Wednesday 4 March 2015

What's left behind

Laura, staff member
Trigger warning - suicide

I can honestly say I had a good life; I grew up in a secure bubble and never experienced hardship or adversity. I remember one occasion a few years ago, talking to my closest childhood friends about how lucky we all were to have had such a happy childhood, getting through those teenage years unscathed, loved being a student and university life, finding careers which we enjoyed, getting married and ultimately settling down. However despite the fact that my life sounded like something from a chick lit novel, I wasn’t naive to the fact that one day my bubble may burst. The big bang occurred on May 22nd 2012. It was an ordinary Tuesday morning when I received a phone call from my father telling me that my brother Conor had died. That was the moment which changed my life beyond recognition.

Conor was 19 years old, and the youngest of four children with me being the eldest. We had a very close bond and got on really well together. Conor had a big network of friends and had been out with some of these friends on the night before he died. He left the hotel where they had all been socialising to walk home in the early hours of that Tuesday morning. My Dad had realised that Conor had not come home from being out that night which was very unlike him especially as he was due to be at work at 9am the next morning. It was in the morning when my parents got up and saw our garage door left ajar that my Dad went out and found my brother – Conor had died by suicide.

In the initial few days after Conor’s death, we were numb, in complete shock and just concentrated on getting through the next few days as best we could. We learned a lot about him from his friends who called to our house, telling us funny stories about some of the adventures and mischief he got up to and we really saw a different fun side to him and got an insight into the type of teenager and young man that he had become. He sounded like he was great craic and a really kind, witty and charming person to be around.

Conor’s death has affected our family differently because of the nature of the relationships we all had with him. Everyone grieves in their own way and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. If someone had asked me 3 years ago, hypothetically how would you be if something like this happened to your family, I would say, we would collapse to pieces and just not be able to function, but surprisingly, we didn’t fall to pieces and we all manage to function as well as we can. That’s not to say we are not grieving or not coping well or it doesn’t mean that because we are managing to function without Conor, that we didn’t love him – quite the opposite.

Personally I have discovered that I am a very good actress. I am able to put on a very good show and act the part of a survivor very well. Outwardly, you can put on a brave face and a smile and tell everyone “I am fine” but inside, sometimes I am not so good. We all have been really surprised by how “good” we all are. I keep thinking that it just hasn’t hit us yet and one day it will hit and we will all fall to pieces but we have gotten strength from somewhere and as a family we are incredibly strong.

In the initial period after Conor’s death, we locked down as a family and spent a lot of time together at home. We talk about him every day, it’s a way we cope with his loss and a way to keep him still with us. We have a lot of photographs around of him and he is never far from our minds. We are able to laugh about him and talk of the good times, and we can cry too about him, and when one of us is down, there is usually another person there to help us back up.

I have experienced a lot of different feelings since Conor died – I experienced an immense feeling of paranoia in that anywhere I went, I felt that people were looking at me, or giving me an empathic smile and I felt I had ‘my brother died recently’ tattooed across my forehead. I then realised, that people weren’t smiling at me because of Conor, because some of those people didn’t even know me, they were just being nice. I felt a lot of guilt of actually being out and about, for even doing the shopping. I felt people would be thinking ‘isn’t it a bit soon to be out’. I felt I had to justify to people I met why I was out, even though I knew people weren’t judging me – but I had this paranoia and guilt that I should be at home, grieving. I still feel guilt sometimes, if I am playing with my children and start singing or laughing with them, sometimes I think, I shouldn’t be doing that, it just feels wrong.

Above all, I feel so much anger about what happened. Anger at Conor for doing what he did. Anger that my life has changed so much and will never be the same again. Anger that it has changed me and hardened me as a person. Anger that my parents who gave us everything, were now put through all of this. Anger that when I look at my father, I see the same man physically but with eyes without their sparkle, because his best friend is gone. Anger that my 2 oldest children aged then 2 and 4 were subjected to the concept of death at such an early age and how going to the graveyard has now become routine. Anger that every happy occasion in our lives will also be a sad occasion without Conor there. Just anger that he is not here.

The death of Conor has really adversely affected my sons then aged 2 and 4. My 2 boys were with me at the time when my Dad called me to tell me the news about Conor, and they will often say “mom do you remember the morning Conor died and you were crying”. I was then faced with how to tell them and what to tell them about Conor dying. They had never experienced death before and now I was going to have to tell them that their uncle who adored them, whom they saw everyday was now gone.

When we brought them out to the graveyard first, I was trying to explain about why we come out here and that it will be nice to come out here to talk to Conor and tell him about their day – my little boy asked then was there a microphone to talk into because heaven is so far away, Conor wouldn’t hear. They asked about what does he look like, does he have wings, what is he doing up in heaven and why did he die and these are such hard questions to answer and for them to understand because, I don’t have any answers and I don’t understanding it myself.

My eldest son still has a lot of anxieties about death and in particular about myself or my husband dying. And I have found it a real struggle to reassure him that we are not going to die. I was told by a counsellor that you should always tell children the truth about someone dying but I just can’t do that. I don’t ever want to have to tell them how Conor died. I don’t ever want them to think about how it happened or why someone might do such a thing. I don’t want to put that idea in their heads. However I do know that I want to be the one to tell them when the time is right.

Suicide throws up so many questions to which there are no answers. We asked the question “why” so many times and after Conor died, no one was able to tell us why. Knowing Conor as well as we did, we knew something had to have happened to make him do what he did, there had to be a trigger that cause him to end his own life. We asked all of his friends about what happened on that night, but no one was able to tell us anything other than he had a lot to drink, he got upset at one stage and he went home. A few months later, I found out that Conor had been upset over an ex girlfriend and the fact that she had moved on from him and this is what caused him to get upset and leave the hotel, go home and do what he did. Maybe in his mind, he felt he couldn’t live without her and having a lot of alcohol taken clouded his thoughts and judgement and fuelled him to do what he did.

Finding out what happened that night, does not answer our why question though. It gave us a little reassurance to know that there was in fact a trigger which caused him to take his own life but we still have so many questions – did we miss signs that he was not happy, did we miss signs that he was feeling down, did he not know that he had a family who loved him so very much who would help him through any event, did he not think that he could talk to us? I know in my heart of hearts that we didn’t miss any signs because there was nothing obvious to us. However I will always wonder. I have relived every conversation I had with him in the few weeks leading up to his death, analysing what we talked about, trying to see if he mentioned anything that might have been a clue that all was not right, but I can’t come up with anything.

I knew my happy, carefree life in a bubble may burst but I never thought something as painful or as cruel as this would ever visit my door. Sadly, suicide does not discriminate against age, social class, where you live, or how you were brought up. The sad reality is that suicide is everywhere, it affects everyone and no one is immune to it.

Almost 3 years on and we are still in disbelief over what happened and there is such a constant sadness surrounding us on a daily basis. I have experienced physical pain before but that can be treated with medication - there is nothing that can ease the emotional pain of losing someone you love. They say that time is a healer but I don’t accept that. To me healing implies getting better and leading to recovery – we will never recover fully from this and there is no bandage that can cover this very deep wound. Time allows us to accept our loss and to find a new way of living without Conor in our life.

Suicide is an individual act but like throwing a stone into a pond, the ripple effect that it has on that person’s family, friends and wider community is immense. One moment in time for Conor leaves a lifetime of pain for those of us left behind. I will forever ask the “why” question and wonder “what if” and “if only he had talked to me about anything that was bothering him” and know that I will never find answers to those questions. As a family we will carry on as we have done for the past 3 years, shoulder to shoulder and deal with whatever comes our way along this journey together and take comfort knowing that we have a very special guardian angel in heaven watching over us, helping us. Conor will remain forever young, will be forever loved and forever missed.




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