Geraldine Leddy spent months searching for a note after her husband Pat had committed suicide. She needed answers desperately, she tells Theresa Judge. Why would a happily married 34-year-old man, with a two-year-old son he adored and who showed no outward sign of depression, decide to take his own life?
Five years later, she describes vividly the nightmare she endured and how it has changed her life. In her case, "the awfulness of not knowing" was one of the hardest things to deal with. She also had to endure the horrific experience of being the one to find him. Their life together ended "like a candle going out".
She tells her story now only to make others aware that help is available.
The number of suicides in the Republic rose again last year for the first time since 1998. A total of 448 people, 356 of whom were male, took their own lives in 2001. Figures from the Central Statistics Office show that suicides peaked in 1998 at 504. Rates tend to be higher in rural areas.
Despite the scale of the problem, groups working to prevent suicide and to help those bereaved by it say adequate funding is not being given. They point to the large sums spent on road safety campaigns, yet 112 more people died from suicide than on the roads last year.
Some believe the true rate may be higher than official figures suggest - in cases where there is any doubt, inquests often record a verdict of accidental death.
In the years since her husband's death, Geraldine Leddy has undergone a remarkable transformation.
She says that if someone told her 10 years ago she would be the person she is today, she would never have believed it. From going to support groups and training as a facilitator to help people who have been through similarly traumatic experiences, she has become a more confident, self-assured person. Her naturally cheerful, friendly personality has survived.
She describes it as "moving forward with a scar" and has learned to accept that there are questions to which she will never find answers. She never did find a note and knows now that even if she had, it probably wouldn't have told her very much.
Geraldine sees the spot where her husband took his own life from her back door every day and yet she can say: "You have to go along this jagged road and try and look on the brighter side, if at all possible." She and Pat were married for five years and had been going out for 11 years before that, from the time they were teenagers. His suicide came "completely out of the blue".
A qualified electrician, he was working part-time with An Post as well as farming. He had never shown any signs of depression and had strong religious beliefs.
"Everything was as normal as could be - you couldn't have anybody more normal. The next thing, snap, it was all over." The only explanation she can give is that he was a perfectionist who set very high standards for himself and he was a particularly quiet individual who didn't find it easy to talk to other people.
"He probably kept an awful lot bottled up and was living with his own pain," she says.
She couldn't eat or sleep properly for months and felt at times that she didn't want to go on. "You are left so alone in every way."
After the first few months, it was the combination of her little son, Gerard, and attending a suicide bereavement support group, that helped her to take an interest in life again.
She is now the co-ordinator of a suicide bereavement support group which she co-founded in Cavan town and also works as a facilitator with a support group in the Family Life Centre in Boyle.
She urges people to at least try these groups. Meeting other people whose husbands and wives had committed suicide made a huge difference to her.
"They assured me that I wasn't going crazy, that it was very normal, everything I was saying to them. I got a great sense of relief, but at the same time the pain was shocking."
Joining a group helps people to see they are not alone. "I would just say to people to at least give it a try - you've nothing to lose. I know when you're hurting and in pain, it is very difficult."
She wishes there was a greater appreciation at government level for the voluntary work they do, and that this was backed up with funding. At the last meeting of the group two weeks ago, the small office of the Cavan Family Resource Centre was full with 14 people.
The centre, which provides a range of other services as well, would have had difficulty keeping its full-time worker if it had not received a €16,000 donation from a private company in May, after money it had been receiving from the EU's peace and reconciliation fund ran out.
She says if government ministers could meet the people with whom she works, they might have different priorities for spending. "When you're on the ground and see what's happening and what is needed, it is a different story."
Geraldine Leddy is also concerned about the stigma still attached to suicide. She urges people to genuinely listen to those bereaved by suicide and to refrain from judgments.
The message she would like to get across is that suicide is not the answer, no matter how depressed a person may feel. They may think they are going to relieve themselves and those they love.
"But if only they knew the heartache and the pain and the devastation that they cause. I think they get into a deep, unknown world and they are not thinking of other people. I don't believe thinking comes into it at all, because if it did, they would never do it."