And she did exactly what she was told. For fifty-three years.
She did not have Edan's hearing looked at as a child. He was not tested until he was nineteen and did it himself.
And in a hospital room on the sixth of October, 2025, she looked at her granddaughter's ear and said what a disappointment — which is a sentence I have had to be told, by two people, was about a hereditary condition arriving in a fourth generation and not about a baby.
I know that now. It does not help as much as it should.
She has written to me twice. The second letter, in the March, is four pages and it is about 1972 and it is the only document in this whole business that made me cry for somebody other than myself.
She sees Nuala. She is good with her. She has learned about eleven signs and uses them badly and persistently.
