Have you used any other way of sort of coping with all this? Did you keep a memory box or have you done anything else at all?

Yes, I have got a memory box and I’ve kept some of the things Matt had. I don’t know if it’s a good thing but his, he had a red filing box and I’ve kept that. And I have got a little book and after [he died] we planted a tree.

Mm.

I write notes from time to time, I used to do it more often. And I don’t do it as often now, and that’s not, and I asked myself recently actually why I did it less often, it would be nice to think that it was because I didn’t need to, I don’t think it is that, when I really, when I feel low, I think I, I say to myself it’s because What’s the point? But I don’t often feel like that, and it’s just, in a strange way it’s I feel I’m communicating with him.

So you write notes to him?

They’re, they’re a mixture. Sometimes they’re just a note about, came today, sometimes I say, came with Henry the dog and, I describe you know, if it’s spring time and whether there are leaves are coming out and what the flowers are around, and I saw a particular bird. Sometimes it’s just like that. Sometimes it has been, I actually do say, Matt, you know.

Do you keep the notes?

Yes I’ve got it in a little book, yes, yes. And sometimes, earlier on I told him when you know new grandchildren had come, because he, he was alive when my daughter had, her first two were born and our sons first daughter was born, but the others have come since, so.

Do you have a spiritual faith that helps you or not?

No, I wish, I want to have. I was brought up as a strict Methodist and I, but it’s a long, a long time ago that I even, I even when I was in the 6th form, I began to question things. I think perhaps I had too much of a, going to church three times a, and I began to question things and it was mostly seeing children, suffering with cancer and things which made me think that you know I can’t reconcile this, I can’t find any answers, so I [sigh], I suppose it, well I, yes I have lost faith and yet there is a small part of me which just occasionally, particularly when I’m out walking and there’s a lovely, lovely day and, and some small part of me, just for fleeting seconds, I think there has to be something more than this, and, then I think perhaps it’s arrogant of man to think that just because we can’t understand it, there isn’t something else, so there is still, there is still some part of me that, well there’s a spiritual dimension to me and there is some part of me which wants it to be a Christian belief. So, I, I go on hoping that, that I might you know, find some faith but…

Mm.

…I don’t know. But I haven’t entirely, I haven’t entirely dismissed it. That’s sounds very silly doesn’t it but

No, does that, does that help you with your

It would help me.

With your loss of Matt, does it help?

Yes it, yes it would help me, it does help me, and I do, I do, I, I, I say a prayer every night, and I, I think why? Why do I? I think of Soames in the Forsyte Saga who, who said, he said his prayers as a sort of insurance policy, just in case there was anyone there. I don’t do that. I don’t think I, that’s not my conscious motivation so I think there has to be still some, there’s still some part of me that, and I sometimes talk to, well, yes I do, I sort of talk to Matt,when I’m in a bit of a quandary about things I sometimes say, Oh I, help me to, you know, go on the right lines. So there, there must be, there is a spiritual dimension.

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.

Well, I did mention a little earlier on in the filming that I was so grateful to Leon for giving me the chance to help him that I decided that I would try and do something and I, actually went to, with Samaritans for a little while, but wasn’t very happy with that. And then I eventually was listening to some, I suppose it would be, we’re going back a few years after Leon’s death now, probably about 4, 5, whatever it was, and a friend rang me up to say, Oh there was a programme you should listen to, it’s on Woman’s Hour So, I thought that’s a bit strange so I tuned into this programme and one of the ladies speaking on the programme was a lady who eventually became part of our organisation. And I was so much at one with the various speakers on this broadcast that I rang the BBC and I got the names of a few people, or I was able to give my phone number across and they contacted me.

And it finished up with a lady who was involved with an organisation called SOBS [Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide] and I; let me put this in perspective, it was then that I got involved with the Samaritans but I really found that it wasn’t the sort of thing that I wanted to do and I, I eventually got to know of a lady locally who was involved with this SOBS operation and when I did talk to her about it felt that I couldn’t possibly be a prop for two or three years for somebody because like having gone through my own son’s death, I think that it was something that I had to do by myself. But this lady said to me, Well there’s somebody I want you to perhaps talk to who is organising a, a little group and she’s going round, whos lost her son to suicide and she’s going round speaking to hospital. So this lady, I eventually did get to meet, and found that this was the sort of thing that I wanted to do, explain to people about the impact of what it has on the family, and that there should be some better facilities able to cope with suicidal people and that when we get emergency and crisis situations we should have some drop in centres and things like that.

And it eventually finished up with a group of us all getting together through this lady who was giving the talks to forming an organisation called Papyrus. Which I’ve found very, very, very helpful to me in giving back to Leon this chance he gave me to help him. Say, Look let’s all get together, let’s see what we can d. And that’s how the group came to be formed. Where a group of very, few, initially I think it was about 13 of us, in the early days, there were probably four of us on the committee, thought, well, you know, we must do something about all this.

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.

Yes, I kept a kind of scrap book because, ou know just some small things, like we put a, I put a death notice in the newspaper and cut that out and kept that. And a friend of mine actually wrote a little obituary in a local paper, for the fellow who died and I kept that, cut that out, kept that, and my friend, the friend who died had actually you know brought me back a little kind of brooch thing from, well a trip he took to the United States once, and I kept all these things in a, in a box together, and certainly at the time I would look through that you know on quite a regular basis, and I think, it, these, these things you could actually touch and feel and handle, did, you know, it’s quite odd, some of them, they were just words on a, on a page, but they were kind of physical reminders of his physical presence I suppose sothat was quite meaningful to me, I mean, n the immediate aftermath of his death it tended to just to make me upset and you know I would cry, and and be very very sad, but I probably had to, and nd certainly you know over the next couple of years say, you know I would get those things out and look at them from time to time, and just, to be reminded of him was a very intense feeling, and it was it was kind of an odd mixture of upsetting and and, I don’t really know how to explain it actually. I would continue to get upset but at the same time I would want to do it because there was something about you know not just consigning him to history I suppose, there’s some ongoing part of him that was somehow embodied in these things and so that kind of sense that he, something about him was still having an effect in the world you know was, was, was quite powerful.

hen it came to the first Christmas without Darren, up to that point Lynda had always sent the cards out you know, she couldn’t face doing it because Darren’s birthday was the 15th December, or it is the 15th December, so it’s only 10 days later you’ve got Christmas, and we always had this thing, not starting Christmas things until after Darren’s birthday, so come the first one and it was so hard, and so much going on, that I took over sending the cards because I felt it would be a way to send the messages thanking people for all their support at the time, and well we don’t want to leave Darren’s name off, so I’ve got, I’ve got a stamp, a rubber stamp with a butterfly because one of the symbols of Compassionate Friends is a butterfly, so I just stamped the butterfly onto a card and put Darren’s name on, with those gel pens, so it stood out enough for me to see it and if people, it wasn’t in their face so, and since then that’s all I, so that’s what I’ve done to every card I’ve sent out, I’ve, I’ll do that. And if I send it to somebody else whos lost sort of a loved one recently or to somebody whos lost their child, I put their name on it as well. But every so often I send that to new groups so the new members can read it and they are so grateful too, because they don’t want to leave their child’s names off of cards, but
That’s really nice.

Yes, that’s it so it is, his name appears without being put there, it’s a sign, and it’s just something that helps you. Cos that’s one thing we’ve learnt over the time is you’ve got to do what’s best for you. don’t worry what, what other people think you should be doing or not doing, this is not something you get over, it’s not an illness, it’s an experience you’re having to face and you learn to cope with it. And you have to do things that are right for yourselves.

Mm.

And everybody’s different, everybody’s an individual. So you do what’s good for you and if we can help others by giving them ideas that’s, and they adapt it to suit themselves, so that’s, that’s what a lot of our journey has been about is