Snapshots, 4th March 2025

 

It was the first time my world collided with suicide. Of course I had encountered the concept before, some a little too familiarly; a colleague of my parents, her brother had put himself in the canal or maybe the river. His Dad turned his back for a minute and he took the car keys and left never to come home. My mother explained that scenario to me, she didn’t keep secrets like that. My aunt’s brother had done similar, he wasn’t found for 6 weeks. I was glad after I didn’t remember that detail until it came up in conversation years later. There are snap shots in my mind of that awful empty day, the cheery daffodils, my happy baby, the stones in the car park, the orange of the search and rescue boat, the bald head of my friend’s friend who I knew was a diver, the silence, there are no words on a day like that.

 

I can’t remember how I found out that morning, who told me? Of course it wasn’t the first time, it was the fourth, it wasn’t a shock in the same way that it was mind numbingly, stupor inducing, hyper vigilantly shocking seven years later. I didn’t know then that so many moments would be etched on my brain, replayed time and again and subsequently replayed in an endless comparative and contrasting reel. I didn’t love her in the same way, but she was so deeply loved by some of the ones that I so deeply loved and that meant she was family but that the wrenching of her life out of our lives broke something, shattering it so completely that nothing would ever be the same again. I grew up that day, I mean I was a grown up, I had 3 children, I had seen life and death before but never suicide. Never watched that level of raw pain, never had seen utter devastation, never looked at little children and ached for the road of sorrow that was now set before them. Never watched the ending of a marriage like that. I thought walking beside that was enough, I never wanted to get closer.

 

My memory may not be accurate, I’ve learned that since, the trauma skews things, that’s probably why it’s in snap shots of vivid colour but the details in between are hazy at best.  I rang her, I said “What are you doing? Sure, you can’t be sitting here all day watching the phone waiting for news, can you get someone to mind your kids? We’ll go drive around, rule out a few places at least. You sort out the kids, I’ll drive.” We had a black car at the time, I think. We definitely had an almost three-year-old, she had to come with me, she sat in the back.

 

I’d driven the same road a few months before, different mission, similar destination, much better outcome. Three others and I went up that long road, dripping with adrenaline, slightly nervous, slightly excited, full of faith, facing the unknown. Determined that the hand of evil that had deceived and infiltrated our world would be silenced and condemned. I remember parking and stepping onto the high curb of the hospital car park. Snap shots of that day too now starkly contrasting with this bleak beautiful sunny spring day.  Tubes, machines, the hexagon waiting room, hospital colours, the still reverence and terribly loud ICU, the victory of “Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.” Hope that life would begin again, mothering, loving, thriving. Weirdly superimposed on the image of the Coke Cola Christmas Truck, best gift ever.  Where had it all gone wrong, why were we on this road again but this time without the hope, a different adrenaline surging through my body. The constant dichotomy of looking for her car and later her body and hoping to see it and hoping to not.

 

The absurdity of later on; back at the house when everyone was lauding the best chocolate cake ever, egging us on to try it, sitting at the table, trying to be out of the way with my little girl tucked against me on my knee and having to say something sensible about how good the cake was. The truth was food was like sawdust, it almost seemed sacrilegious to be doing something so banal as eating. Although the too strong tea was good. The snapshot of the table, the chair, the dresser, the search for paracetamol for a head ache. The rawness of the hidden drugs no longer needing to be hidden. The pain in my gut when the little motherless boy I had only met a handful of times clung to me needing comfort that only his mummy could give but would never give again. The tears at the glimpse of the grief that would follow, the echoing thought of how could anyone ever be right again, let alone children. The forced and false cheerfulness of the adults wiped away instantaneously like a shadow of a bird flying high overhead once they thought no child was watching them. Why do adults do that?

 

It was so cold, but that was possibly the shock, walking along the pretty little path. Each step cementing the realisation we were now not looking for her. The unseen image of her clothes left neatly beside the river forever burned in my mind. The long grass swaying in the wind, idyllic, winter starting to fade and spring appearing everywhere. How could the most horrific thing have happened here, any other time I would have wanted to return, to enjoy the muddy path and the flowing river, I thought this walk would never be repeated. It was; different path, different field, different water, different day, same family one step closer. Each snapshot also permanently imprinted, trees, gorse, white sheet, cousins, road, sun, pain.  

 

We stopped for lunch at some stage, I bought rolls, that wasn’t a normal habit and it felt warranted. There was a limestone wall and daffodils. A sign and a gas tank and a wide bit of the road to park. Would the lady behind the counter know we were out driving looking for a missing person, would she know I was in the middle of a crisis? The surreality of buying food and a drink and getting back in the car to continue the search, continually crying out from our depths with words that cannot be uttered, there were no words for a day such as this.

 

How did we even find the car park? Did we follow someone? Was there google maps? We’d gone to the beach first. What if she’d been swept down the river and out to sea, what if we’d never find her. What if we did find her? The sand, the beautiful shells. Walking on the crusty sand surface, each foot fall sinking down. Those shells lived in the door handle of the car for years, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. I don’t know where they are now. A missing poster on the electricity pole, how surreal, would we have to do posters? Someone we loved was actually a missing person. How? The slow realisation that we were putting off the inevitable, we needed to go to where her car was. We needed to be with the others, we couldn’t wait any longer. Reality is ugly.

 

Her car was tucked in beside the hedge, it wasn’t obvious. This was planned. That really was her car, these were the steps she took last. The sobering reality, the silence. We whispered greetings. The comfort of having familiar people, all of us standing in the freezing sunlight, what do you do? What do you say? There is no answer to “How are you.” The concentric circles of familial closeness, exclusive in each widening circle of grief. Maybe that’s the wrong word, it was inclusive, we were all surrounded by the same grief, by deep love, of pain. Divers squeezing their bodies into wet suits across the field, glancing over at us “the family.” A boat being dragged across by the rescue jeep. It was a different boat, the other boat was being used in another incident. We were “an incident.” Later this moment was a flashback, I didn’t know this snapshot would catch me so unawares months later and hit me like an aftershock, stopping me in my tracks and causing my heart to catch and tears to fall. It would transport me instantaneously to this moment shivering beside a car, in a car park split in half by sunlight and shadow with rescue orange across the green spring grass behind the farmer’s innocent barbed wire.

 

We walked back along the riverwalk, tarmac footpath, yellow flowers, gigantic concrete supports under the M1. There was comfort in searching together as siblings and cousins. As if we were out for a family stroll, straining to look in the water, hoping not to see. Driving over that spot was the catalyst for tears for years, I couldn’t look down or I was transported back to that day too vividly to drive safely. How long do flashbacks last for? Split seconds? Moments? Minutes? If I drove over it today, a decade later, I would cry. Maybe next week would be ok. Standing on the path and looking across the clear, fast flowing, deep, deceptively still water, the white of Newgrange flashing at the top of the hill. Years later  when the camera panned over the valley and river below during the winter solstice broadcast on youtube, I was transported back to this spot. Glimpses of her brothers on the other bank walking, searching, shouting over every now and again. Separated from us by the water, the space between us symbolic of the river of grief we didn’t want to experience and didn’t know we would be swept away by. Them desperate to find her, the constant silent conversation in my head hoping they wouldn’t. They didn’t; who did? A farmer? The rescue guys? It doesn’t matter now, I did know, I think it was aptly a shepherd, he knew his sheep and he knew his land and waterway. What a gift the divers give families, such a grim reward. When had we walked up that path, how had we got there and why do I remember walking back stepping over a fallen wooden stake? We followed some of the others home when it became dusk, it seemed weird to be in her house without her. Just a shell, invaded by people, where had we all been when she was hurting the most, why could we not break the lies that stole her?

 

The next long day, they had to identify her, I felt that agony and involuntarily groaned for the grief of it. We lay on the grey carpet, crying together, imagining together, what would unbroken look like in this picture? The fire was lit, it was night time, cosy and warm, the opposite of the riverside. The unsearchable and unknowable peace potent and heavy in the room surrounding us like a blanket. The watery thoughts tumbling through my mind creating vivid pictures of the weir where she was found, her last moments, the unknown of her thoughts. The tumultuous images becoming a familiar although unwanted companion in the processing of all these events and the almost duplicate de ja vu that we did not know would later be forced on us so terribly.

 

I didn’t want to see her in the funeral home, how could she look normal? Her mother sat beside her, she had wanted her in her favourite purple cardigan. I wanted to see her chest rise, to take a breath, to live again. No corpse looks like its owner, this one was no different, she wasn’t smiling, there was no laughter, she was gone. She was buried on the side of a hill. It was muddy too and slippy, people stood between certain people, afraid of a scene. We sang about a river, I couldn’t, why was that hymn chosen? There was no path and trees in the way, everyone was relieved when it was over. I was angry. How were there so many people here? Where had they all been? Why was she so alone and could see no way out. I couldn’t talk to people, I was too angry at them. There were birds singing obliviously, children running and playing interspersing their grief with normality. I can see the churchyard yew trees in minute detail leaf by leaf. We were some of the last to leave, the graveyard was in shadow, it was cold. I walked back to the car beside a grown man weeping.

 

There were purple chairs in the church. It was bright and warm. People said nice things. No one asked how this had happened, how does it come to this. I can’t remember what was said now ten years later. I’m sure it was good, the internal conversation was louder than what was said. There were people milling everywhere, children darting through the crowd for a cup. When it was over the deep silence descended again, it had never truly left even with so many people having regular, pointless conversations. I was glad to drive home that day, back to my safe little world. To leave some of the pain there and retreat to my little circle of family. Everything had changed, there was now a new reference point to life.

 

I vowed in that church yard that I would never be a person who only turns up at funerals, I was going to be there for my friends in life not just death. It began a journey of intimacy, walking not just with covenant friends but family, on a grief path that has shaped us and every decision we make. It was the impetus to choose to celebrate the things worth celebrating, to choose joy, to know that Joy is our strength. Everything we believed was examined and held up to the Light, could it pass through the waters and the fire and still stand? We could become bitter or better, we wanted to choose better, authenticity became a core value. It formed every parenting decision and marriage decision, would we choose love at all costs? The cross became greater than our loss and the true realities of life slid into focus showing us truth about ourselves and the brokenness around us. I didn’t know then that that type of trauma would unsettle me so much, how unsafe I would feel, now I know why I panicked a few weeks later when through miscommunication our plans didn’t work, now I know why I was so upset and why we fought and why we were told to just forget it and get along. Now I know, then I didn’t. I didn’t know then it was only a practice run for seven years later. Now I’m glad we learned to choose love, to be kind, to pull together in our grief and not just forget it and get along. Now I know that what I believe or more accurately who I believe in can stand the test of fire and water, because He did. We have been made unbroken, our shattered hearts have been made whole, our overriding belief hangs like a banner over our lives: “God is Gooder than I ever thought possible.”