After Charlotte died I felt it very difficult to leave where I live, and leave the area where she died. I didn’t want to go anywhere, although she wasn’t there, I felt as if I was leaving her when I went away. But I don’t feel like that at all now. I can happily go anywhere.

After you lose somebody from a suicide, or I expect many other types of death, I personally lost my self, my sense of safety, for everybody else. I lost the sense of security, as if anything could happen to anybody at any minute. So I was worried constantly about my other daughter, when she went out in her car, I just needed to know all the time that she was okay, and she said she felt the same way about me. And you just couldn’t stand it if something else happened to somebody else, so you, you’re overly sensitive and overly anxious to everything. And I think that’s, it’s taken a long time but I think that’s nearly back to normal now. I used to, I used to wake up in the mornings and the first thing I thought about was Charlotte, always, and the last thing I thought about when I went to sleep was Charlotte, and for about, over a year I used to wake up at 3 or 4 oclock in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep, but after about, I think after about 18 months I started to sleep through the night again. And she’s not always the first thing I think about now when I wake up or the last thing at night. I think about her, all the time, every day, and I’m not sure anymore how often I think about her through the day, but lots of things remind me of her, and I often think what she would’ve thought, said about something, thought about something, and if we eat the food that she liked, or when I go round the supermarket I see a food that she liked, so it’s constant really. But it’s not in the same sad way; it’s often in a happy way now. And sometimes we laugh about, my other daughter and I we laugh about things she said.

Do you want to say anything about the inquest, and what happened after that? So you had the funeral and then you had to wait, how long did you have to wait after that?

We had to wait until the following May, so she died at the end of August.

That’s a long time.

Yes. And I had to wait until the following May, but again it gave me time to know what I wanted to say, it gave me time that I wasn’t in such a state really that I could be calmer, to go, and it was very important to me that I went and said my piece. So I stood up and I, I said exactly what I felt about everything, and how Charlotte had been found, and it was an open verdict because there were several reasons why they couldn’t say that it was suicide’ because she hadn’t left a note; and there wasn’t enough heroin left in the syringe to know if it had been pure, too pure heroin, and the level in her body was enough as an over dose that she would have died fairly quickly. But they didn’t know whether she’d done that on purpose, or whether it was because it was a bad batch of heroin.

What do you think?

I personally am 95% sure that it was suicide. I, I do understand that there’s a possibility that it wasn’t, that maybe it was, there was pure heroin, and there had been a few people the week before Charlotte in her area, that had become unconscious and taken to hospital because there was a bad batch around, so it is possible, but given that she’d tried the week before, and the week before, and that she’d wrapped her phone up, she’d taken the plug out the wall and wrapped her phone up. And I, I, I personally, and there was alcohol on her bed that had been unopened, which she always did when she took an overdose. I, I personally think that she knew exactly what she was doing.

Which other group did you join?

It was called the Compassionate Friends, and they meet about once a month, and it’s usually it’s for parents whove lost a child. So it doesn’t have to be a young child, it can be an adult child, and I found that very useful too.

What’s happens when you get to the meeting?

it’s held in one couples house, who lost a child. And they’re just absolutely wonderful and made you feel very welcome. And then you just all talk about, if you want to, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but when you feel ready to you just tell your story, and every body else does the same, and people say how they’ve managed to deal with it, and it’s helpful because some of the people have been going for years, like even ten years. So they’re ten years further on, so they know exactly how you felt but they know exactly how it can change, and how you do feel differently over the years.

Would you mind saying a little bit about your experience of seeing a Cruse counsellor?

They saw me quite quickly, because sometimes you have to wait a while. And they saw me quite quickly, and it was a very nice man that I used to see. And he was, he was just brilliant but he used to make me, not make me, but ask me to tell him everything about what had happened, and even down to when I went to see Charlotte after she’d died at the hospital. And of course that was extremely painful and I think I cried nearly through every session, most of the time, but I think you need to get it out, I think I learnt as well with my daughter, because she suffered with depression for so long, if you have feelings that you don’t let out and you don’t speak about, I think it’s much more of a chance that you will become depressed also. And I haven’t taken anti-depressants at all since, after losing Charlotte. I think I’ve just found ways to, to speak about it, but Ive only spoken to people that I’ve wanted to speak to, about these things.

And seeing someone from Cruse was helpful?

Very helpful, he was, he was, I can’t remember exactly the things he said to me now but I think that one of the first things he said, one of the first things he said to me was, You can get over this, but only if you want to And at the time I thought it was slightly harsh, but actually it wasn’t, it was very good advice I think. And I think, I needed to get over it because I have four grandchildren, one of which was Charlotte’s. And you can’t live a very unhappy life and be miserable all the time around four children and they were, except for Charlotte’s baby, the other three were all old enough to understand what had happened, and they talked about it constantly.

ometimes I actually feel happy now, and I feel about 95% normal, but I think it’s because I’ve found different ways to feel that way. At the beginning I went to Cruse, and I went for about seven weeks, and I went there because my daughter’s psychiatrist told me to go there and that helped enormously. I’ve also started helping at a homeless centre, where my daughter used to go sometimes, although she wasn’t homeless, the people that are vulnerable can go there. People that run out of money half way through the week, they can’t look after their own money properly, they go there, and I’ve felt that, I felt that going there I was closer to her. And I also felt as if I was doing it for her. I read in a, although I’m not Buddhist, I read in a Buddhist book that even when somebody’s dead you can still do things for their soul. And it just seemed very important to me to do that.

So those two things have really helped, Cruse and helping at the Homeless Centre?

Yes. Massively, and the Church too.

And the Church.

But I think of all, the Church and the homeless centre have helped me the most. And I think, not at the beginning, because I couldn’t have done that for the first year, I’ve been going to the homeless centre for 18 months, so it was 18 months after Charlotte died I started going there, and I couldn’t have done that for the first year I think. I think you have to know yourself when you’re ready to do things, and I think it’s different for everybody, on when they’re ready to do things, but for me I needed to go back to work, I needed to, to be doing things all the time. And when I started going to the homeless centre it made a massive difference to me. And I think, because I’d taken care of Charlotte for such a long time, when she died everything just stopped. And that was as bad as losing her really, because I had big holes in my life.

And since then how have you found any help?

I found a lot of help. Before Charlotte died, I can’t remember, I think about a year before she died I’d started going back to the Church, and I’d spoken to a retired vicar on several occasions, I used to have appointments with him on a Thursday morning for about an hour. He was lovely. And, so I’d found a, I’d found a, I had a re-found faith before she died, which helped enormously afterwards, and actually going to the church after she died, I went nearly every week, and to begin with I cried through every service, I think the whole way through, but and I had a feeling that I didn’t have to explain how I felt there, I had a feeling that I was totally understood there, not, not by the congregation or the vicar, but just by God I think.

I think your initial reaction really is you can’t feel your legs. I mean it’s just you’re so shocked. I mean I half expected this to happen for a long time before it happened, and, part, sometimes, painful as it was, I almost used to wish for it to happen because I used to think she just couldn’t keep on with the way she was. She, she just had such a terrible time for such a long time, and she’d actually talked to me about the fact that she’d thought about suicide lots of times in the past and she’d said the reasons why she’d wanted to, and the reasons why she didn’t want to, and she didn’t want to hurt everybody.

You said at one time you almost felt a sense of relief at Charlotte’s death. Do you want to say a bit more about that?

Yes. it’s an awful thing to think in a way, and it’s an even worse thing to actually voice, but I did feel a sense of relief because even before she died I used to sometimes wonder how I would feel if, if she did it, because she’d, she’d threatened to do it before. And she had such a horrible time for such a long time, she was in such distress so many times that I felt she didn’t have to suffer that any more, that she was free of it. And also, I didn’t have the worry of if she was okay anymore. Because every day I used to worry how she was.

Of course.

How did you tell them [the grandchildren] what had happened?

I think my daughter actually told, told them that Auntie Charlotte had died and she’d gone to heaven, but they asked a lot, a lot of questions about it all the time. In some ways that was very difficult, but in some ways that helped too, because we had to put it in very simple language to tell them, and they asked where she’d gone, and what would happen to her body, and we had to tell them everything.

Did you tell them that she’d killed herself? Or weren’t you sure at that time?

No, we weren’t sure at that time, no, we said that she’d died because she was unwell, and that she was; they asked where she was, and we told her that she was in her flat, and that seemed to satisfy them. And I don’t think we’ll, we’ll tell them exactly what happened until they’re older, able to take that in. And actually we don’t know.

No.

So, I think they’ll just understand as they get older. But we won’t tell them any lies definitely because everybody advised us, the psychiatric team, and everybody has advised us not to tell them any lies at all. Not to cover up what happened, because that wouldn’t help them in the long run.

She was, Charlotte was cremated, and I left her ashes to begin with, you can leave them at the undertakers, and so I left them there for a while, for about four or five weeks I think until, and I hadn’t decided where I wanted to put them, but after I’d thought about it a lot I wanted to put them in the parks under a, under a tree. And Charlotte was quite free spirited and didn’t like graveyards very much, and so I, I spoke to the person who runs the parks and he said that he could order a tree, and I could pay for the tree, and they would plant it and they would be there when we put the ashes underneath. And he said, what sort of tree would I like, and I said I want something English and I want something beautiful, and so he said, How about a Wild Cherry So I said, Yes, that sounds just right So when, when we, when we planted the tree her, her father and her step mum and her sister and Charlotte’s little son, and a previous boyfriend and two members, two members of her psychiatric team came. And they’d already, the parks men had already dug the hole for the tree and we all put the ashes in to, underneath, not in the casket, cos I wanted her ashes to become the tree, and it was lovely actually. And I’m very pleased I did that, and it’s not far from where I live, so I go every, but to begin with I went every day, and I talk to it, and I tell her all about her son.

My daughter died three years ago of a heroin overdose. She had mental health issues and drug problems, and she’d, she’d been unwell for twelve years. Her problems started when she was about fifteen or sixteen, when she first used cannabis. She had a psychosis, a small one which we didn’t realise what was going on at the time. Didn’t really understand what she was saying. We thought she was distressed because we’d recently been divorced, and well not recently, it was about five years after. We had no idea that cannabis could cause psychosis, didn’t even know she was smoking it at the time. And then it sort of went away, and she had depression, her father took her to the doctor, he said it was normal sort of adolescent growing up; she used to sort of sit on the pavement outside the school and cry. And, then it seemed to pass a bit, and she did her A’ levels. And then she went to do a foundation year in Art.

And Charlotte only really had to smoke a very small amount of cannabis and it made her very ill, but she, she then was, at the end of that year, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, for about six weeks and they wanted her to stay longer but she left, of her own will, and then she started a degree course in October, but she didn’t make it to Christmas because she started hearing voices and was really not very well. And I said to her at the time, Leave, Charlott, because I thought, I still thought at that time that she couldn’t cope with it because after what had happened to her she needed a bit of a rest, but she was still using drugs, so then she came to live with me, and she, we, she was under a psychiatrist, and she went to, and I don’t know who she was now, but I think she was a nurse, a psychiatric nurse, and we used to go together, and we used to have to sort of fill in forms and. And do diagrams about how she felt about herself and how I viewed her, and how she viewed me. And she went there for quite a long time, and then they, they decided it would be good for her to go to psychotherapy. And she went for a very long time to psychotherapy. And she told me for one year in that time she didn’t use drugs at all, but she didn’t feel any better, she felt just as bad. She, she, she never stopped having depressions.

She was under a psychiatric team, not the team that she was with for the last two years, a different one, and when I wrote to them explaining that I thought that actually now she was taking harder drugs, class A drugs, they immediately put her over to the drugs team, and they said that they couldn’t see her at the same time. That when she got her drug problem sorted out, they would see her again in the psychiatric team. But when we got to the drugs team and we spoke to them there, they were really quite annoyed at that, because they said, actually they said, it’s time they came up to the twenty first century, that most people with psychiatric problems, not most but a lot nowadays have drugs problems as well. And a lot of people with drugs problems end up with psychiatric problems. And it needs to be dealt with as a whole thing, not as a separate thing.

So there’s a lack of communication as well between the two teams?

Yes, Yes. But it, this team at the end they actually did deal with all of it, but not very many, they have so many people on their books, that there’s a lot of people that need their help that don’t get it because they’re just, they’re just over worked.

The drug team?

Yeah. On the, on the, on the, it’s a psychiatric team.

But who are looking after people who have both.

They have multiple, they people they take care of have to have multiple problems.

But you felt that the original psychiatric team should’ve gone on caring for her.

I think they let her down. Yes definitely.