Why do people like Leonard Cohen songs?

They are depressing, sad, and full of heartbreak.

I think they are also funny and disarmingly honest.

“Everybody knows” is a perfect example for this.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody got this broken feeling… Isn’t that the perfect description of misery? I’ve got this broken feeling. My lightness of being is gone. My ‘Unbekümmertheit”, my carefreeness. I don’t think it’ll ever come back.

What I haven’t lost is my ability to laugh and joke about my misery, at least at times. And who would have thought that some researchers believe that laughter is the best medicine at least for some conditions. Apparently, we change physiologically when we laugh. We stretch muscles throughout our face and body, our pulse and blood pressure go up, and we breathe faster, sending more oxygen to our tissues, including to our brain. The opposite is true as well: no laughter, less oxygen, less chance of recovery.

So I’ll keep listening to Leonard Cohen’ songs. And looking for a stand up comedian who’d be prepared to tell Pádraig’s story, in a funny way. To keep the oxygen going into my brain – and otherwise get people to listen.

Pádraig will be going back to Germany on Sunday. This time to the Therapiezentrum Burgau. We visited there a few times but have never been there over a longer period. They are helping us with An Saol’s pilot project – so it’ll be good to see how they work.

Today, for the first time, Pádraig stuck his hand into a crisp bag to get himself a crisp. He didn’t manage to get his hand back out again, unfortunately. He’ll try that tomorrow and the day after until he’ll be able to do it all by himself.

He’ll just have to keep trying.

“Thursdays with Pádraig” is what his friends have agreed to do. They take turns and call in to see Pádraig, to update him on what is going on and to see how he is doing. Today, as t happened, two of his friends called in, at different times.

One of them told us that he was going to walk across Ireland. Why would he do this, I ask. Was his car broken? – Probably out of courtesy, he smiled. The rest of my family just looked at each other and blamed cultural differences. He is going to do this coast to coast walk with two of his (and Pádraig’s) friends. They hope to do it in nine days.

The other (slightly older) friend is seriously ill. He had been coming over to see Pádraig regularly over the years and had made friends even with some of Pádraig’s carers. For him, he said, everything was coming together. When he left, Pádraig had one of those moments when we all new and felt how sad he was. And there was nothing we could do about it.

This morning, before Pádraig had his first physio session following his return from the Cape, I went up to our local HSE office and collected the original of the signed (!) Service Agreement with the HSE. It was an almost unreal moment, holding this document in my hands that had taken close to a year to get together, and another six months to get counter-signed by the HSE. Now, we’re just waiting for the funding to get processed and then, there will be no way back!

After many ups and downs, today we decided to work on the refurbishment of ‘Creation House’, the FABrik, the old Smurfit factory. It will take up to nine months to get planning permission, the paperwork processed and the work done, I was told today. We will need to find interim premises to start getting on the tracks after the summer. It is amazing to see things changing and turning from ideas into reality!

So what kind of day was this today? A mixed bag day? Or just: a ‘normal’ day?

I think it was the closest thing you could get to a ‘normal’ day

Are we back to the daily routine? Are Pádraig’s days structured again along the lines of carers coming and carers leaving? Has anything changed? Are the days of exploring and conquering days gone by?

To the contrary.

They are just about to start.

Which way is he going to go?

How would I know?

It’s his life. It’s his decision.

He is the master of his fate.

He is the captain of his soul.

Under the bludgeonings of chance,

His head is bloody, but unbowed.

He is invictus.

Here is a video my phone put together. I have no idea how it did it. None.

There’s no therapist in sight. There is no-one encouraging Pádraig to move his arm, his hand, a finger, his leg or foot – not even his head. Yet, this video is full of smooth moves and full of spectacular ‘firsts’.

A lot of what Pádraig experienced last week is in there: the walk from the Police Department to the spot of the accident. The encounter with the jogger who performed CPR five years ago. The sign we had put on the roadside two years ago which was resurrected by an unknown friend and placed with a solid metal stick screwed on to it into a prominent roadside ‘garden’. Breakfast in the garden/house of a good friend (Pádraig had met for the first time). The visit to the Brewhouse for Pizza and Beer with his two friends who had been with him in Cape Cod five years ago. A visit to the house he and his friends had stayed, beside a beautiful lake with some ‘lake chairs’ still waiting for their return. Dinner at Gerardi’s Cafe, where the owner and staff welcomed him with open arms and open hearts. And a quick shot of the car we had rented after much difficulties in which he could sit right beside me in the passenger seat position.

PS: I lied a little earlier when I said that my phone prepared the video with no input by myself. I did pick the background music theme: happy. Hope you like it.

Went swimming today and Pádraig managed to stand on one side of the pool, holding on to the bar, all by himself, with me just helping him a little to keep his head up straight. Something unthinkable only a few months ago.

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.

Pádraig’s Walk for Life is getting quite a bit of coverage.

The journal.ie Facebook coverage

The journal.ie’s Instagram coverage from Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Pádraig even hit the front page of the Cape Cod Times!

In addition, there were hundreds of tweets, shares, and likes from people Pádraig has touched, not all of them met. There were also many people who made generous donations via PayPal and GoFundMe for Caring for Pádraig, set up by a group of friends to raise funding for Pádraig’s therapies and associated costs.

To all of the people who supported Pádraig’s Walk for Life, to raise awareness and to push for justice, who supported him in so many different ways: from the preparation of posters to organising a fantastic breakfast for all walkers, to spending time with him during his walk: Thank You!

None of this would have been possible without your help!

My head is still spinning and I am wondering whether I am getting used to that feeling.

To keep it like that, we decide to go to Leitrim for the weekend. Sure, why not. The bags don’t even have to be packed (they still are). Nice BBQ in the afternoon and dozing in the sun, recovering.

#SaolWalk   #PádraigsWalk

http://www.CaringforPadraig.org

Friday morning. First flight in to Dublin. One of us straight off to Galway. One of us straight up to the hospital (‘routine’). Two of us home, having a shower and trying to settle back in. To normal life. Tired as tired as one could be.

Up to a meeting in the old Smurfit premises and in what could still become the home for the An Saol Project.

Afternoon all in a haze. And off to bed.

#SaolWalk   #PádraigsWalk

iwww.CaringforPadraig.org

Breakfast. Packing. Drive. Airport. Flight through the night back to Dublin. Our last day on the Cape was short and really uneventful. It was raining really bad and we were saying how lucky we had been with the weather on the day.

The enormity of what had happened during the week is not even yet dawning on me.

#SaolWalk   #PádraigsWalk

iwww.CaringforPadraig.org

We got up early and made it to Brewster Police Department for 9am. Together with about 16 old and new friends, Pádraig went, in his wheelchair, up the road and around the corner, for just over a mile, to the exact spot where the accident had happened at the exact time we got there, at 10am. Brewster Police Department pulled out all the stops and secured our walk with two squad cars, or: “Cruisers”, one at the back and one in the front, stopping traffic along the way. “We don’t want anybody to get hurt”, one officer said. Who could have disagreed? We had wondered how we’d get back to the Police HQ to collect our cars but shouldn’t have worried. We all got a ride in the ‘cruisers’.

At the spot – used to be close to the Bramble Inn, now the Spinnaker -, Cian, Neil and I had put down a plaque two years ago, when we had cycled from Boston to Brewster for the third anniversary of the accident. I had not expected to see that simple, plastic plaque ever again, but someone had stabilised it with a metal stand and repositioned it prominently beside the roadside in what almost looked like a small garden.

And then, at 10am, a jogger came along an stopped. It was Mary A. Foley who had done the exact run at exactly the same time, exactly five years ago. When she witnessed the accident and was the first to give Pádraig CPR (she is a nurse). Still cannot believe it.

One of our new friends invited us all to her house where we had a lovely breakfast in the best company you could imagine.

Quick stop at the Brewster Brewhouse for beer and pizza for Pádraig and his two friends who had been with him on the Cape five years ago. On to the house on the lake where they all had stayed, quick chat with the owner. On to see his wife and daughter in law. And then dinner at Gerardi’s Cafe where Pádraig had worked. Pádraig picked his favourite dishes and enjoyed the best Italian food on the Cape! The owner and staff were so welcoming, it was brilliant!

Don’t ask me about emotions. About how I felt. About what it all means or meant to  me.