Clearing out things you don’t need anymore is great. It marks transitions, it’s a statement that you’re moving on, and it makes spaces for new things.

This is the stuff you get when you have problems eating. You might not be able to eat and get a balanced and sufficiently calorie-rich diet, but a lot of people can drink thickish calorie drinks which their manufacturers try to make more palatable by offering them in different flavours. Then there is calorie powder you can just add to your own drinks or yoghourts and the like.

It’s all a step up from liquid ‘food’ administered via a PEG, a tube into your stomach, using a drip. If you can’t eat either, you can ‘inject’ these drinks through a PEG as well, as soon as your stomach can take it.

When I came across these bottles, it felt like a blast from the past. Recently, time has not been the linear experience it used to be, but even from within this time bubble I seem to live in, this was a memory from far, far away – and yet so close.

The satisfaction of being able to dispose of these bottles and powders was huge.

And now, we have more space for stuff Pádraig needs right now: devices to help him to communicate, to support and strengthen his posture, to assist him with standing, to connect him with the world in all its diversity.

Cleaning out stuff and disposing of it, in this case, was a pleasure, not difficult at all.