Entering I became aware of several others… and I offered a very deliberate “hello everybody.”

Approaching Paddy, I deliberately enquired “how are you doing?”

Paddy was momentarily stunned. There was no reply, just a confused laugh which in words said “how can I be?”

It’s too big. Few standing in Paddy’s space will have had an experience that matches this devastation and it is near impossible to find words to express it.

Tears 😭 become our words… 

Yet it is necessary to begin to name it… in time, of course, slow down man!

Even if it is a primordial roar of pain while collapsing on the floor.

It is so difficult to be in the presence of this devastation…

It’s like Paddy is on fire with pain and as you draw nearer and nearer you begin to burn… until that moment when you jump back… burned again!

I came away carrying a horrible unease… an anxiousness that just troubled me for the rest of the evening.

There was no relief.

A little of the pain that permeated and filled Paddy and the room we’d shared had entered me.

It was a room designed for the opposite – for light and space, for luminosity – and the room itself jarred with the darkness… the heaviness of our grief and loss.

It was early when I needed to sleep.

My body, ever faithful, and so often neglected, still protecting me.