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Dear Ben
You have probably heard of us from Fr Pat or from Theresa Lee. Pat was a very good friend of ours for some 25 years in Hong Kong and we are probably the only real friends that he now has in Ireland.
We were talking to Theresa today when we visited Fr Pat and she brought us up to date on the present state of your proposal to bring Fr Pat to Sydney. I understand that you are having a meeting this weekend to discuss the issue, so I thought that I would let you have some information about Fr Pat's present condition.
 We visit him twice a week and take him out for lunch in a restaurant and to a supermarket, spending 3-4 hours with him. This is not easy for us because the nursing home is 1½ hours drive from our home. But we feel that it is necessary because there is nobody else who takes him regularly. ........ When the Salesians occasionally take him out it is for an occasion like a feast day and they have a meal at the Salesian House in Dublin.
His family, sister Eiken and Brother Tim visit him most Sundays and, I believe, also take him out occasionally.........
The nursing home is quite good, I suppose. Father's basic needs are catered for – he is kept clean and tidy and he gets the basic institution food – We think not good enough food and not enough of it – nor enough variety. But there are no activities, nothing to change the mon otony and, with his difficulty of getting around by himself, he cannot avail of most of the facilities that are available. He is left for long periods on his own, he is pushed into a corner, he is treated like a child, he has nothing to stimulate him, nobody to talk to, nobody that understands him when he talked of Kowloon or Aberdeen or says something in Cantonese. (We would probably not understand him either but we would know that he is not talking gibberish but speaking Cantonese). It would be so different for him if he had a variety of people to visit him and take him out, especially people who are familiar with his life in Hong Kong and ones who understand Cantonese.
Fr Pat is always glad to see us, always recognizes and is always glad to go out with us – He has never been unwell or not in a fit state to go out with us. We generally take a wheelchair so that we can move him quickly to the car and around the supermarket but he can get in and out of the car quite easily and walk in and out of the restaurant with just a little help. Always he eats and enjoys a full meal with us, generally eating more than we would eat leading us to suspect that he does not get enough food in the nursing home. He particularly enjoys Chinese food and we try to bring him to different Chinese restaurants whenever we can.
Now Fr Pat is not always lucid. Sometimes his mind is confused and generally when this happens he thinks that he is in Hong Kong and talks as if he is there. He can also imagine things and talk a lot of rubbish at times. Even on his good days he can have periods of talking like this.
Our visits (because we are the only people visiting regularly) we think are inclined to become monotonous to Fr Pat. And we feel that we are not able to stimulate him enough. So we, and Fr Pat, have to look forward to the next visit from Theresa.
Theresa is like a special tonic to Fr Pat. He reacts wonderfully to her and she can make him into another person. Just today we saw it – He was lucid and "with it" all afternoon, really relaxes, really happy and not in the least "confused" for a moment. It was wonderful for us just to see him like this.
If there is any possibility of you bring Fr Pat to Sydney where he could be near Theresa AND a number of "Old Boys" who love him and understand the great man that he was AND would visit him regularly then you MUST try your best to do it. If he stays in Ireland we can foresee a fast deterioration and ….
In our opinion, Fr Pat is quite capable of travelling with Theresa and another person. All he needs is reassuring and a little bit of help.
I'm afraid I've waffled on for too long but I've written down how we feel. We love Fr Pat but we feel that he is slowly dying from loneliness here which is wrong. When he dies it would be far better if he died among his Chinese friends.
Please forgive me for rambling on but I think that you should know these things.
Yours sincerely
Boasco Keown
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