Little Grey Gloves – a Story of Hope After Suicide

It was the run-up to Christmas 2021 and for the first time in years, my husband Michael and I wouldn’t be hosting Christmas. We, along with our five children and four grandchildren, had planned to go to my daughter’s and son-in-law’s house for Christmas dinner and we were looking forward to a gentle few days ahead. At the time our son, Wayne, was living and working in Cambodia. The last time Wayne was with us all for Christmas was 2019.

On the morning of 21/12/2021 our worlds changed forever.  My husband Michael and I were getting our 4-year-old granddaughter Lucy ready to go to town for coffee and hot chocolate, to soak in the Christmas lights and festivities with plans to meet our three other grandchildren, Sophie, Paddy, and Penny. When I was helping Lucy put on her little grey gloves our whole world shattered. My daughter Amanda and her husband Gary, called to the house to tell us the horrendous news, that Wayne had taken his life whilst living abroad in Cambodia. Our world stood still. Earth shattering news to hit any family. Unfortunately, there are too many families like us out there. From the moment I learned my 38-year-old firstborn son, my baby, had died, I didn’t think I would be able to live on with such heavy tortuous pain. Other people I knew could do it, but I thought I couldn’t. It was way bigger than I was, how could my life continue? So many questions, how will Michael deal with this news? How was Wayne feeling when he made this decision? Wayne was the eldest of our six children, I kept thinking how would Wayne’s siblings cope? My head was doing summersaults. It was like a sledgehammer coming down on top of us. I always pictured our family as a jigsaw, and this news was like shattering us into pieces. That’s not to say I felt nothing could touch us, in fact, the opposite. I never took anything for granted, ever. To me, it felt like I was plucked from my life as I knew it and plunged into this dark black barrel. It felt like I was tiny in there at the bottom of this dark barrel, looking up and thinking how is there a way back from this?

Wayne had travelled the world, he was a free spirit, and he loved nothing more than living a nomadic lifestyle.  He was single so I suppose this was an advantage to him living the life he wanted too, full of travel and adventure. He had originally planned to be in Cambodia for 3-4 weeks. He arrived there at the end of February 2020. Then COVID hit, and it changed the whole world. We were in touch with Wayne all the time. Facetime calls were great, as we could see how he was, how he looked and where he lived. He was living on an island called Koh Rong Sanloem, very picturesque, not the worst place to be stranded during COVID. It looked idyllic. He worked there in hospitality in a place called The Beach House working behind the bar and helping to manage the place. He was good at that; he was good with people. He was a very intelligent young man and always was, even as a young child. He lived a very simplistic life, he lived life on a shoestring, never phased by material things.  After he briefly lived with a Vietnamese family (one of his many adventures), he said they had so little, but they gave so much. That stuck with him. He always said he loved us all and missed us, and we all loved him too, so very much. That said, he was not perfect by any means, like every other human being, we had our disagreements. But he did have a big heart full of love, especially for his family.

Wayne was due to come home between Jan/Feb 2022, but with COVID still prominent, the plans of flying home did change. Never did we imagine Wayne would be brought home by the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust (KBRT). Wayne died on 21/12/2021 and the KBRT brought Wayne home on 16/01/2022. An agonizing month of waiting for Wayne to be repatriated home. The Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust are an amazing organisation, that helped us tremendously, in our darkest time, working tirelessly to bring Wayne home to us. We can never thank them enough. Almost a year later through a Golf Classic suggested by Michael, the community came together and raised over €62,000 for the KBRT.

As time went on, Wayne was a bit stressed with work, he was struggling to manage everything. He had told me so. I talked things through with him, this was around a month before he passed away. Aside from that, we didn’t think for a moment there was anything to worry about. He passed away one month to the day after his 38^th birthday. It was heartbreaking.  I remember seeing his two younger brothers, only 21 and 23 carry their brother’s coffin and then lower it into the earth on the day of Wayne’s funeral. This is an image I will never forget. They should not have had to face this, but they did, and with such strength and dignity, as did Wayne’s three sisters. Laura, my eldest daughter even wrote a beautiful poem representing Wayne’s life for his eulogy. They are amazing young men and women.

I found HUGG in desperation one day. I can honestly say it has changed my life. It was like a lifeline was thrown at me, as I felt like I was drowning in a raging storm at sea. I started going to HUGG five months after Wayne’s passing in May 2022. My whole family noticed the difference in me. I would not be where I am today without HUGG. My motto in HUGG is, we give, we take, we share, we care, we talk, we laugh we cry. I can firmly say I have met some of the strongest, most amazing people through HUGG. I am the only member of my family to go to the meetings, but that’s okay as it is not for everyone. So many people, friends and family continue to support us to this day.  Pieta was also a great support to me, especially my counsellor Marian, who has become an invaluable friend. I had a deep longing to talk to another mother who understood this grief and I found that in the HUGG support group.  This gave me great comfort.  Taking time out on my own was and continues to be an important part of my healing journey. Long walks in nature are essential and sometimes dark sunglasses are a useful way to disguise my tears. It can be very sad to not have my beautiful son Wayne by my side and to know he won’t experience nature like this anymore, but I am allowing myself to feel both the sadness and the comfort. This is helping me to grow around my grief.

The empathy shown by others has gone a long way and we will be forever grateful to all our friends and family for their compassion and support.  Sadly, however, not everyone can show empathy when it comes to suicide. This is something we’ve learned as we go through this grief.  Sometimes it’s the closer people you would imagine having empathy, but they just don’t have it. It’s sad and has hurt me personally but these are not bad people, maybe they just can’t find empathy within.  This is hard to understand but I am learning to come to terms with it.

We are a close family of seven now, whereas sadly once we were a family of eight. Our extended family, which includes our four beautiful grandchildren, were all under the age of seven when this tragedy hit.  Thankfully we are strong together. We have made it this far, two and a half years on. I can enjoy day-to-day things and special occasions like I did before, we all can. I do not allow myself to feel guilty about this as I once had. I cried an ocean of tears and in time those tears did lessen. The loss of Wayne is with us every day, but we have grown around living with this grief. What good would we be to anyone else if we could not go on? Together as a family unit we journey on, there is light at the end of the very dark tunnel. Wayne is with us always.  We all have great strength in our human spirit, you don’t know how strong you are until you must be. I believe everyone has this within. You have to dig deep sometimes but it’s there. Nothing will fix you, this is with you forever, but we can move forward, day by day. I learned this in HUGG, about moving forward. Life can change in the blink of an eye, grasp life, and live it.  Life is short, fragile and precious, but it is possible, you will come through the darkness into the light. Don’t give up.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.  If I can help one person by sharing this story, it makes the difficulty of writing this worthwhile.

Written by Bernie Meegan- HUGG member since May 2022