A valley of tears

The column below appears in this week's INM Irish regional newspapers.

By Michael Commane
It must be four weeks ago now since I drove my motorbike from Rathgar in south Dublin to Rush in north county Dublin. I was interviewing a 90-year-old amazing man who spent most of his working life with Aer Lingus. This year Tanzania launched the first Young Scientist Exhibition in Africa and the man I was interviewing had long links with the Irish Young Scientist Exhibition. I was preparing an article highlighting the genesis of the exhibition.

Interview over, we said our goodbyes, I put on my helmet and went back out to my motorbike. It was a miserable day, that sort of never-ending drizzle that keeps sticking to you.

Earlier in the morning I had felt touches of a headache. I might well get the occasional ‘man-flu’ but it is seldom if ever I get headaches.

Back out on the motorway, rain clogging up my visor and terrible traffic jams because of road works near Dublin Airport, that headache began to hurt. In fact, it was beginning to thump at my head and even my eyes were sore. I only began driving a motorbike in 2007, so the mix of headache, bad weather, motor way traffic and road works was beginning to become intolerable. I decided I simply could not stay at this and left at an exit near Castleknock.

I eventually got home and straight to bed. The headache kept getting worse and worse until I was forced to go to the doctor to discover I had sinusitis. It’s only in the last few days that I have been free of the damn thing. The exhilarating joy of getting out of bed in the morning free of a headache is incredible.

The experience set me thinking about all sorts of things: how fragile we are, how easy it is to knock us out of our daily routine, but most of all, what must it be like for people who suffer great and horrendous pain and over long periods of time.

Some weeks ago I wrote in this column about a young man who had lost a leg and was in the process of having a prosthesis fitted. I have been amazed at how he has taken it all in his stride.
I know someone whose niece’s husband received serious brain injury back in the spring and is still in a coma. The pain and suffering of that for his family cannot be described in words. What can one say?

And just last week the shocking death of 31-year-old Savita Halappanavar in Galway.

Every day and night we turn on our televisions and radios and see and hear about horrendous pain being caused on people. Last Wednesday I saw an Israeli bomb tear down on a car in Gaza setting it into a ball of fire and killing all the occupants.

Anyone who is watching RTE’s ‘Love Hate’ or the US TV series ‘Homeland’ must at times put their hands to their eyes as indescribable pain is meted out to people, human beings, people like you and me.

The writers of these series will say they are portraying, more or less, reality, a world that exists ‘out there’.

Maybe it has something to do with growing in age but the more I see of the world around me I can’t help but say that yes, it is ‘a valley of tears’.
Of course great things happen. People experience wonderful happiness and joy. On Friday cycling to work I was stopped at traffic lights and beside me was a young man with his small child on a little carrier saddle on the back of the bike. Great smiles from both of them. And they are the important moments. But always, lurking somewhere or other, there is pain and suffering and wrong doing. And so much of it could be avoided, but so much of it is a given and part of our lives.

When I was in my late 20s I lived in a Dominican community. In the house at the time was a man whom I presumed was quite old. He may not have been that old at all but he was always complaining of being in pain. Eventually I more or less stopped listening to him, paid no attention to his pain.

My tiny four-week discomfiture has made me make a promise. Be far more sympathetic to people who are in pain and suffering. At least listen to them and try to understand. Be there with them and for them.

A friend of mine often says to me she will listen to no words from anyone unless they have wiped the bottoms of the old and infirm, been with them in their pain. She has a point.