Coping with suicide: Margaret's story

Margaret says she is living proof that you can lose a loved one to suicide and still come out the other side.

Margaret says she is living proof that you can lose a loved one to suicide and still come out the other side.

"There is still an empty space here for my son," she says, pointing to her heart, "and that will never be filled. But I want to tell my story to convince other newly bereaved that life can go on, that things can get better."

It is more than two decades since the Cork mother lost her 24-year-old son to suicide. He was newly married and his wife was expecting the couple's first child.

"None of us knew why it happened. That it occurred when his wife was expecting made it all the more difficult to come to terms with. Over the years I've come to realise that it's not so unusual. The only difference between then and now is that I've stopped asking why," she says.

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Margaret says the subject was never discussed at home because it was too upsetting. In retrospect, she realises this was the wrong thing to do.

"I didn't talk about it with them [ the family], they didn't talk about it with me. The result was that no one spoke about it. It was the elephant in the room. That went on for two years."

Margaret then suffered a mental breakdown and was discovered in a bewildered state, standing in a river, telling passers-by that she was waiting for her son.

"I had no recollection of being in the water. All I could remember was a nice ambulance man asking me would I go with him on a little trip in the ambulance and I'd be grand," she says.

She was admitted to hospital where she received psychiatric treatment and, afterwards, found a helpful GP who, she says, provided vital support.

"My old GP was just giving me sleeping tablets. When I found another one, he was marvellous, he always had the time."

Margaret began to channel her energies into campaigning for the decriminalisation of suicide. Now in her 60s, she is helping to provide support to newly bereaved families. "There are so many wonderful people working in this area, I feel privileged to have met them. A lot of work remains to be done. If it results in one person's life being saved, and also saving the terrible anguish it causes to family and friends, it's worth it," she says.

The name of the mother has been changed

... Carl O'Brien