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This Limbo: March 2012
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Thursday, March 15, 2012. To whom it concerns. In my life, I have received correspondence of all kinds, written with a whole range of purposes. Love letters from boys who came and went; notes in my lunchbox from my mother, when I had been bold and she had been mad and both of us fools were regretful. There have been letters of rejection from employers who didn't see it. The sad stories that these two families have to tell have in common the decision to donate the organs of their children. In fact, in...
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This Limbo: December 2010
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Wednesday, December 29, 2010. And so that was Christmas. The reverse psychology performed by the weather was all that was required to put paid to my anti-buzz. It was rolled out in the following steps:. 1 At the start of Christmas week, plant seed of foreboding that the roads will be too bad for travel. 2 Capitalise on fear from Step 1 (best achieved by making car slide on short journeys). 3 Add some more snow. 4 Place weather at the top of every news bulletin every day. 5 Close all airports. No matter w...
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This Limbo: May 2012
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Thursday, May 24, 2012. For the first time in three years and seven months, I left the country at the weekend. One passport facilitated this, and will facilitate all future trips, in legal terms; but it is the other passport that will give me the world. It was just a short hop across the water, to London. But my word, the butterflies! And the spontaneous smiling that started a good 48 hours before I even picked up my boarding pass. Life never stands still. I thank God for that. But they didn't take any n...
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This Limbo: November 2012
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Thursday, November 1, 2012. I typed it first because heart does not travel to hand anymore, to the pen therein. Thoughts flow best when they are tapped out on qwerty, watching words appear on the screen as if they didn't originate in my own head. Surprised by them. My friends joked that my donor family would regret having got me as one of their recipients because they would be tormented with having to read pages long letters every year. It took a long time for that to lift. In all honesty, I was itching ...
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This Limbo: Dum spiro, spero
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Sunday, January 13, 2013. Dum spiro, spero. Today marks the first anniversary of my transplant. I don’t know where to put myself. Whether to sit or walk or run as fast as I can. Or kneel on a pew somewhere and cry my heart out for where I was and where I am, and for that unknown person who saved me. It seems impossible that it has been a year already. Some are congratulating me on it, but that seems ill-fitting as a sentiment. Time has passed, that is all. In shifting and mooching about this special day,...
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This Limbo: February 2011
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Monday, February 28, 2011. Mayo, God Help Us. It always strikes me as typical of the man he was, the days my dad chooses to visit me. He comes to me on match days, when I remember Sundays in September from my childhood; the odd occasion back then when Mayo would make it to Croke Park. He would leave at dawn, to get the train. Arrive back to us late, waking us up with some little presents, with stories of who he met, what Dublin was like and his analysis of where the match went wrong. Whatever you may thi...
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This Limbo: December 2011
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Thursday, December 22, 2011. Next year all our troubles will be miles away (I hope). I won't lie to you. It has been a difficult time. There are now nine hours of dialysis to endure each night, and once the Christmas of plain turkey, no spuds, no chocolate and no alcohol has passed, I can expect to be increased to ten hours. The extra hour lost to a machine every night has taken what stubborn fight was left in me after two and a half years and almost 1,000 nights of dialysis. Tuesday, December 13, 2011.
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This Limbo: June 2012
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Thursday, June 7, 2012. 1 The rain is back, and it is welcome. The sun had me tormented. Applying Factor 50 to every inch of exposed skin. Re-applying it 30 minutes later. Tilting and re-positioning my hat this way and that, but still looking like I had a want in me. Feeling the fear at every text coming through once the office blocks released them. "Beer garden? Going along, because I am there at everything now, a social animal for the first time in all my days. But I look forward to seeing the ends of ...
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This Limbo: January 2013
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Thursday, January 31, 2013. We debate amongst ourselves. By we, I mean the ones who waited as I did, and who came away with a scar that mirrors mine. Would it be better to have been sick from the start than to get sick in the middle? Would we have coped better than we did? Do people look at us differently now? Do we give a fuck? We endured the same hardship, but of course we are each individual. Another says: “Fuck you, do you know what I’ve been through? I don’t care if you like me or not”. But then, Ch...
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This Limbo: March 2011
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Monday, March 28, 2011. In all my years of travelling on Dublin Bus, yesterday was the first time I noted a unicycle in the luggage rack. Yes, a unicycle. I surveyed my fellow passengers, trying to work out which of them was the owner of this wonderful vehicle. I settled on the chap with the long, unkempt hair who had the look of an overgrown adolescent returning from a festival in some muddy field. A musical instrument, or a set of juggling clubs, or a lacrosse stick. Tuesday, March 22, 2011. Sunshine m...
