it happens, ‘they’ lost his mouth guard in the UKE, pretty expensive, made by dentist especially for him, getting a new one organized took over two weeks, now the new one is on its way.) Moving time: hopefully early next week!
All my love to him. Great to see his friends still flying over to see him, still lining up on the calendar! Padraig’s ‘holding court’! Pity to hear his fledgling beard’s gone: I thought it very fetching, very dashing, suitable for him holding court ! Thinking of joining the queue again on ‘Padraig Hamburg’.. gotta watch the money.
Thank you! We’ll pass that on to Pádraig. Yes, pity about the beard – but it’s not lost:)
one of my friend use to say that things did not get lost they just changed the placement “cambian de sitio”…going back to Eilbek will be like going back home, good news!!! muchos abrazos y besos for you, Pat Laura and Maria
There is a bit of an overlap between Spanish and Irish Zen, it seems, Ana! – Reinhard