Memories can bring diamonds and rust.

Which New Year’s Eves do you remember? Diamonds. Rust. – ?

One of my memories is that standing on the open living room window of our 2nd floor apartment in Dortmund, looking out at the fireworks – looking at them because my parents wouldn’t allow me to go down onto the street and light my own fireworks.

Another New Year’s Eve, a few years later, I was standing, again, at the window of an apartment on the 2nd or 3rd floor. This time, I had chosen to stay in the room and, finally, play that record I had bought earlier that day and had brought to the party – but wasn’t allowed to play because it was to non-party like. It was Joni Mitchell’s 1970s Ladies of the Canyon album. I listened to this magnificent album alone in the empty party room on the wide open window and couldn’t care less about the world and people around me.

Then, there was the millennium. Both my (slightly) extended German family and my Irish family were in our house. Just before midnight we went out to Dollymount Beach which was supposed to be one of the vantage points to see Dublin’s fantastic Millennium Fireworks. It turned out to be, literally, a shot in the dark. There might have been fireworks somewhere, but none were to be seen from Dollymount. It was, nonetheless, a night I won’t forget. We were all together that night. Tonight, those who didn’t die in the meantime are in other countries or out and about. Tonight, it’s Pat, Pádraig, and myself.

Two years ago, it also was Pat, Pádraig and myself. We were in the University Hospital in Hamburg Eppendorf. That night, Pádraig was struggling for his life with SIRS, blood poisoning. As 2013 turned into 2014, Pádraig turned a corner and started to recover.

Tonight, he’s at home home.

Tonight represents another turn, a turn to live and living his life, with his family and friends, with the support and therapy he’ll need, the social life he’ll enjoy, the adventures of a true Dreamboat architect

We’ll remember tonight. As a diamond. Forever.