You kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you’re gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. In the end, it does nothing. Nothing changes. The world goes on and you’re gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself.
Eddie Vedder

I would never have thought of revenge but about demonstrating that you could treat people with respect and help them to live their lives – even with some of the most devastating injuries you could imagine.

I am very hopeful that we will be able to do this. We have gone a long way already and with the realisation of Teach An Saol, a small campus in North Dublin covering a therapy, social, respite, and transitional supported living hubs, we will firmly make this effort part of the Irish health system and the Irish society.

The inspiration, the motivation, and the energy to carry all the hard work with have been doing is, of course, Pádraig, together with so many families in similar situations as ours.

I met families struggling with their new lives via the ZNS Hannelore Kohl Stiftung (Foundation) in Germany for the first time a few years ago. They organise regular meetings for family members, for parents, for siblings, and for the entire families, including their injured members. I have been attending these meetings for some years now, perhaps once or twice a year.

This weekend I have been in Dresden where we were a neurological consultant taught us about the brain and brain injuries. There were discussion sessions with therapists. Hands-on sessions with Neuro ICU OTs about moving our injured family members. And there was a half-day boat excursion going down the river Elbe visiting the beautiful centre of Dresden.

Right in the Centre of Dresden, there was a protest where one to the placards caught my eyes. It read:

“It is the living who close the dead people’s eyes.
However, it is the death people who open the eyes of the living.”

Although the protest was about a different issue, it made me think about what we have been doing, effectively trying to persuade the HSE to allow us to do the work they should be doing themselves. Getting them the land they should have got. Gathering experts to design and plan an entire campus to deliver services that should be delivered by them. A campus and services they themselves said were necessary, should be delivered, and should be expanded.

In return, they have led us into a jungle of never-ending bureaucratic twists and turns where there is no urgency and no end in sight.

Pádraig and those like him want to live although their doctors wanted them dead. They kept their eyes open and opened our eyes.

We won’t kill ourselves and make a big auld sacrifice; we’ll be ending up with more than this paragraph in a newspaper or a TV report.

We’re going to live and make sure that what needs to be done will be done.