STORIES OF SUICIDE:Fiona Giles is still haunted by unanswered questions after her brother Stephen, 20, took his own life on the family farm in Rosscarbery, Co Cork
FIONA GILES'S friends used to joke that her life seemed straight out of an episode of A Little House on the Prairie. The six children grew up on a farm on the outskirts of Rosscarbery in west Cork. Life felt simple, happy, uncomplicated. It wasn't a place to keep secrets: problems could be shared and discussed with their parents who were there to help rather than judge.
“We felt there was nothing we couldn’t talk about,” Fiona recalls. “Other kids might feel they couldn’t talk about problems, but we did. Mam and Dad were always very easy-going. We’re a very open family. It was the same when it came to our friends. Our home was almost a half-way house – everyone came to it. Everyone felt welcome.”
Stephen, 20, was the youngest. He still lived at home with his twin brother and wasn’t planning to leave home anytime soon. He was just finishing up his studies at Darrara agricultural college in Clonakilty. The plan was that he’d take over the farm and he was bursting with ideas on how to develop it over the coming years.
“Everyone was happy that he’d take over, because none of the others were really interested,” Fiona recalls. “He was planting new trees on the land, he was talking about farming land that Dad had let out to other people. It was all planned out in his head.”
Stephen always gave the impression of an untroubled young man who was comfortable in his own skin. “He had that kind of take-me-as-you-get-me attitude,” Fiona says. “That was Stephen all over. While his brothers or friends might have been more image-conscious and concerned about the shirt being ironed or having gel in the hair, Stephen’s attitude was, ‘sure, if someone doesn’t like me the way I am, they can buzz off’.”
He was outgoing, friendly and good-humoured. He was also generous to a fault, his sister says; he’d always put others above himself. She still recalls their last Christmas together, when he came back from Cork city, loaded down with presents for the family.
“He was a student and didn’t have a penny, really. But he had bought the most elaborate and thoughtful presents for everyone. He’d bought his sister Gillian a life-sized stuffed toy of a Collie dog; he’d got a stroller for my baby boy Cian; he’d got my Dad one of those pub-sized bottles of Jameson.”
Stephen was particularly close to his twin brother Bryan. “They were both very happy living in Rosscarbery, happy with family life, happy to have the craic with their friends,” Fiona says. “Like any brothers, they had their sparks, but they were very close. They shared the same room at home. If they were out at night and came home at different times, they’d always wait up for each other. They’d be nattering away for hours.”
IT WAS Easter Saturday. There was an air of excitement around Rosscarbery. A music festival was on and Stephen was at one of the pubs with his brothers and sister, as well as some friends. His parents were at a dance at the local hotel. Fiona, meanwhile, was at a friend’s 21st birthday in Skibbereen.
Looking back, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Stephen seemed in good spirits, as did everyone else. Then, out of the blue, a row broke out between Stephen and another person in the pub. No one could hear what it was about, but they could see he wasn’t himself afterwards.
Stephen had only drunk a few pints that evening but decided early to call it a night. His brother followed him out on to the street and asked him to hold on for a while. They could all head home together. But Stephen wasn’t in the mood. He said he’d go home on his own and see them later.
“All I know is there was an argument with some other boy; we still don’t know who he is or what was said,” Fiona says. “Stephen just wanted to walk home on his own.”
Later that night, his parents arrived home from the dance. It was dark and there was a light on in the barn, which was unusual. Maybe it had been left on from earlier? His father headed over to turn it off. There was a key in the door. He looked inside the barn, just in case. The colour drained from his face. He could see Stephen was dead. He had taken his own life.
When Fiona arrived on the scene later, the air was thick with confusion, chaos and turmoil. Her Dad had run across the field, screaming and crying. He couldn’t comprehend that his youngest son had just died. Her mother was holding Stephen in her arms and didn’t want to leave him go. Other family members were arriving to the house, after hearing that something terrible had happened. The flashing blue lights of the police and paramedics’ vehicles lit up the night sky.
A young garda who arrived at the scene couldn’t hold back the tears, while his older colleague quietly chided him to regain his composure.
“I just remember seeing Stephen wrapped in a blanket. You’d think the way Mam was holding him that he was sleeping; that he was going to wake up any minute,” Fiona recalls. “We stayed in the shed a long time with him. We didn’t want to let him go. The hardest part was when they took him away and put a sheet over him. I remember Gillian, my sister, saying, ‘please don’t cover him up, let him breathe’. That’s the way it looked. It was as if he was going to wake up; as if it was all going to change.”
THE EFFECTof Stephen's death on the family was shattering. The cosy world of family life seemed changed forever. "It was incredibly difficult. We were all walking on eggshells, in case you'd upset the other person. It tore our family apart. That perfect family was ripped apart. Our once perfect house was turned upside down. You'd be afraid to say anything to anyone else in case you'd hurt them . . . They might be having an okay day and you wouldn't want to drag them all down by talking about it all over again."
The support of friends, family and neighbours in those hours and days afterward was invaluable. It wasn’t so much the words of comfort or the expressions of sympathy that mattered. It was just being there, in silent solidarity. That, she says, meant an awful lot.
The stigma of suicide also impacted heavily on the family. Fiona remembers hearing stories from people that Stephen must have planned his death, or must have been suffering from depression, or that something was wrong within his family or among his friends.
“That was very hurtful, people making those kinds of assumptions or judgments. It might be the case with some people, but the truth is they didn’t know. As far as I can see, what he did was impulsive. There was no warning at all,” she says.
“Some people stayed away and didn’t call to the house, people you’d expect to, because they felt it would be too weird. Or people would avoid you on the street or in the supermarket. It was like people were judging you. That attitude shows the kind of stigma there still is around this issue.”
The stress and grief affected everyone in different ways. Her mother suffered a heart attack, which her family believe was linked to the stress of grieving, and later recovered. Her father suffered a brain haemorrhage a year-and-a-half later and died. It felt as if their family was being mauled by grief.
Fiona says she lived in denial for a long time, trying to keep busy at work and keeping a brave face to the outside world, before collapsing in tears at home every evening.
“As soon as I collected my boy from the childminder, I’d cry the rest of the day. Making dinner, bathing him, putting him to bed. If anyone called, I’d be grand. I kept it from everyone. But I was hurting badly. I didn’t really know how to grieve. I felt that if you were still grieving after all that time, you should be in a straitjacket or something.”
One afternoon she was lying on the bed crying and her two-year-old son Cian came down to her and put his hand on her back and rubbed it.
“Mammy, why are you always crying?” he asked. “Remember last summer when I fell and you got a plaster and made it better?”
That was when Fiona realised that she couldn’t go on as she was any longer: she needed help.
THERE WASa suicide awareness day in Clonakilty which she decided to go to. It was there she first came across the newly formed bereavement group Loinnir, which went on to play a huge role in helping her recover.
Before, Fiona used to think she was going mad: the overwhelming sense of sadness mixed with anger, despair, grief and a million other emotions gnawed at her incessantly.
“But after joining Loinnir, I realised I wasn’t mad – I was just grieving,” she said. “I met others who were going through the same thing, or who had been through it before. I didn’t feel judged. It felt like a safe place where you could share your feelings.”
It started off as a weekly series of meetings for 10 weeks, followed by monthly meetings. Instead of crying all the time, or giving way to a dam-burst of emotion, she felt able to hold these feelings in until the next meeting.
“There are some things which only other bereaved people can relate to. It can be the smallest thing, like laying the table and leaving out a knife and fork for the person that’s gone, thinking they’ll be back soon. When you talk about these things, you don’t feel judged – you feel understood.”
The group was set up following a number of deaths by suicide within a 10-mile radius of Clonakilty in 2007. Many young men had taken their own lives, but women also had died. Many members of the community felt shocked at the deaths and needed somewhere to turn to.
“Suicide can freeze communities,” says Clare O’Reilly, who helped establish Loinnir. “No one expects it to come to their door. It’s the suddenness. The lack of a goodbye. The guilt, the confusion, the anger. Mothers or fathers or family members asking themselves all these questions, wondering if there was something they could have done.”
The message of Loinnir – and other groups like it – is that with help, people can come through the darkest of times. More than 100 families have participated in 14 different groups in west Cork. Many of these families had lost loved ones 10, 20 or even 30 years ago, but never felt they could speak about it until now. The project, which receives Health Service Executive (HSE) funding, is now expanding into north Cork and the city.
Stephen’s death has profoundly changed Fiona’s outlook on life. She says she has a greater appreciation for how precious life is and how important it is for everyone to respect each other. Small expressions of kindness cost nothing, she says.
“Family and friends are so important to me,” she says. “My little boy, my fiance David, his family, my family. And it’s so important to listen to each other, to be kind and respectful. There is so much nastiness and people can be so hurtful. I think we need to be kinder and more respectful to everyone, because everyone is special to someone. Every person is someone’s son, daughter, brother or sister.
“Hurtful things might brush off some people, but they can really sit with others. As for me, I’m much more conscious of people’s feelings.”
She also says we need to do much more to lift the stigma that persists around mental health issues. It shouldn’t be considered abnormal to see a counsellor or therapist, she says; everyone goes through tough times and everyone needs to talk.
“I think I’m also a more relaxed person these days. After Stephen died, I tried to be strong to the world because I felt I could hold everything in and fix it. But you can’t. All you can do is do your best.”
Just a couple of weeks ago Fiona’s family helped organise a fundraiser for Loinnir and suicide awareness in Rosscarbery over a weekend. It was a massive success. The whole family turned out in Rosscarbery, as well as hundreds of young people, neighbours and friends whose lives have been touched by suicide.
“These kinds of events help to tackle the stigma around this issue, and they also give people a chance to demonstrate some practical support,” Fiona says.
“I hope that the people who saw us dealing with this out in the open will feel that they can do the same. Hopefully this will lead to more peer support and openness about these kinds of issues. If we can just help just one person or one family, or even make a person think of what they’re doing – then we’ll have done an awful lot.”
DO YOU NEED HELP?
The following organisations can help:
- Loinnir, a bereavement support group based in Cork, can be contacted on 023-8833297
- 1Life (1life.ie) Call 1800 24 7 100 or text HELP to 51444 for one to one text support.
- Samaritans (samaritans.org) Call 1850 609090 (Republic of Ireland) or 08457 909090 (UK including Northern Ireland)
- Pieta House (pieta.ie), the centre for the prevention of self-harm or suicide, 01-6010000 or email mary@pieta.ie
- Console (console.ie). This charity for the bereaved has a free help-line at 1800-201890
- Aware (aware.ie) which helps people with depression has a helpline at 1890-303302.
- HeadsUp (headsup.ie) a mental health project aimed at 15 to 24 year olds, has a free 24-hour text service available by texting HEADSUP to 50424.
- Reach Out (reachout.com) is a website aimed at helping young people through tough times.
- Spun Out (spunout.ie) is another website which is run by young people to help address issues such as stress and positive mental health.
- Console is organising its annual Christmas service of light commemoration on Sunday, November 28th, at 4pm at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. The event commemorates lives lost through suicide and will feature artists including Frances Black, Niamh Kavanagh, Jack L and Eleanor Shanley. Ticket are available in advance by contacting 01-6102638 or www.console.ie
ONLINE
To find out more about the issues surrounding suicide in Ireland, go to irishtimes.com/ storiesofsuicide
Watch Tony Bates’s video on issues around suicide at irishtimes.com/ itmatters/storiesofsuicide/