Pádraig is alive and keeps getting better.

So infinitely more than any of the doctors who treated him would have thought.

There are many hundreds of people all over the world who have in a real and very significant way contributed to his very slow but very steady recovery.

There are thousands of people, some are random strangers, who have heard about what happened to him, who have heard about he phenomenal support by his wider family and friends, who spontaneously send messages of supports and contribute to caringforpadraig.org.

Right now, two years ago, we were frantically booking tickets to get to Cape Cod as fast as was possible. Pat and Pádraig’s sisters here in Dublin, myself in Sanya, on an island in the South China sea. Nothing was real.

They promised us that he would be alive when we got there.

Today, Pádraig had a picnic in the park with Pat, and a beer, to celebrate. He is alive and keeps getting better. And soon, he will be back in Dublin.

Now, how’s that, Dreamboaters?

There is no two ways about it: Pádraig’s friends, the young, the old, and those of no determinable age, have this joie de vivre that is just contagious.

I will write More details about the Féile Schaler later in the morning.

Have to go to bed. Good night!

Cancel all appointments or meetings you might have tomorrow evening and make your way down to the Conradh for Féile Schaler! Check out the details here.

When I arrived back home to Dublin today for a short visit, building work on Pádraig’s extension had started! It’s magic and it’s going to be the best extension ever built. Because people know how important this is going to be for Pádraig coming back to Ireland. Check out these pictures!

with Pádraig’s room dimensions

Our front garden…

The back…

In the afternoon, two of Pádraig’s friends from Coláiste Eoin turned up together with their wheelbarrow to help. They did magic! One of the men working on the site said: “Wow, he must be a special person – if I tried to call on my friends from secondary school, I’d be on my own. – Thank you so much for your help!

I’m going to write a short piece every day on the accident, coming up to the second anniversary. I took the following short video on Rt. 6A Eastward, the direction both Pádraig and Mr Couto were travelling. Watch the pedestrian on the right, how the cars are very much slowing down, and how the cars (there’s also a truck similar to Mr Couto’s) are driving around that pedestrian very slowly. – Now, imagine Pádraig on his bike, on the left of the white ‘fog line’ delimiting the right side of the road. And imagine Mr Couto overtaking him, with his foot on the accelerator, driving at a speed of approximately 30 miles per hour – while, at the same time, another car (with one of the key witnesses to the accident) was pulling into Rt. 6A from Croker Lane in plane eyesight and now driving straight into his way.

Tonight at 8pm, there was a big feature on Raidió na Life about tomorrow’s Féile Schaler with an interview and an airing of the brilliant recording of “Pádraig” by Markus. You can listen back to the few minutes of the interview to get a taste (!) of what is going to happen tomorrow in the Conradh.

Please Join Us on Friday for Féile Schaler

Would you have a few minutes and do me a favour, could you?

Take a few moments and either (1) write a short email or (2) tweet (or do both:) to:

• The Governor of Massachusetts Charlie Baker and
• The Attorney General of Massachusetts Ms Maura Healey
  • to consider the request made by the parents of Pádraig Schaler in the open letter of 22 June 2015 to them, to establish an independent investigation into the accident on Route 6A in Brewster, MA, on 27 June 2013, that left their son and your friend Pádraig in a minimally conscious state. Here is the link to the letter: https://padraigschaler.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/ol-mass-150622.pdf

Here are their contact details:

• The Governor of Massachusetts Charlie Baker
  • Twitter
    • @MassGov
    • @CharlieBakerMA
  • Email
    • Could not find an email address, just a form to fill in: http://www.mass.gov/governor/constituent-services/contact-governor-office/
• The Attorney General of Massachusetts Ms Maura Healey
  • Twitter
    • @MassAGO
      @maura_healey
  • Email
    • ago@state.ma.us

Once you have done this, please take another moment and ask you families and friends to do the same – may be we can create a snowball effect right in the middle of the summer!

Look at it as an experiment:

• How many people will we get to send them a note? – 20? 30?
• How many countries will these emails/tweet come from? – 5? 10?
• … by next Saturday – the second anniversary of his accident.

I think the more of us write to them the more likely it is that they’ll take notice.

Let’s make it viral.

From a very different sphere: It’s amazing how everything slows down and the ‘important’ stuff retreats into nothingness when you close the door, sit beside Pádraig, hold his hand, talk a little or just sense a silent but very strong connection. No need to take a course in meditation or mindfulness. It’s all there. There is a huge energy in the room, not the kind of busy energy, but a kind of re-assuring, centre-ing one. It is hugely rewarding to spend that time with Pádraig. I hope he feels that too.

And all along, we keep building dreamboats: trips to Alaska (remember Alaska?) or just down to Tating (we discovered there are wheelchair you can push into the sea) or to Drumdarkin (in the middle of nowhere, literally).

Today’s German Music Tip
Fard, Reich und Schön. Don’t get turned off by the name of the singer… This is a really good German rapper song. Rapper are the new Neue Deutsche Welle, only that the background of most German rappers is not German.
What’s hot
Viral campaigns
What’s cold
Letters
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Wo kämen wir da hin, wenn das alle machen würden?

After Pádraig’s accident, there were three things I wanted to do something about. The insurance madness, the police ‘investigation’, and the lack of care for persons with severe ABI in Ireland.

With the second anniversary of the accident coming up, I spent today finishing up the Open Letter to the Attorney General and the Governor of Massachusetts, and then faxing it to their offices (remember faxes?). Couldn’t have done it without the help of Pat, and a good friend in Boston we met on our visit there some weeks (months?) ago.

That turned out to be the easy part. I then faxed (!) it to the Irish and German Departments of Foreign Affairs, as well as our Embassies in Washington and our Consulates in Boston. Once the faxes were out of the way (pp.!!), it was all downhill with emails to the US-based Irish news channels, Boston and Cape-based papers, the Irish and the German papers, finishing up with Twitter.

If you haven’t got anything better to do and are looking for a light read you can have a go at the letter here. CIRCULATE – CIRCULATE – CIRCULATE

It’ll be interesting to see the reaction. If there will be one…

Pádraig today turned out to have a bit of a cold, not quite a temperature yet, but not well at all. Yesterday was the official start of the summer in Germany but it feels more like an autumn day here.

Today’s German Music Tip
Tonbandgerät, Deine Tasche riecht nach Schwimmbad (May2015). Sometimes I wonder myself how I find those…. You MUST check this out. Even if you don’t like the song, you’ll be hooked on the video. Promise!
What’s hot
Open Letters
What’s cold
Faxes
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Och nee, Alexis, nich schon wieder! Warum seid ihr nur immer so knapp bei Kasse?

A few short notes at the end of the longest day of the year, the summer solstice.

It’s also Fathers’ Day in Ireland today (not in Germany) and while I heard all the last minute adds on how to get your father a last minute subscription the Irish Times online edition I neither got that nor any other present. We did have a special ‘take away’ tonight though to celebrate the day (and my stomach is feeling sick already because of the over-indulgence;).

Weekends with Pádraig are always great because there is never a rush to get ready for anything. We can take all the time of the world in the morning for washing, some exercises, and cleaning up while listening to lazy irish Sunday morning radio.

During the day, I wrote the first version of an open letter we intend to send to the US authorities in relation to the investigation (or the lack of it) of Pádraig’s accident. We want to have that with them and with the media this week, ahead of the second ‘anniversary’ of the accident this coming Saturday. Going over what happened again produces a strange kind of helpless rage. But there is no way that we will let this pass by without at least a good try to tell the other side of the story, not the “he cycled out in front of a van, mam” story police repeated like a mantra once Pádraig was on his way to the hospital. At this time, not many people believed he was going to make it and the case could have turned out to be one of some kind of manslaughter which made it even more important, it seems, for the police to conclude that the driver, Mr Couto, had done everything he could to avoid the accident while Pádraig had just suddenly cycled across into the path of the van – to conclude before they had even properly started the investigation, to conclude and share their conclusion with the press who spread the word within hours. The local man was absolutely and completely innocent. The foreign cyclist was not just responsible for the accident but also for his injuries because he did not wear a helmet. (I checked and there is scientific evidence to show that if you are hit by a 4.3 ton van at 30+ miles/hour your head does not stand a chance – with or without a helmet.)

Even the longest days come to an end. From tomorrow, the days will get shorter again.  All part of the ups and downs of the circle of life that goes on and on and on. And we are right in the middle of it. Dealing, as best as we can, with these ups and downs. But always believing, always looking forward, always trusting our instincts, always depending on our families and friends, always Dreamboaters.

Almost forgot: Today, 110 years ago, Jean-Paul Sartre was born, good friend of Simone de Beauvoir. Sartre is the guy that had the idea of “L’enfer, c’est les autres”. Well, he was a philosopher and he didn’t mean it literally. It’s not always easy to live with other people. It’s impossible to live without them. And more, it’s the people around us who define us and who give our life a meaning. Tataaaa!

Today’s German Music Tip
Alpa Gun, FÜR DICH VATER. Alpa is a rapper with Turkish origin. He sings this song in German, a song that a German of German origin would not have written, or sung.
What’s hot
Summer solstice
What’s cold
Incorrect police reports
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Das kannse dia vonne Backe putzen

St Patrick’s church was where today’s Requiem Mass was held for Sara. The church was packed to capacity to celebrate Sara’s life and to say good-bye to a very beautiful young woman and a fighter like no other. Pádraig and I were there in spirit. Sara will always be with us, we will never forget her. She and her family, Mary, Martin, Niamh are so much part of our new life. There were prayers of the faithful that included a prayer for all victims of severe ABI in Ireland that they will receive the treatment, therapy, and care that they so much deserve. Nobody like Sara and her family making that case over the past years.

You might remember how Pádraig managed to hold the mobile while talking to his aunt. Well, today he did one better. I never know when they are finished talking – except today Pádraig handed over the phone back to me when his aunt had hang up. I don’t want to make too much of this, it could all have been coincidence and it was really not much more than a movement of his arm with the phone in his hand – but…

This weekend they will fly back home the bodies of those who died in Berkeley. I just hope that the best of care will continue to be given to those who were badly injured and who are staying behind, at least for the time being.

Tonight, for Sara: Sarah Connor, Wie schön Du bist

Pádraig is doing well. Except for 30 minutes today, when I got onto the super-dooper all singing and dancing Vojta therapy table under the watchful eye of his physio to learn how to do exercises with Pádraig a metre off the ground. The exercises are, of course, designed to help Pádraig get a better orientation, regain a good feeling of his body, and keep him flexible. At the end of those thirty minutes I thought that there was an immediate need for me to do a bit of work on my own body!

We are still thinking all the time of the J1ers in Berkeley. It is great to see that the movement of solidarity with the victims of the Berkeley tragedy and their families continues. According to berkeleyside.com, a relief fund set up by the Irish Immigration Pastoral Center to help the immediate needs of the families and students in Berkeley, the Irish J1 Berkeley Tragedy Fund, has raised more than $100,000 in two days, on a goal of half that.

For the families affected, it will still feel like as if they were just living a really bad nightmare. When they wake up they will hope that what seems reality might just go away. That is if they sleep at all. The more of the logistics can be managed for them by others, the better. And I hope that whatever needs to be done to help them will be done. I remember in horror the ten days and nights it took for Pádraig’s J1 Insurance Company to be persuaded to pay for his hospital treatment and repatriation. There were days when we thought that, in addition to Pádraig, we might also loose our home.

What is transpiring from the building and the contractor that put it up is astonishing. It sounds like something from the third world. No doubt, the next question will be who was responsible for allowing this to happen. And no doubt, each of the players will pass on the buck, as the US-Americans say.

Tomorrow morning, Pat will go to Dublin to attend Sara’s funeral. Her parents, sister, and the rest of the family are going to the worst of times. Having fought for years for their daughter and sister to get the treatment she deserved, having pleaded with doctors, health officials, airing her frustration on the public airwaves, Sara died in St Francis Hospice in Blanchardstown, in what must be one, if not the most beautiful, the best equipped, and most professionally run caring facility in the country. It is not run by the HSE and it is free. Above all, there is none, absolutely no return on investment whatsoever into the care of the clients there – except their love and dignity.

They are, no doubt, dreamboaters.

It’s a one of the tragedies of today’s Ireland that you only get to know them when you are about to die.

Today, I went to Tating with one of Pádraig’s sisters to sort out some paperwork, to collect the post, and to see that all was ok. I hadn’t been up there for a while. Getting out of Hamburg, up onto the motorway, crossing the Kiel Canal (the Nordostseekanal), Europe’s busiest artificial inland waterway, where we always look out for the big boats, driving through “Kotzenbüll” (you do not want to live there), through Garding and passing Lütt Matten, was strange. It’s where we went almost every Friday night, stopping by to have a pint (Seos got me pint glasses which I left there) and to listen to the live music.

We haven’t been there since January.

However, during the summer months, we’ll go there together and we’ll have a great time. It won’t be like having a pint in Dublin, but it’s second best, like a rehearsal or a Generalprobe.

Pat made arrangements to attend Sara’s funeral on Saturday. How much would I like to be there in person to say good-bye.