Where is this letter? The one. Not all the others on my desk, on the floor, in the shelf, in the plastic storage boxes, in the arch lever folders, on top of the shelf, on top of the boxes, or in the kitchen. There must be hundreds of them from some state offices, the hospitals, the insurance companies, the courts, the waterworks, the electricity company, the carers’ company, the Wohnungsgenossenschaft, the Wasserbeschaffungsverband, the critical care company, the Apotheke, the bank, the credit card company, and I don’t know from whom else. They are all writing us letters. It’s a wonder there’s any trees left.
All those letters are here in this room. It’s a small room and it faces to the East which means that you better avoid it in the mornings, because these days it gets really hot when the sun shines in. I’ve looked through all of these hundreds of letters several times today. I’m telling myself how useless I am in organising all this stuff. All the letters are there. Everyone of them. But not the one I’m looking for. The important letter. The one.
I’m praying, I’ve tears in my eyes, I’m asking Pat: she’s the one who always finds lost items in our house, long after St. Anthony has given up (although, he might just take his time when I’m getting too impatient). Even she can’t help. There’s absolutely no sign whatsoever of this letter. Anywhere.
At least Pádraig’s had a good day today. No sign of a cold anymore. Three meals, small and pureed, but three meals. Pat went out for a walk with him and while I kept looking for this letter getting more and more desperate, the two of them enjoyed the blue sky and the sunshine. It’s not too hot here (yet), just a beautiful summer’s day. Physiotherapy and speech therapy sessions, followed by an occupational therapy session. More than he got on a good day in the hospital – especially if you count the walk in the park today as an extra two hours of therapy.
One last desperate look, passed all the really old papers and letters, down to the bottom of the transparent plastic box with the pink lid. An envelope with the letter in it. The one. I can’t believe it. The relief is something else. But still, why am I not better organised? Is the German in me dead and gone? What happened to the organised me? Did I just get overwhelmed by this masses of paper from all these people all looking for all sorts of stuff, from money to information?”
Off to Dublin tomorrow to check on the extension. I’ll take a day off during the weekend to sort out all the letter, answer them, fill them in, pay the amounts requested. A day might not be enough…
Talking about letters – the one to the Governor and the one to the Attorney General of Massachusetts have neither been answered yet.
Today’s German Music Tip
Gestört aber GeiL & Koby Funk feat. Wincent Weiss, Unter Meiner Haut. Uploaded mid March of this year, this song got 6.2m views on youtube. It’s a good song, I guess, they don’t play it on the radio, must be a club hit! I wonder is it the really cool apartment the two are living in that makes this so attractive?
What’s hot
Bins
What’s cold
Paperwork
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Papier ist geduldig
Hospi-Tales 
It is frustrating when you lose something. We are glad you found the letter. We hope that your letter Governor and the one to the Attorney General of Massachusetts are answered as a matter of courtesy to start with. We emailed both parties and received no acknowledgement, which is unusual. Often here in Ireland, if you are contacting a government department, you get an acknowledgement. It is easy to be overwhelmed by a paper mountain. At least you have the letter now. With every good wish, Mary and Robert.
First of all, Mary and Robert, thank you for your absolutely brilliant present, the hitchhiker’s guide to the universe on CD. It arrived just before I left Hamburg, but it going to be the first thing we’ll listen to on Saturday! – In relation to the letter to the Governor and Attorney General, that might take some time. The Irish authorities also took a bit of time when we wrote to them, but they do usually respond. So many people have written to them they they will have to respond!
Glad the Hitchhiker’s Guide arrived safely. My next nearest brother introduced me to this book the year we did our Leaving Cert. It was a great diversion. He passed away while working in the US, some seventeen years ago, but the quirky humour in this book always reminds me of him.
My very favourite quote from it concerns the usefulness of a towel:
“…about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.” I have used this paragraph in class so the students can model their creative writing on it and the end results are always great fun. We hope you and Padraig enjoy it.
We wrote a lot of letters to the HSE with regard to nursing home care for my mother in law a number of years ago. We have three thick files of correspondence. We found them difficult to deal with. There was no continuity, so every couple of weeks one found oneself explaining ourselves from scratch. We had no success, and wish now that we had spent the time with my mother in law, on whose behalf we were writing instead. So your description of looking through all that correspondence to find one letter resonated with me.
We are glad that lots of letters got written to the Governor and Attorney General. Social media and causes that go viral are a very interesting phenomena, harnessing as they do the innate good in people, to make the world a better place, in this case for your good selves.
With every good wish,
Mary and Robert.
I am so sorry to hear about your brother, Mary. But he certainly did seem to have had a brilliant sense of humour. (Many thanks again for this brilliant preens Large organisations are always difficult to deal with, often they are structures with little soul and heart. The thing with the letter was not really so much about the letter I felt in the end – really, how important was that letter? – it was more about what this incident meant to me. What I thought it showed up about how I am at the moment was so much more important. But there will be better days…
I think I know what you mean about the letter. The letter itself was less important than the opportunity you had to put everything on paper. Writing it was something you had to do. I suppose all those details would be in your head, going round and round. Writing them out would put order on them. I feel putting them in the public domain is important. With the progress that is happening on the extension, there will indeed be better days. What an enormous difference it will make to all your lives to be home and not have to do the amount of travelling you all do at the moment to make this work.
Yes, Mary, life will be life again. Found a great quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide about being in a place that is familiar and feels safe…
“Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?
Ford: We’re safe.
Arthur: Oh good.
Ford: We’re in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.
Arthur: Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
We’ll be getting out of the Vogon Constructor’s Fleet spaceship’s galley cabin soon and back to safety.
Great quote and great humour. There is so much to like about that book.
I read an excellent quote over the weekend from Simon Fitzmaurice which I know you will appreciate having read his memoir. His film ‘My Name is Emily’ is headlining at the Galway Film Festival and it was part of a great interview with him http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/simon-fitzmaurice-i-m-a-bit-of-a-stubborn-bastard-1.2270967#
“I was brought up to believe very strongly in my rights as a person living in a society. … Your rights surround you, a protective force, I was taught. And if someone violates your rights, you defend them. It is part of the reason I’m still alive.”
He has worked with medical students on foot of his experiences with medical people and is teaching them some very valuable lessons about empathy and communicating with patients.
http://www.ucd.ie/medicine/ourcommunity/patientssociety/careinmedicine/
His contribution is about 2 minutes 50 into the video. It is encouraging to know that this is an aspect of medical training.
Hope it cools down soon and glad that Padraig has discovered frozen yoghurt.
This is an incredible speech Simon gave to the medical students and it captures what we have been hearing in relation to the care of persons with severe brain injuries very well. The question he asks, “Can we afford to care?” is at the heart of much of the discussion. Care is always related to time and in hour society time is related to money. And despite what Simon believes is right, patients are treated by some medical professionals like stock that either does or does not offer a return of investment. What a great person Simon is! Thank you for sharing those links, Mary! How do you find these?!
I heard about the medical student training from a friend of my daughter’s who was there.
I know you found his memoir very affecting, especially the position a number of the medical people adopted, so I hope you find it very heartening that he answers them back in no uncertain terms. I thought his views would resonate with you on account of the experiences you have had.
I think it is such a positive thing that the article from the newspaper talks so much more about his work than about coping with MND. This is a change that has occurred over a year to eighteen months. Initially journalists wrote more about the diagnosis and living with MND and less about his body of work.
All these changes in people’s attitudes and specifically in the views of medical people, bode well for all patients and for Padraig on his return to Ireland.