A Farewell To Harm….?

Both sides now…

e get quite a few press releases, charity appeals and general enquiries about Greystones here at GG HQ, and most of the time, it’s a simple case of letting the rest of the town know someone’s news. Or views. Or blues.

Well, in the case of Ann Kennedy’s recent email, it’s a little tougher. For anyone who loiters around Facebook for more than five minutes in the last few months will know, Ann and her sister Margaret have had a hard time settling in when it comes to Greystones. Both ladies are confined to wheelchairs, and have had to face many obstacles inside and outside of Greystones when it comes to leading a normal life.

Here, Ann explains where these two sisters are coming from – and where they’re going. There was a suggestion from Ann that I might have to edit her open letter, but, in the end, I thought it best to let her words come to you unpolished and undiluted. These are real emotions, real issues, and they shouldn’t be muzzled…

So, here’s the full, unedited post from Ann Kennedy…

oving to a new area to live is always a difficult decision, one made for many reasons. In our case, we became increasingly disabled and with no home that was suitable for us as we will end in wheelchairs we came here. Finance was tight and we now needed two homes for single women who had always lived by themselves in different countries, we felt this was the best option.

We are 62yrs and this gigantic leap was to be one of faith and hope to find the peace to end our days. Also, being single we had little support from any source so we were working this project alone but not without some research of our own. Greystones had been an approved ‘best place to live in 2008’, and this swayed us greatly possibly the most. We were informed that the Primary care system was well advanced here in this county. Nothing could be further from the truth. The team who helped us with our disability informed us that care could be sourced as there were many who could be found that would help when we had settled in, this wasn’t the case either. Economically, it ticked the boxes as well.

Where we chose seemed pleasant and attractive. It wasn’t easy for the twin who stayed in Ireland and lived all her life in Co. Dublin; such a shift would take faith and a lot of hope. We are here now over four years and despite the banner of best town, we are arranging to leave again to go ‘home’ pretty much like E.T.

Many through social media had discovered that I personally was far from happy here in Greystones. In retrospect it was late in the day to leave my county, which I do adore. It was also late to start afresh when ill now and disabled. It was a bit of a madness to go to a place where you knew no one and were tired – integration was not going to be that easy. Integration can only happen if you get out there and I was too unwell to do this or someone helps you. There were few to help and I am very shy, so rarely ask for help anyway. The most shocking thing for me has to be the interaction and communications I have encountered with Primary care and also HSE managers in this county. There is a huge leap from friendly expertise to unfriendly suspicion, and a skills base which has not moved with the times at all. This was alarming and evident almost from the moment I stepped on greystones soil.

I am staggered that many things beyond my ability to change happened, and how quickly it did happen. There was little planning for me on hearing I had come here sick and unwell with a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and to this day I do not have a basic care plan in place, and still no suitable wheelchair. Suspicion was so evident, I am baffled how any wariness about me as a person and character could not be ironed out simply by engaging with me on a very real basis and also engaging with my care teams I had just left in my last county. Sparse information followed me so Wicklow made up its own mind; erronously it was out of order, misplaced and very wrong. When this happens we have the immediate fall out. The HSE has no format to follow when planning care for newcomers with severe sickness and disability and no criteria to adhere to. Policy and proceedures do not exist for anything it seems. Even the ones they hold dear to, they fail to impliment. The client/patient is left entirely alone.

There was no road map of integration from any source at all. Healthy individuals with links to their chosen new area could do this with more ease than those coming here as economic migrants from another county. It is an area that is less easy to understand than my own. The age group balance is out of kilter and therefore I am out of my league in the face of children. The information coming to me about friendliness hit me very forcibly as people confided that they didn’t find it friendly at all – and that they too are considered ‘blow-in’s after decades residents in this area.

Being unusual as twins who use wheelchairs, sticks and rollators, I didnt find it very welcoming to hear that we were being discussed in the school yard, so to speak, by the mothers here who questioned our disability status – this being told to me by a mother who overheard such murmurings when collecting her child.

Nor did it help that as I tried to set up an art class and found an upstairs room with the Art & Hobby shop, I placed an ad for this on Facebook only to be swiped by a Greystoner, who was sarcastic about my choice of room space and ‘you of all people being disabled yourself!’. If that is the attitude, would you wonder I gave up before I even began.

Being sick and being in the home a lot, I do far too much virtual engagement on Facebook. This is easy; it’s accessible when all else isn’t, at times. My posts were spiked on more than one occassion. I was wiped from one Greystones forum several times, and had to reapply to get back in, but finally wiped again, I decided not to bother again. Why bother? No one asked for the welcome party to be lining the streets as I entered to take up my abode here. But surely help in integration would have been the civilized thing to do? Making sure sick people know where to get the help they need, in setting up home and setting up health care. Making sure newcomers know the environment they now enter and to offer help when help was so badly needed… Considerable thanks would have been extended.

became very traumatised here after all that happened here. There are unpleasant people all too ready to make life as hard as it can be for newcomers. The HSE is out on its own and I have never encountered such discrimination and inequality in all my life. They are an unhelpful lot and unfriendly, barely willing to get to understand and know you and your circumstances. I am only an old lady of 62 after all. It has for me been a dreadful few years.

Certain TDs, councillors and community activists know what I have been through. Some believe it’s amazing that I am still standing. I am still standing, but just about.

I am receiving therapy for the trauma I have encountered coming down here. I am receiving help in my wish to get out again, as fast as my little trotters can take me. This was an experiment that did not work, on so many levels. The elderly do not get a look in here. There is no hospital transport to our many appointments and the Dart can be too much at times, therefore it is hardly an option. Also, with no proper wheelchair for the roads of this county, I feel unbelievably trapped, and the mobility scooter I arrived with was taken from me, after having it for seven years and maintaining it well.

ince I have arrived, only one person has knocked on my door and offered help – if there was anything I needed help with, I was not to hesitate to ask her. I have been left alone, with the native suspicion hanging over me and left alone to work it all out for myself. I have decided I have worked it out; it’s not a pleasant, friendly place by any stretch of the imagination. Certain groups, I guess, do well; if you have a few children it helps.

To be an older person, it’s impossible. To be disabled and sick, it’s even more so. I am leaving. I hope one day Greystones will realise that the sign at the entry to the town is obsolete and should be removed – it is misleading. I hope one day Greystones will realise there is more to life than seeing the children getting cared for, amused and educated. That others less able than some are coming here with great hope only to find profound depression, and bitterly regretting their decision to place such hope and faith in this town.

Before I end this missive, I have to say that I have met wonderful people, and they do know who they are. But the town has a distinct mistrust of newcomers and I have felt it. Walking around my van and peering into it will only tell you a little about me; getting to know me will tell you more. I watched this happen one evening around tea time, as a middle-aged couple passed my house and I watched in staggered amazement and considerable disbelief at this level of inquisitiveness. Greystones, many say it’s changed since a decade ago.

I hope you can analyise such a report and see, that yes, Greystones needs to change again, and be far more inclusive. You are now losing a vibrant woman who arrived to be part of community and give to community, to live in peace and die here having spent at least a decade of happiness in this place. You are losing me.

I am leaving as if I never wish to see the place again and hope I can erase the memory from my mind swiftly once I do leave. It’s a sad lesson for all, writing this for me is painful, but it will be for Greystones too, to hear it, many will be indignant and announce, ‘who does she think she is?’. I thought I was going to be a neighbour of yours. That’s what I thought I was.

Ann Kennedy