His friends left the room, packed with high-tech life support machines, when I arrived. He didn’t move and had a big white bandage around his head. Someone had written on it, with a thick black marker, “No Bone”.

Any chance of a misunderstanding I had hoped for so desperately disappeared in an instant. My body went into shock and I cried like never before.

That day sent all of us, especially Pádraig, on an incredible journey. What he has been experiencing is beyond imagination. With a huge impact not just on him, but also on everybody around him.

The world did not stop that day. But it started to change. it will take some time for us to fully realise the extend of the impact of that accident, for which nobody was ever prosecuted. What is certain, though, is that it was much much bigger than anybody could have anticipated that day.

That day, Pádraig started to open doors.

Pádraig opening the underground garage door in Pforzheim.

It‘s seven years today that the phone rang just before I was going to bed in Sanya on Hainan Island in the South China Sea.

Together with a good friend, I had just won a fun quiz pool side competition, following a long day of a localisation conference to which a Chinese company had invited me. I had used ‘Skyfall’ as a metaphor to present my view about how I saw the field changing dramatically. Skyfall.

It took another few phone calls that night for us to start to react to what had happened earlier that day on Cape Cod.

I didn’t go to sleep that night, booked flights and a car for Boston Airport, and left the hotel to head for the airport at 5am.

The rest of the family made their arrangements on the other side of the world. We arrived in Hyannis within hours of each other.

The following seven years have felt like several life times.

What happened that day nearly killed Pádraig many times, including occasions where one of his friends and then us were asked to consent to his death, to “allowing” him to die.

That decisions though is nobody’s but his. No decision about Pádraig without Pádraig. Especially if it is a life and death one.

We will leave Pforzheim this morning to drive up North. We‘ll be back in two week‘s time to see two (neuro) orthopedic specialists. Pádraig’s hip issue, we have learned here, cannot be resolved with therapy alone.

His journey, Life and Living, continues. Like yours. Like ours. In company. With Love.