This is the day before.

Pádraig had a great breakfast this morning with his two visitors from Dublin, with lots of chat and good humoured laughter. When they left, I did a bit of work and then left myself to collect our daughters on the way to my sister’s where we will be staying tonight.

We’re going to bed early and will be driving to the cementary through the early morning rush hour. Because the funeral will be early, the mass will take place afterwards in Nordkirchen. We’ll then have soup and sandwiches. – It’s all quite different from what a funeral in Ireland would be like.

I wonder what the day and the day after will be like.

There are a few things that I wanted to write about. Some revelations from the German health system the German magazine “Stern” reported about in late February. Or our preparations for going on the train, the special train, to Lourdes in May. The new St. Patrick’s Trail that the Irish Media reported on recently – because of the millions of euro it’s going to generate…

They’ll have to wait for another day.

Two of Pádraig’s friends are over for their now traditional St. Patrick’s Day visit. It’s really great how they keep their visits going and show Pádraig how much they care for him. It was a warm, sunny day today in Hamburg. Warm enough to explore our roof terrace and go for a walk on it, discovering it measured more than the 12 steps up and 12 steps down of the Schön-Klinik’s equivalent. But, at the same time, their visit, their stories from Dublin made me home sick, and I can just imagine what the visits meant for Pádraig. The visitors brought some recordings from a show his friend did with Pádraig on Raidio na Life years ago. Can’t wait to listen to the recordings with Pádraig.

One thing that is certain in life is that it will end one day, at least in the physical sense. But there are sensations, music, pictures, even smells that bring back memories, that bring back people to life. In a spiritual way, people that mean something to you, people that have influenced you, those who made you who and what you are, these people will never ever leave you. Whether they are with you in person or not, they are always right beside you, with you, all the way.

Today and tomorrow feel like in-between-days. The kind that let you drift away for a short time.

I’ll collect the girls tomorrow afternoon and drive with them to my sister’s house. We’ll be ready for the funeral on Friday morning. Pat will stay with Pádraig. What I wouldn’t do to have both of them travelling with us tomorrow.

What a Lá fhéile Pádraig. The first one since his accident Pádraig did not spent in hospital. Unfortunately, I was only with him for a short time today. I drove back to Hamburg at noon but it took almost 6, rather than the usual 3 hours because the autobahn was completely shut down and traffic diverted to country roads…

Thank you for all the messages of support you sent to us.

I can’t really think straight tonight – it’s difficult any night, but tonight I’m not even trying.

You might have seen a picture of Pádraig in newspaper article about the accident. That picture only tells half the story, and it’s only half the picture.

The full picture has my mother in it and was taken by my sister when Pádraig visited my mother just before he went to Boston almost two years ago, because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to see here for her birthday during the summer.

So here, there are the two of them. My mother kept the pictures beside her in her room where she prayed for him every day, where she told me every time I saw her that he was going to get better, where she held my hand and comforted me, even during her last days when she could hardly talk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another reason not to, never to give up. “Dranbleiben” is what makes the difference.

Deirdre just came on RTE Radio 1 talking about Pádraig.

Life is a journey.

On the road, the autobahn, from Hamburg down to my mother’s, my sister rang. I had talked to her several times in the morning. My mother was not well, but well enough to hear my voice on the phone. Even though, I decided to drive down to see her.

There were tears in my sister’s voice. I knew, I was going to be late. My mother had gone.

I know, I know… but in Germany it’s not Mothers’ Day today. There are international days for almost anything and anybody, but Mothers’ Day still seem to be a national thing.

This morning on the Week-end on One, Cathal was playing all sorts of songs for Mothers – some were really good. Like “Mothers’ little helpers (what a drag it is getting old)” or “You fill up my census” (yes: that’s how he announced it:)

So to all of you mothers in Ireland: Happy Mothers’ Day! I hope you were pampered with breakfast in bed and brought out for dinner, with flowers and cards adorning the house!

For Pádraig, today was the last ‘medicine day’. Isn’t it amazing: just over two months ago, he was on a range of meds; you could only see him once you had put on a face mask, hair net, Schutzkittel (some kind of overall) and what not; he was on half a dozen of monitors beeping left, right and centre, with contacts glued to his chest; he had a tracheostomy that his doctor wanted to converted into a surgical, i.e. “permanent”, tracheostomy; we were not allowed to take him out for a walk.

“Lá Fhéile Pádraig” this year will be a great day, very different from that of the past two years. Can’t wait.

Tonight is Saturday, the night of a weekly  programme on Irish radio called Céilí House. For many year, we have been listening to Céilí House when we were in the middle of nowhere (Leitrim:) for the weekend. It’s always been a really great programme with brilliant music and chat.

In 2011, on Saturday the 3rd of December, the programme (I think it was recorded the previous Wednesday night) came from O’Neill’s Pub, on Pearse Street, just across the road from Trinity College Dublin.

This night, the great Kieran Hanrahan, the presenter of the programme, had a problem.

There was a tall fellow there to whom he had to hold the microphone up to so high that he almost got a cramp in his arm. But the two of them had a lovely conversation, full of laughs, so well humoured, with lots of energy and happiness. And it was the only conversation that night in Irish.

They went through the archives, dug down deep, took the dust of the tapes and found that night’s recording. It’s a really really great programme, with lots of Pádraig’s friends (who I wouldn’t have known then) playing and being interviewed. So it’s certainly worthwhile listening to the whole programme.

Pádraig had his slot towards the beginning (10′:40″ – 13′:30″) of the programme.

I am sitting here with him, listening to the programme with Pádraig. We wondered how he would react to it. Turns out, it’s an incredible experience.

There is a constant smile on his face, more even when he hears the names of his friends and their music. But he had never had as big a smile on his face than when he heard his interview with Kieran.

There was a sad moment when Éanna Drury, the son of the brilliant, legendary journalist Paul Drury, who recently passed away, played the Uilleann Pipes (which he also played at his father’s funeral earlier in the week). The Irish Daily Mail, of which Paul had been the editor, has repeatedly reported on the injustice that is the need for Pádraig to ’emigrate’ to Germany to get treatment that he (and other persons in his situation) cannot get in their own country.

Listening to this programme, just about to finish, he has been, most definitely and without a doubt, really happy.

Thank you to all the friends who made the programme happen, and to Kieran and Niamh for getting the recording over to Pádraig!

 

 

 

His first words greeting thousands of people who had waited to see him on this magnificent square, and probably millions watching world-wide on TV, were: buonasera, good evening.

This morning, a German radio broadcast reported on today’s second anniversary of the inauguration of Pope Francis who, as they reported, has continued to annoy loads of people in the Vatican Curia, talking about spiritual Alzheimers, raising important but very controversial issues with the cardinals, focusing on the people who make up the catholic church, living a much simpler life than most Popes before him had, realising that he is a person with personal faults as everybody else (and why not).

Pádraig today did well. One thing we noticed in his overall condition is that he has got so much more relaxed since the same carers, and just two different ones, are coming in, since they have started to come at the same hours during the week, and since we’ve had long, relaxed weekends.

I went to visit my mother again today (an almost seven hours drive in total). She is as helpless as Pádraig nows. She is very, very weak, but comfortable. Leaving her in the evening almost broke my heart.

What if we all concentrated on the essential. Switched off the ads promising us better, cheaper deals for things we don’t need. Focused on people, on friends and families, not on things. What if we started to annoy the establishment, raising, like Francis does with the curia, important and controversial issues. What if we told them that we want a different kind of politics, a different kind of society, one that puts social responsibility, people responsibility, first, no matter what.

If we did we might all sleep better.

Buonasera.

 

“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”  – is one of the famous quotes from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe.

The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) captured it all in one word today: “unverschämt”. They referred to, of course, the Greek government who had decided to remember the Germans of their debts to the Greek people. Hhhhmmmm, I thought, what a brilliant word to describe the attitude of someone claiming what is really theirs.

I felt an urge to be “unverschämt” myself. Ask for what is really mine, for what is ours. Of course, there is no question that we all need a functioning economy, that people need to work, and that, in many cases, it is companies who create these jobs – but they don’t do this for charity. They do it  for profit. However, people’s welfare, and especially that of those most in need, has to be the priority of any decent society.

So I am asking for a working health system, one that does not force people to move out of the country to get rehab abroad. Several families are already or in the process of brining their children to Germany where they will receive treatment that is not available in Ireland. They are paying for this themselves. Despite legislation that guarantees people living in Ireland treatment abroad if it is not available in their own country.

I am beginning to think that asking for what is ours, the right to a health system worth its name, being “unverschämt”, is what we all should be. Talk ‘Tacheles’. Talk straight. Call Rumpelstilzchen by his name.

 

The days are getting longer and spring is definitely in the air. Can’t wait for the new wheelchair which we were told will be less bulky and easier to navigate. It would be so nice to go for walks, to a park, listen to the birds, the sound of water in a river or a lake.

Pádraig is getting the hand of the stand-up business. I am still struggling with the controls. It all looks so easy, but it’s not. Far from it. What seems to work really well is Pádraig kind-of half standing. Not completely upright, but half way towards it. He has no problem taking that position for some time and it must do wonders for him.

Just heard a professor from Oxford saying in an interview following his lecture as part of the Environmental Protection Agency lecture series that it was important to realise that “climate change is not just something that affects polar bears or our grandchildren”. He is right but as sad as it is we won’t change until it’ll be too late.

Officially Ireland’s best love poem of the past 100 years:

When all the others were away at Mass 

In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives –
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Today, the day just disappeared. It came and went and I have no idea where it went to. The only thing I remember well and in some detail is how I got up. The rest of the day was just one thing after the other. Yet, I haven’t managed to work through my list, and that is the list with the most important things to do.

Another thing I remember from today is an hour this evening, when we sat together with the lights low, listening to some really good music together. Unreal. Real. Happiness. No threats. No panic. No fear. Doesn’t sound like much. But it was.

Today’s German Music Tip
Mark Forster, Zu Dir (Weit Weg)
What’s hot
Tilt
What’s cold
Beer
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Für lau.

When I didn’t manage to run over the weekend I promised myself I would go for a long run on Tuesday at the latest. Well, I managed a half marathon – but don’t ask me for my time. I was proud that I managed to get back to the apartment.

In the afternoon, I tilted Pádraig’s bed. And then the First happened: I held his hand and he moved his arms, one after the other, up to his chest.

Pádraig very clearly made a connection between what he heard, and his arms!

Pure brilliance!