Кадр выше наш. Полное медиа с Facebook запрошено — подставим его сюда, как только приедет.
toikd.com
I’m holding a photograph of Sophie. Tomorrow, the social worker is coming to take her away. Because I’m her grandfather, and I can no longer stay on my feet. I’m 66 years old, and for the past three years I’ve barely been able to walk. My Sophie is seven. I’m all she has left. Her parents — my son Seán and his wife Aoife — were killed in a crash on the N18 outside Limerick. Eighteen months ago. A lorry crossed into their lane. There was almost nothing left of their car. That night, Tusla placed Sophie with me temporarily as a relative carer. A social worker brought her to my home at about three in the morning, still in her pyjamas. Sophie was clutching a stuffed rabbit and she wasn’t crying. She didn’t understand yet. I told her: “Sophie, Grandad will never leave you. Grandad is here. Grandad will stay with you.” And now I’m looking at this photograph, knowing that tomorrow I may have to let her go. Because I can no longer walk. My name is Patrick O’Brien. I live in Limerick, in an old working-class estate on the south side of the city. I worked as a metal fabricator in the Shannon industrial area for thirty-two years. I had hands like iron, and legs to match. I got up at four in the morning and stayed at the plant until the end of my shift. Welding bays, heavy steel, concrete floors, heat that burned your face even from several yards away. No one told me that one day my body would present me with the bill. The first problems with my knees started about nine years ago. They clicked. They hurt in the mornings. I thought it was normal. Once you were past fifty, every man I knew from the plant complained about his knees. In our family, you didn’t go to the GP over every little ache. You got up and carried on. That was how our father raised us. I was a fool. I’ll say it myself: a complete fool. After Seán died, I took Sophie in and suddenly understood that there was no one else. My wife, Kathleen, died in 2019. Pancreatic cancer. Three months, and she was gon
