He got out of the VW camper van, shorts, t-shirt, the most beautiful big brown eyes, huge smile on his face, head bent slightly forward towards me. He gave me a big hug. When he saw my worried face, tears rolling down my cheeks, he asked ‘what are you worried about? Everything is fine! No reason to be so sad! Come on! – What do you think of it? It’s great, isn’t it? I’d been looking for one for ages, remember? And each time I thought I’d found one I liked, you said ‘are you sure you want to buy it? It’s a big responsibility, a lot of money, not just to buy it, but to maintain it, let alone tax and insurance’. And then I started to doubt and backed off. But when I saw this VW, I knew this was it! Now is the time to live the dream. Forget about the money. I don’t care about the money. I’ve saved enough from last summer and I am going to spend it. What good is it going to do in a bank account? I want to do this and I’m going to do it now, I’m going to enjoy this instead of thinking about all the reasons why I should not be doing it. It’s going to be brilliant! Don’t you think? Have a look at the engine! What a tiny little, simple engine! Sounds great, doesn’t it? Come on, we’ll go for a spin!’

There was some movement beside me I decided to ignore. Was it Pat moving beside me? Quickly checked his bed in the Schön Klinik; he was still there. Desperately tried to get back to the VW bus. Thankfully, it worked.

‘Are you coming?’, he asked. – I was still thinking about my work and the stack of ‘to do’ notes that I had to go through. When was I going to do all this work? Work! Those dozens of emails I had to check. The grass in the back and, more importantly, the front (neighbours!). Bills to be paid. Car needed a service. The Skype calls, webinars, websites, and messages that needed attention. All really important stuff that nobody else could do. And he wanted to take me for spin in this dream car? I needed to work!

So what, I thought, and hopped on to the passenger seat. ‘Klar! Natürlich komme ich mit!’ He gave me one of his big smirky smiles. Of course, he had known all along that this is what I had to do and had just been soooo patient (not really one of his ‘natural’ traits) with me, giving me time to make up my own mind. – He started the engine, put in the gear, the wheels started turning, off we went. Happy together. On a little spin, on a journey to God who knows where.

At that point it didn’t surprise me anymore that the world didn’t stop. Life continued.

Just in a different way.

Eventually I woke up. I got up and dressed, we had our Saturday breakfast (boiled egg instead of porridge:). Before cleaning the apartment a little, I decided to try out this hair cutter I had bought for Pádraig (apparently, the hair dresser in the hospital is so ‘basic’ that it’s worthwhile to ‘do-it-yourself’). I thought I was managing quite well, in the bathroom in front of the mirror, I was trying out the different tops for different lengths: shorter on the sides, longer on top. While I tried the back and didn’t do too badly there either, I thought, I’d call in Pat to check it out. She took off the tops, got a comb, and started to take out bits of hair that were sticking out. Until she found this bit, that was ‘clearly’ too thick and needed thinning. Definitely. It must have brought out some unknown streak of creativity in her, she grabbed the opportunity by the mane (!) and went for it: turning the cutter around she pressed it into the back of my head. All I heard and felt was a big lump of hair being cut out of the back of my head, as if she had started to put a pattern into my hair. – I shouted, she thought it was really funny, I tried to take it with a (very much forced) smile.

The best part of this story is that she showed the picture of the back of my head straight after the ‘cut’ to Pádraig, told him the story of her creative attack – and provoked his biggest smile ever! – I guess this is what you call Schadenfreude:)