When Pádraig today spelled out what his greatest memory of his visit to Cape Cod was, we guessed the fifth letter.

When a cousin later dropped by and left a super tasty fruit/cream/meringues roll for him, that happiness continued and spread. We all had our double sugar boost and (nearly) finished this work of art in less than 15 minutes.

My heart is aching, there is a knot in my throat, and I am on a high – not just because of the sugar from this magic roll. We had thought long and hard about going with Pádraig to Boston and Cape Cod. At times, we had not been so sure whether this was the right thing to do. How would Pádraig take the trip physically and, maybe more importantly, emotionally. How would we take it.

Feeling happy for having done this trip is the best we could have wished for.

Much of this is thanks to the people we met along the way. From the staff in the airport and the plane, to the attorneys in the AGs office (at a personal level), the people working in Cape Cod Hospital, the Irish-American family who put us up five years ago and who we met again, the group of people who walked with us, some of whom traveled especially from Boston to the Cape for the day, his former landlord and wife, their son and daughter in law, even the Brewster Police Department who could  have handled this in a much less supportive way, the lady we had never met and invited us all over to her house for breakfast, the friends who made a point in coming to the airport in Boston to say good-bye to Pádraig, the people who so generously donated to support Pádraig’s Walk for Life.

I have always been annoyed that I hadn’t been born ten years earlier so that I would have experienced flower power first hand. So that I could have been in Woodstock or in San Francisco.

Last week, there was more love and peace and rock’n roll in Brewster Massachusetts, than there has ever been in Woodstock or in San Francisco.

Love and peace and rock’n roll. We’re conquerors. Dreamboaters. H-A-P-P-Y and beautiful people.

We’ll continue to turn bombers into butterflies.

And we’ll find ways for persons with catastrophic brain injuries and their families to enjoy life again, most of the time:) We’ll change the hearts and minds of people about very severe acquired brain injury so they’ll never ever think, never mind say, ever again that any money spent on their rehabilitation, in the widest sense, was a waste.