There must be a name for the phase I’m going through at the moment. You know, one that come after denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It doesn’t all end with acceptance.

Like, I’ve just written yet another email to the Attorney General’s office in Boston to find out what they found out when they investigated the investigation into the accident. It’s the third time in the third year that I’m about to launch yet another campaign to establish whether the police can just issue a press release declaring someone ‘guilty’ of his own devastating brain injury within just a couple of hours of the accident on the internet because they had apparently established that the “threat” (that’s what they called Pádraig, the “threat” to the driver) just had decided to cycle into the way of that driver’s truck that was very carefully and keeping the correct distance trying to overtake him on a road that gave him sufficient space to do that safely with traffic conditions that allowed him to do this. Oh my God! I wonder, do they take all this for real themselves?

What I am doing, I am not doing in anger but out of a sense of justice that, I believe, should prevail. I am not bargaining, there is no ‘what if’… I am not depressed about what happened, life has changed for all of us, it’s not what we had planned or imagined – who would have? – but we are where we are. Which does not mean that I would have accepted what has happened in relation to the insurance or the police nor the lack of an appropriate health service. How could I? Anybody?

So what is this sixth ‘phase’?

Pádraig needs more of our efforts directed towards communication. Enabling him to communicate and enabling us to get a better grasp of how he is communicating. We’re getting pretty good with the physical side of things and he continues to make progress. Now we need to mirror that with a focus on communication.

Imagine how much he could and wants to share with us – how much his ideas and brilliant sense of humour, his at times completely over the top but very matter of fact statements only he can make, would make us all get going like nothing could ever get in our way? What would he tell us about ‘phases’? Can you imagine?