Forever Young: A mother's story of life after suicide

by Sharon Truesdale

  Two days after Matthew died, I had a dream. There were three women in my room, looking down at me. One of them looked like my father’s mum, Annie. She was wearing an old fashioned long, vyella night dress. She was kissing my hand, and although I couldn’t see Matthew, I was aware that he was standing behind the women. The dream was so vivid. It was almost as if I was awake. I actually felt the softness of that kiss on my hand.

  I’ve always attended church quite regularly, but after Matthew died, I realised I should make a point of attending in order to hold onto my faith. I went every week, and it gave me comfort. At every service, I would gain some peace. I tried different religions. My dad was a Presbyterian, so I sampled that. I tried evangelism, and I tried the Baptist church. But that one was a bit too strict for me.

  God was there for me when I was growing up, and now I needed him more than ever. I attended Victory Praise and prayed daily. ‘Father, I know it is written that there is a plan. I trust you, and I stand on your every word. Father, I know that you will help me through this.’

  For all that, I went through moments of doubt; moments of thinking that God didn’t understand what I was going through. But nine months after Matthew’s death, sitting in church with the sun streaming through the stained-glass windows, I remembered that God had a son who died too. So of course, he did understand.

  When I was at my worst, on the verge of a breakdown, Kritti invited me to her house for a few days. Kritti is like a sister to me and I know that I can get to her house and be kept safe. When I explained all this to Karen, and told her that I needed to get away, Karen said she would take time off work and would come along too. I was delighted, but shocked. Karen is always so busy and committed to her work.

  ‘And while we’re there, we can go to a fortune teller,’ she said. ‘I’d like to be there when you hear from Matthew.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ I was flummoxed.

  ‘I think you’ll hear from Matthew,’ she said, ‘and that will give you a sense of peace.’

  I’m normally sceptical of such things, but Karen believes in angels, and the books she had bought for me on angels had given me comfort. I’d accompanied Karen when she went to Belfast to hear the writer, Lorna Byrne, who sees angels, and believes they are all around us, and I could see how fervently people believe in them. Karen had also got me the box set of ‘Ghost Whisperer.’ Watching it, I was able to imagine that Matthew was standing beside me. The image was so vivid. He was telling me that he loves me, and that he wants me to strive for the job of my dreams but more importantly he wanted me to live and not barely exist.

  But I wasn’t putting too much faith into this visit to a fortune teller. I’d been to see them before. Well, hasn’t everybody? But that was when we were at college and wanted to know about boyfriends and holidays. It was all a bit of fun. This was different. Did I really need a fortune teller to tell me where Matthew was? I felt I already knew.

  ‘Matthew is in heaven,’ I told Karen. ‘I’m convinced of it. So, what’s the point of all this?’

  I was fighting a losing battle. When Karen gets her teeth into something, she’s hard to dissuade. And her enthusiasm won out. I decided to give it a go and for what Karen would call fate the following morning when we arrived, we phoned a fortune teller and got 3 appointments for that morning.

  When we arrived, the woman took us into this healing room. She put me in a gloriously comfortable chair and gave me what looked like was some dumbbells wrapped with copper wiring. Then she took us through some breathing exercises. It was supposed to relax us, but I found it hard to concentrate, and I started laughing hysterically. I found that I couldn’t stop, and the healer did not appreciate this.

  She looked at me, sharply. ‘You think I talk shit? You think I’m stupid?’ She was, clearly upset, but this just made me laugh more. Kritti and Karen were mortified. ‘She’s just nervous,’ said Karen. ‘Sharon always laughs when she’s nervous.’

  Well, when I got into her room for my private consultation, my gosh I wasn’t laughing. It takes a lot to scare me, but she terrified me with her knowledge. Without saying anything she told me that it was Matthew’s anniversary the next week; she told me how he had died; she talked about the argument between the two girls, and whenever she spoke to me, she referred to me as, ‘Ma.’ How did she guess that that is what Matthew always called me? How would she know?

  ‘When you found your son, there was a bird in the room,’ she said. ‘And you know that cupboard? The one in the kitchen where Matthew used to keep his protein shakes? Often you find that open. Is that right?’

  I nodded, wordless. It was true. The cupboard had a stiff door – one that was hard to open because layers of paint had made it a tight fit. And I had, indeed found it open, many, many times. It had always puzzled me.

  ‘That’s Matthew trying to contact you,’ she said. ‘He’s trying to show you that he’s okay.’

  She was quiet for a while, apparently going into a trance, then she spoke again.

  ‘Matthew is worried about you,’ she said. ‘He thinks you might feel bereft on Mother’s Day. He says you’re to buy yourself some flowers – as a gift from him.’ She smiled. ‘He says, ‘nothing too expensive’. He’s thinking of some daffodil bulbs in a pot.’

  Then she laughed. ‘To be honest, Sharon, from the sense I’m getting of your Matthew, I suspect he’d have just lifted some flowers from somebody’s garden.’ And how right she was! For all that, a part of me remained sceptical. The whole scenario was too reminiscent of the movie, Ghost with Whoopee Goldberg – and the way the fortune teller took on Matthew’s personality freaked me out.

  For all that, it gave me comfort to know that Matthew was okay. And when she passed on his messages, I felt real comfort. ‘He says, I love you Ma, and I’m sorry that my death made you suffer.’ Since meeting that fortune teller, I feel sure that Matthew is with me. How else could she have known about the strange things that had happened in the house?

  Returning home, I felt calmer. I can’t explain some of those odd experiences, but at least I now know I’m not mad! I still live by my faith in God, but I am now more open to these alternative forms of belief.

  12

  Fighting

  I will never forget Matthew. I don’t want others to forget him either. I want his legacy to be of some use. I don’t want anyone else to have to go through the pain I experienced, and I want his death to help other people, and to make them think before taking their lives. This is why I searched so hard for answers.

  All through Matthew’s troubled life, I had been looking for help. From his times of trauma – witnessing the domestic violence and hurting because contact with his father was so spasmodic. I looked for help when he was being bullied at school; when he experimented with drugs; and when he found himself in trouble with the law. I knew he needed professional help and did everything in my power to secure it for him.

  There are, officially, processes in place to safeguard and support a young person with their mental health difficulties, but in the ten years – from when Matthew was seven until his death, I sought help for Matthew. He was referred to Social Services 17 times, but we could never get our foot through the door.

  This lack of support was especially worrying during Matthew’s last year of life. There were so many distressing signs; his self-harm, and his earlier attempts to end his life. We looked for help and kept on looking. Terry and I have training – and we put into place all the possible safeguards at home, but we were well aware that Matthew needed outside help. That’s why we went to our GP and to CAMHS.

  I could never understand why they had been unable to offer Matthew the support he so badly needed, and in the months following his death, I made a complaint to the Northern Health Trust about CAMHS. The head psychiatrist and head social worker took my complaint seriously; they came to see me the month after Matthew died. I remember it so well. The two of them sitting opposite me, on the sofa, drinking tea.

  I reit
erated that I’d warned CAMHS of the state that Matthew was in. I’d told them about the attempts he’s taken on his life, and of my worries that without expert intervention he would complete suicide, and the head psychiatrist put up his hands in mock-surrender.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘On this occasion the trust failed you and it failed Matthew.’ Then, shaking his head slightly, he added, ‘If I had been there, things would have been different.’

  I was happy with that. If they could accept that my complaint was valid, I reasoned, the procedures would be tightened up in the future.

  At that time, I believed that Matthew was the only young boy to have been so badly let down, and that ours was the only family to have been denied the help we needed. I thought it was a once off. But that, I discovered, wasn’t true. And if young people were not getting the support from professionals; if parents weren’t getting appropriate information, how would the situation ever improve? The services need to change because suicide is on the increase. It’s not good enough that policies are put into drawers and forgotten about as the aims and objectives for their existence are not met and inequalities creep in where they pick and choose who to help.

  When the head social worker made her report the following January, she highlighted the deficiencies in social services. In many ways it was a wonderful, thorough report. But she rowed back on what was said at the meeting at my house. Whilst saying that social services had let us down over the years, she failed to address her own part in this. My question had been, why did CAMHS not help Matthew, and the report didn’t address that.

  When CAMHS said that they were not aware of Matthew’s history, and didn’t know he had tried to take his own life, I couldn’t accept it. Because both he and I told them that in May, when we were there. It was made quite clear. It felt, to me, as if they were conspiring against me. And when I asked for a copy of all their records, it showed me that actually they did know that. Were they deliberately lying?

  I’m not saying Matthew’s death was their fault – but they took away a chance of helping him because without intervention he would succeed. That’s what upset me so much. The emails pinged backwards and forwards for two years. In a way, they kept me alive. There was nobody else who was going to fight for Matthew. It was up to me, and this was the one last thing I could do for him. I wasn’t looking for money; I wanted change for someone else. My message was, ‘follow your policies and procedures. And if you can’t do that signpost the young person.’ Because we didn’t get that.

  The letter I received from the head psychiatrist did not answer all the questions. At his conclusion he did apologise – but not for the inadequacies. He said he was sorry that I had been treated as a working colleague, rather than as a mother concerned for her son. But if that is how they viewed me, why could they not take on board my professional opinion that Matthew, as a young person, needed specialised help – and needed it urgently?

  There was one issue which particularly angered me. I requested all the notes from CAMHS, in a desperate search for answers, and I wasn’t one bit happy with the account I read. And worse, they were so dismissive of me. There was little empathy for me; little recognition that I was a grieving mother who was struggling to cope with her loss.

  I was learning the stages of grief the hard way – and I assume, through their training, these specialist workers in CAMHS could recognise the stages in me. It seemed to me that they did so and were using my grief against me. They were making out that I hadn’t told them about Matthew’s previous attempts on his life; they said had they known they would have done things differently. It was as if they were trying to make me feel guilty.

  And believe me, I felt guilty enough without their input. But the constant reports made me believe that I wasn’t a good mother or a good youth worker. If I couldn’t help my own son, how could I help others?

  Yet I knew, logically, that Matthew completed suicide because they failed to offer him any intervention. When I asked why, the social worker said it was because they had failed to look at Matthew’s history. And his history, surely, mattered? All the things that happened to Matthew – the violence he suffered at the hands of his father – the effects of the divorce – the bullying at school – the trouble with the police, and charge of rape – not to mention the times he voiced his wish that he were dead did this truly matter? Was it not enough to say, ‘I asked my doctor for a lethal injection, my mum caught me with her dressing gown belt around my neck and struggled to get it off?’

  Their lack of response really mattered to me. Changes were needed. It was too late for Matthew, but not for others. The rate of suicide in my hometown was increasing, and yet these experts did not do what they were supposed to. I said that, if I wasn’t happy with the report, I would go public, and I meant every word!

  At one stage, seeking another response, I showed Matthew’s medical file to a lady who works with the Public Health Agency. I showed her the first page. It stated that Matthew had asked for a lethal injection from his GP, and that he continually stated that life wasn’t worth living. I asked her what, presented with such a case she would expect to be done?

  ‘First, the service would make sure the young person was safe,’ she said, indicating that a plan would be drawn up for him. ‘It could be a mixture of counselling, psychiatric treatment and medication.’

  ‘Would it be sufficient to ask his mother to deliver an anger management programme?’ I asked, adding that that was the only help offered to Matthew and me.

  She was so shocked, she almost choked on her tea. She hinted that in her role, she was able to offer free training courses mental health first aid, ASIST but that CAMHS had told her ‘such courses was not necessary’; as they were specialists, hiding behind titles in my eyes. As a youth worker working ethically with young people it would appear I had more mental health qualifications than CAMHS. When I left her, she was deep in thought?

  I then met a gentleman from ZEST – a self-harm and suicide support agency and showed him that same first page. He read it assiduously, then, looking at me over his glasses said, ‘Was Matthew diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?’

  I frowned. ‘No. My son wasn’t diagnosed with any mental health disorder.’

  ‘But he was referred to CAMHS?’

  ‘Oh yes. Many times!’ I relayed my experiences to him, and he listened intently.

  ‘Hmm.’ He looked annoyed. ‘I have to tell you, Sharon, terrible though this is, I am not surprised.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘I’ve seen other, similar cases.’

  And if that shocked me, and it did, what he said next came as a body blow.

  ‘Don’t be surprised,’ he said, ‘If the different services collude in order to prevent a court case.’

  I stared at him, open mouthed as the penny dropped. I could imagine them all sitting round a boardroom table working out what they could write that would get me off their backs. ‘They just hope I’ll go away!’ I said, and he nodded.

  ‘Well that,’ I said, ‘it’s simply not going to happen.’

  And it wasn’t. There was no way I was going to stop my investigation. Not when the suicide rate in Northern Ireland was on the increase. A fact brought home to me when one of Matthew’s close friends Atlanta completed suicide a few months after he had died – an event that brought our community together as we sourced and shared information, finding out about all the local services who might help young people in distress. That strengthened my resolve.

  Additional help came from an unexpected source. A year after Matthew had died, my dad contacted, asking if he could visit. I was reluctant to see him, and I told him so. ‘It feels strange,’ I said, ‘that you want to see me now. I don’t need a dad at 40 – I needed one when I was 10.’

  He asked again, and I relented. Matthew’s death had shown me that life is short, and maybe I should give him a chance. Perhaps he could add to my life?

  He arrived, and we chatted. And, almost at on
ce I recognised myself in him. We share mannerisms, and as I got to know him, I realised I got my sarcastic sense of humour from him too.

  But the starkest realisation, was that he had this passion for fighting for justice. Working for the Royal Mail, he’d been a trade union representative, and in retirement, he clearly had a soft heart for those who needed looking after. And as we chatted, and I told him how I speak out at work, anxious to ensure that policy and procedure aims are met, he could see this same characteristic in me.

  My dad wanted to fish in Antrim, but he needed a day license. We were told we could buy one from the old courthouse. We arrived there at 1.50pm and were told that the girl on the desk was at lunch but would be back by 2.00pm. So, we waited. As it happened, she didn’t appear until nearer 3.00pm, and then told us that the courthouse no longer dealt with fishing licenses.

  ‘You’ll have to go over the road,’ she said.

  We walked over, only to find that the building had shut for the day just minutes before. ‘That’s frustrating,’ I said. ‘I hope that doesn’t happen to many other people who want a license.’

  He caught my eye, and we laughed.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Which of us is going to write that letter of complaint?’

  It got us talking about CAMHS. And Dad said that he had seen situations like that many times before.

  ‘Don’t give up,’ he said. ‘Stick at this and you will win out.’

  ‘You think so?’

  He nodded. ‘At the start of any dispute the people in an organisation stick together – anxious not to take the blame. But when they see how determined you are – and that you will not go away – their instinct for self-protection will kick in. That’s when they start playing hot potatoes, passing the blame on to each other. Eventually someone will tell the truth.’