It is part of the human condition to look back and to look forward. The poet P.B. Shelley put it neatly when he said:

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not.
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought

Why do I do either today? I have just read of a meeting of Mercy Archivists and began to think of all the little interesting things we would not know if we were deprived of archives. This year lends itself to reminiscence in Ireland as we have already begun to commemorate the 1916 Rising which ultimately led to the Independence of our country from eight hundred years of colonisation. Because many of the leaders of the Rising were poets or visionaries I have always regarded it through these media. Padraig Pearse, one of the leaders, was a poet, a teacher, a visionary, an idealist but from the National Archives this year I learned that he cycled from his home in the suburbs of Dublin to the city to take charge of the Rising – that was interesting enough – but then the story told that he stopped in Rathmines to get his hair cut on the way! He must have at least suspected that he was cycling to his death. These little archival details make the past real and human, intriguingly interesting and amusing. In this case it changes the man for me.

We look back on our personal lives, sometimes with laughter and at other times with regret or with any of the emotions of the human condition. It seems we must look back – the current interest in family tree tells us how much we want to validate ourselves or understand ourselves from the past.

But why do I look forward today? Because the sky is blue, flowers are bright and I think hopefully of summer. And then I began to think of those who cannot look forward to summer without care and anxiety. I am thinking specifically of the parents of children in our hospital schools; those schools attached to hospitals or clinics of which Sisters of Mercy in our Congregation are Trustees. The schools, though operating in hospitals, are run according to the rules for primary schools of the Department of Education and Skills and the teachers are paid by the Department. Sisters of Mercy are on three of the four school boards of Management. The other one is visited and cared for by the Sisters.

There are four known to me: one is in the Children’s Hospital, Temple Street, Dublin, where children are taught while they have a long or short stay in hospital – this is a very happy school where the expectation is that children will recover and lead usual lives. They have a bright attractive classroom and those who cannot attend the schoolroom are taught by the peripatetic teachers who go around the wards. The hospital school can make contact with other children in hospital schools through technology where they can exchange stories and school work. Temple Street hospital school is always a bright cheerful welcoming place.

Another school is attached to the Rehabilitation Hospital. Here children have an acquired brain or spinal injury. Sadly these are permanent injuries and children and families have to make huge adjustments to their new reality. The children are rehabilitated to their highest possibility and are educated in the school within the hospital also to the highest standard with teachers and clinicians working in tandem to achieve the best result for each child. These children are usually long-stay patients so care of their education is crucial. While the school as it operates daily is a happy place the underlying emotion has to be a deep sadness for parents.

Our other two schools are attached to specialised clinics in hospitals. The children in these schools are day pupils though some are in residence and others receive regular residential respite care.

The children in the smaller one of these clinics attend the school for two years in an effort to help them cope with their emotional and behavioural difficulties. They are around four or five years of age and the hope is that the early intervention will help them to attend mainstream school. Otherwise suitable placements are found for them on the advice of the teachers and the clinicians who have been working with the children over the course of the two years. This school is attached to the Mater Hospital.

The other is a bigger school – St. Paul’s Hospital and School deal specifically with children on the moderate to severe and profound end of the autistic spectrum. These children and their families suffer enormous difficulties. At school they are educated with the hope that they can achieve their full potential with the cooperation of excellent teachers and hospital clinicians. But the difficulties inherent in moderate or severe autism are very challenging for parents and siblings. It makes holidaying away from home almost impossible.

It does not take too much imagination to think of the difficulties of summer without school for children of the clinic schools when children are home without the supports of teachers and therapists. It is a difficult time for siblings as well as parents and also for the child-patients.

These hospital schools portray for me the depth and the strength of love. They run on unconditional love.

So summer for many does not bring the carefree time with which the season is associated as parents do their utmost for their beloved children but without a lot of the supports.

I think of them as I and so many others look forward to days of sunshine and freedom from usual chores and labours at least for a while, and hope that some joy will come to everybody.

We will inevitably continue ‘to look before and after’ and indeed ‘pine for what is not’ but may our looking back help us appreciate our ‘now’ and our looking forward help us to create a better future.

Thomasina Finn rsm
Congregational Secretary