Yes. So we’re talking about Rose and who died November, 2005. I think probably that the depression that she suffered from had started a long time before. But it wasn’t, I didn’t recognise the depression she’d had on and off for about ten years was the reason for her suicide. She had anorexia badly at fourteen. And she had a complicated teenage life, having affairs with older men. So there was a great imbalance in her character.

Hmm.

But it went with a tremendous verve and huge charisma and just … she had more friends than anyone I’ve ever known and five, six hundred people came to her funeral which at twenty eight is quite something. So it was very complicated to know why it was that this huge imbalance was going on, that in the end led to this absolute despair.

She went to New Zealand in 2000, 1 or 2 and came back in 2003. And in the meantime she’d had a serious accident. Someone, a woman knocked her off her bicycle and she landed on her head. And had … and sustained I think quite bad neck injuries and head injuries. And from that moment on felt that she, she couldn’t work. She thought she’d got ME. I think she actually had a serious injury.

Hmhm.

And things really went down hill from then.

But suicide was not something I’d even considered with her. I now think it was the result of the antidepressants, the mixture. And I have found out since it is quite a possible thing that people do … it’s quite a …a quick reaction to taking antidepressants is suicide in some people. It can just flick your chemical soup the other way.

I came back and by this time she was seeing a psychiatrist in London but in a very ad hoc basis. And this was at … a psychiatrist who had she seen her earlier I think might have made a real difference. But she worked for a charitable organisation. And it was too late. She immediately recognised Rose’s condition as being bipolar. But it was too late, because Rose had lost all hope by then.

And she had left some notes you said.

Yes and he [the coroner] produced her note, her suicide note in a plastic bag like this. And wiggled it in front of me and said, “Is this your daughter’s hand writing?”

And you hadn’t even seen it?

I hadn’t seen it.

Ohh.

And I said, “Yes, where did you find it?” And she had written it on the back of a Edinburgh University, which is which is where she was, a concert programme, where she and her brother had been soloists. And she’d … it was on her bed.  I had seen it. They had produced it. The police had searched her room and found it and brought it down. But I was … I, I was … I mean they showed to me and I was so hysterical that they put it in a bag and took it away. But yes they produced that again [at the inquest hearing]. And I sort of grabbed it and said, “I want this.” And they said, “Well you can have it now.” I’d actually sort of … they took it away obviously as evidence. So actually they had the evidence in front of them already.

Hmm.

I mean the coroner had it there. He was reading it, it says, “Please forgive me if you can. I can’t go on..” And I virtually said, you know, I had to control myself from actually being quite rude to him.

Yes well … I mean the only merciful thing for me … I mean the shock because I had no idea that she … I mean if I’d thought in my wildest dreams that she might shoot herself I would not have allowed a gun in the house obviously.

Hmm.

But she’d grown up with a family that shoots and therefore it’s just part of gun cabinets, you know approved gun cabinets in approved places have always been in this house.  I think … so when I actually found her, when I thought she was going to be playing her guitar, with a gun …with the gun lying on the floor … mercifully, mercifully she was face down. But I think it happened literally thirty seconds before I found her, because actually afterward my cleaning lady said she had heard a bang. But you know hadn’t thought anything of it. And it was in the attic so three floors up. And because it was literally half, half a minute or something, I think she had looked out of her bedroom in the attic seen me coming out of the office and thought, quick, help, panic … got to do it now. This was on a Tuesday.

On the Saturday before she looked at me with her gray, gray face and said, “I nearly did it yesterday, mum.” And I said, “Did what Rose? What?” And she said, “You know what.” And I said, “Well in that case you must tell me, you must tell me what you were going to do that you haven’t done.” But I mean she wasn’t stupid. I mean she knew … she was obviously planning to do it at some point so why would she say I was going to shoot myself because then I would’ve been able to stop her. But of course when I found her, because it was so soon after, there was no blood. Or I didn’t see it.

Hmm.

I didn’t see it. It must have been there and I didn’t see it. So I picked up her hand and of course it, of course it wasn’t … she hadn’t got rigor mortis from it because it was so soon.

I have the most terrible … it took me. I know that I can’t mention it. I didn’t touch her room until this summer. It was in complete and utter chaos because one of the worst things that happened while she was ill is that her stuff was brought back. She thought she was only coming home for a few weeks and then she’d be back in London. So her room in London was full of her stuff.  And her friends, well meaning but it was terrible, packed her stuff into boxes, drove up, came through the front door, put them in the hall and said, “Here’s your stuff”. And Rose just howled and said, “That is my life, just piled back.” 

So I couldn’t bear to do any of it. And then because I thought we were moving I realised I’d got to do the attic. I hadn’t been into the attic for a year because I couldn’t bear to go there.

Hmm.

So I got some … I got a carpet firm to come and re-carpet the room where she died because obviously they’d taken everything.  And I cleared the attic which is big; it’s three enormous rooms and her room. And I knew I would find stuff that absolutely tore me apart and I did, a lot of it. 

Hmm.

Diaries, journals, the, the complete, gaps there were between her and I that I hadn’t realised. A lot of what she felt about me which was just awful, but, and yet at the same time I thought, “No she’s writing this when depressed”. They weren’t when she came home, they were the year before.  

Are certain times particularly difficult for you like anniversaries …?

Yes appalling. They’re appalling. So I made a decision to … in a sense to honour them and do something as opposed to sitting at home crying. So her first, her first birthday … her … what would have been her twenty ninth birthday, we went with my … this sister, who’s been marvellous, and her and a sister-in-law of mine who, who was very close to her and my sister’s partner, we went out Scolt Head [an island of sand dunes and salt marsh], you know and scattered her ashes … well, some of her ashes. Her ashes are in all the places where we go, there’s a bit of her there. They’re not her favourite places, they’re mine. And then blow it, in those gales in March the dune on Scolt Head where she is, collapsed.

Ohh.

And I went there on Easter Monday to see her, because on Boxing Day it was still there. And the whole dune had turned upside down and all her ashes were underneath the top.

No.

So this year we went to Orkney for her birthday just to walk in Orkney and it rained a lot. And we’re going to Venice on her anniversary.

Oh.

That’s how … that’s the only way to cope with it, is not to be in the normal stream of things.

Hmm.

But to actually get out and in a sense celebrate her birthday, you know.

When you scatter her ashes do you make a … Do you go as a family or just you and your husband or … what’s best have you found?

Ashes are very particular … do you … I was told this incredible fact that your ashes weigh to within a half an ounce or something of your birth weight.

Oh.

Well don’t … I can’t. Anyway it was right in her case. I’ve been with the boys, out in the hills in Spain where we have … we grow avocados. And up there where you see the sea and the snow and up in the hills and almond blossoms, they, the boys came and her favourite cousins came.

Hmm.

And we did it. And it … not always alone, no not alone, I’ve never been alone and done it. It’s too … it is so awful. It’s so awful. There is nothing healing or heartening for me anyway because it’s just that. And I’ve still got most of her ashes.

Hmm.

And anyone who says, oh come … and I was so upset about the dune. And everybody said, “Oh come on that’s just nature.” And I said, “No she’s underneath the top, the whole point is that she should’ve been out there.” Anyway no one understands. And then you think well are you just being too sentimental for words. It is not … I do not enjoy scattering her ashes … no.

One thing I would say to anybody who, who has a chance to do something like this, I haven’t been to see what I’ve done yet, is to set up something in the person’s memory because it’s really worthwhile, even if it’s only … not just to give some money to a charity, but to do something even, even if it’s to buy a new desk in a school or something. (…) We’ve raised money for a charity, and it turns out quite by coincidence Rose was already involved with the building of this school in Africa, run by someone called Grace, who has set up a place for girls and women who’ve been abused and left with children. And in Rose’s memory they built a loo block, and a teaching block and a covered playground. I think that’s a great thing to do. As yet I haven’t got her head stone or anything. I’m going to because she must be marked.

Where will you have that?

Well probably against what I would do but what she would like it’ll be in the church yard.

Hmm.

Hmm. And by the way there was a wonderful charity called Memorials by Artists set up, working from Snape in Suffolk, set up specifically for people who’ve lost children. It’s memorials for young people. And you design your own memorial and it’s made and you can put in it … it’s totally a-religious, and set up by someone who didn’t know what to do for her stepdaughter who killed herself.

The inquest was extremely unpleasant. But I and I had thought it was going to be quite a sympathetic affair because it was so obvious what had happened. But of course I realised that it wasn’t.  

When was the inquest?

February, the following February.

Hmm.

Which I had thought was a long time but apparently a short time. But again, I mean a cause of death had to be established. Did I shoot her or did she shoot herself? But it was pretty tough. But of course I suppose naively I thought well they know she committed suicide so why are they being so hard on me.  

So did you have to take the stand?

Oh yeah totally .. totally … for the whole of the inquest. I mean even when I’d given evidence, which went on for a very long time. Other witnesses were then brought up.

I thought … you see well know I say this as I have said again maybe I misinterpreted the whole thing. Maybe they were genuinely trying to find the cause of death which I thought … since her death certificate and everything said that she had taken her own life. I didn’t see the need to put me through the mill to the extent that they did, if the cause of death I thought had already been established. I think it certainly needs to be; the whole system needs to be more victim sensitive. I mean it’s, it’s very cold. It’s very austere. You sit in serried ranks. And then you know I was shaking so much I couldn’t walk and yet I was told to stand.

So what would you recommend in future, would you recommend people were prepared properly for what was going to happen?

Much, much better yes … yes I think, I think especially in a very sensitive situation like this when you’re … the family is so traumatised, that actually you ought have a pre-session. This is where you will sit. This is, this is how it’s going to be. You’ll have a chance to speak if you want to. Is there anything you particularly want … is there you know… what would help? As opposed to the feeling, and I have checked with my husband several times, was I making a meal out ... a mountain out of it. And he said, “Absolutely not, it was appalling.” 

So none of that information was given to you, you didn’t meet the coroner’s officer first or anything?

No, no, no … no. No. And I think also there shouldn’t be a strange little man in the corner who keeps looking at you like this and scribbling your evidence down. It should be done in a much more modern and subtle way. It can be recorded. But no it needs to be brought into the 21st century; it was like something out of Dickens.

Just recently you’ve been put in touch with Compassionate Friends, did anybody mention them or any other support groups a long time ago?

Yes I … at the beginning I had the … I had the number for SOBS, Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide and the Compassionate Friends. I did nothing for a very, very, very long time. Well until about it, it … I mean it’ll be two years in November. And I should think I made contact with SOBS first, earlier this summer, maybe in the spring. But I rang and there’s absolutely no branch of a support group here in [this county of England]. In fact the person I spoke to didn’t know where [this county] was. I was actually just so appalled by it because it had taken a lot of courage to ring. And I’ve … I felt I was opening myself up by ringing and to get a response which was so … it wasn’t negative. It was idiotic. So that was the end of that. And I thought well I won’t approach anybody anymore.

And then suddenly a few weeks ago I felt I really needed to talk to someone or people in the same position as me because other people seemed to be “moving on”, not only my friends but my family. And I … my counsellor had pointed out to me actually she thought I was getting stuck … which I thought actually for eighteen months on was a bit odd really. Frankly I thought it was a bit harsh. But maybe she was trying a technique of moving me on.

So I rang the Compassionate Friends, and I must say they have been; I haven’t been to a meeting yet. But there is a group up here. And they were tremendously sympathetic and kind and immediately sent me literature and that did make me feel, yes I’m not alone.

Have you got any other messages for either health professionals or those that have been bereaved?

For health professionals, listen. Listen to what the patients are actually saying. And if someone is saying, “You don’t understand, you don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you, I’m desperate.” Then don’t say, “Well, we’ll see you in three weeks.” Listen. Take it seriously. And if the worst happens, check on the people who are left, see if they are all right. I mean, I’m lucky I have found the money for private counselling. But if, if I couldn’t I … where would I’ve gone? Nobody offered help on the NHS. Somebody, somebody within the local GP network should have checked, should have visited, should have, should have sent a note saying the doctor’s practice is open if you, if you need us, this is a list of counsellors who you could see with assisted finance … anything. But you know it’s only because I‘ve got the sort of family that I have that I’m in one piece. I cannot imagine what someone would do without …

Hmm.

 … the both intellectual, moral and love, loving support I’ve had. So listen.