When Moire O’Sullivan’s husband, and father of her two boys, Pete, died by suicide two days after Christmas 2018, she wondered if she would be able to handle the weight of her grief. Grief, Moire says, is “exceptionally messy. The important thing is journeying with it, and through it. Because if you get stuck in it, then that’s the hardest bit.”
ete had been suffering from severe depression for six months before he died. In that short time, Moire’s husband had transformed from a social man, always at the centre of the worlds he occupied — work, family life — to someone ravaged by fear and paranoia, unable to work, afraid of the impact he was having on his two boys, convinced his family would be better off without him.
“Pete was brilliant,” Moire says emphatically. “I cannot even begin to describe what an incredibly talented, amazing individual he was. When he would go into a work situation in particular, he would solve everybody’s problems. But then, equally, if you went to a pub with him, his would be the voice you’d hear; there’d be amazing, crazy stories. He was incredible to our young boys. My children are always saying what they miss most about daddy was playing horsey; he was just such a fantastic father.”
The couple met when both were working for Concern. Pete had just ran two marathons and fancied himself as “some sort of hot shot runner”, Moire explains with a laugh. She is a hot shot in that field, an award-winning mountain runner and adventure racer who now runs her own company, Happy Out Adventures, from her home in Rostrevor, Co Down. “He asked a colleague to ask me to bring him on a mountain run. He was horrendous, though,” she laughs fondly. “He didn’t run up hill, didn’t run downhill. If I’d given him tarmac, he would have been fine,” she smiles.
If she had not witnessed it, it would be unbelievable, Moire says of the swift and total transformation depression rendered on her husband.
“In so many respects he was incredible, but with depression, that was all gone. He couldn’t work, was afraid to go into any social situation. I had to drag him out to try and get him to talk to people. It was so obvious that something wasn’t right, and he wouldn’t even talk to friends.”
Now, Moire, whose work previously with NGOs took her to Kenya, Cambodia and Nepal, has written a book, her fourth, about her experiences in the aftermath of her husband’s death. A Quarter Glass of Milk: The Rawness of Grief and the Power of the Mountains, is a moving and hugely helpful tale of navigating loss and its aftermath. The terrifying change depression can render in a loved one is just one of the many aspects she captures of what it is like to support a spouse suffering with mental illness that, unless you have experienced it, are often misunderstood or unrecorded. The spouse, she points out, is so busy keeping the show on the road, they do not have time to reflect on these things.
Moire says writing her new book helped in her grieving process
She says: “I always want to write about a subject I feel goes against the grain in some way. Where I feel I’ve learnt something from my own personal experience, but the main narrative in society is slightly different.”
She wanted to challenge some beliefs about suicide. “Particularly around when people say it’s a selfish act. I realised Pete loved us so much that he really believed we would be better off without him, even though nothing could be further from the truth. His depression had told him so many lies. I really wish I could just give him a big hug and say, ‘it’s not true’.”
Moire wanted to put forward her account of the impact of her husband’s death, in the hope that it might give pause to anyone feeling as Pete did. “If anybody picked up that book, they’d think, ‘it’s such a bad idea’.”
Moire perfectly captures the dilemma of a spouse in this situation. Friends at Pete’s funeral who hadn’t seem him recently, and had no idea how much he was suffering, were shocked at what had happened. The person suffering from mental illness will often want to be private about their condition, talking might help, but a person who is depressed is often likely to feel less inclined to talk than at any other stage in their lives. A level of secrecy can set in, which leaves the supporting partner struggling to cope, and without a direly-needed support network.
“It was difficult to know what to do, and what was right,” Moire reflects. “Now I can see that depression is very much a medical condition. But I’m not a doctor; I didn’t know. I spent hours sitting with him, talking. I’m not sure any of that was really beneficial because I’m not a counsellor. I think there’s a lot of expectation that the spouse is responsible for their partner’s health.”
Encouraging people to feel able to be open about these things is crucial for everyone involved, she points out. “I wanted to help. But we also have to think about who cares for the carer. If the spouse is able to say, ‘ok, I need help as well in order that I can support my spouse,’ we can have a proper support network. But this means having it first of all out in the open. Everyone acknowledging the problem. What’s the medical condition? Who are the people around and what do they need in order to support them? What medical intervention is required? This all needs to be joined up.”
Moire’s book gives the lie to the notion that some of the things trotted out to people suffering from mental illness can get someone out of the hole. Pete had given up alcohol and caffeine, taken up meditation, running, counselling. None of it worked, underlining, she points out, how little we understand this disease.
“It’s a really horrible, evil disease,” Moire says fiercely. “People sometimes ask am I angry with Pete for doing what he did? I say ‘no, I’m not angry with him, I’m angry with the disease’. I think so many people are suffering in silence and not admitting it. And their loved ones around them are also suffering. It’s a problem that needs solving. I don’t have the solution. But I knew that if I wrote the book, hopefully it would be part of the jigsaw in coming to some sort of solution, so that people don’t die from this illness.”
She writes movingly about helping her two young sons, now eight and six, cope with their loss. “The main thing is just don’t lie to the children. They will eventually work out that it was a lie, and then they won’t trust anything further that you say.” They are now, she says, an especially tight unit, who look out for each other.
I ask her what she would say now to someone who is at that early point and wondering, as she did, if they will be able for the weight of their grief. “When you’re at that stage, and you’re so numb, you don’t even know what to do, or where to go. So I wouldn’t actually talk to the person themselves. I would talk to their friend and say, ‘you go sit with them. Just go sit with them. Your presence might be enough to help them move forward in their own way’.
“I think that’s what we all need; to not be afraid to show up for each other and to not try and give them any remedy.”
Moire is an award-winning mountain runner
The stages of grief are in no way a tidy progression, she says. “You jump from feeling acceptance, to denial, to something else. It can be within the same day, the same hour. They say there’s a new stage that should be added, integration. When you realise that they are so a part of you. Sometimes I get glimpses of that; I think Pete’s actually closer to us now than he was when he was alive. And he probably sees more, and understands more, and accepts more, and loves more. And then I’ll jump back to the anger of, ‘I can’t believe you left before you saw your youngest child go to primary school’.”
The important thing is to accept that this is ok, this messiness is how grief works. An award-winning mountain runner, in the aftermath of Pete’s death, the solitude of exercise actually brought on panic attacks, and Moire came to realise that pushing herself to rely on something that had previously proved so helpful was not going to be fruitful.
“The problem with grief and loss is that there’s no one path. How you were before, and what helped you before you lost, might not help you afterwards. And that’s terrifying. It’s then trying to find the new thing that’s going to help you.”
Moire had already begun studying to become a mountain leader when Pete died, a path which has provided huge solace since his death. The training involved a lot of walking with others, she explains. “People who were not normally the sort of people I would hang out with. But they just seemed to be the right people at the right time; they also had gone through terrible loss or difficulty. By walking we were able to talk, when I run, I don’t talk. By talking, I then started to realise what I did need.”
It also gave her meaning in the midst of such huge loss. “One door closes, then maybe another door opens. When you have considerable pain, you try to find some purpose. I’ve turned to the mountains and now I spend a lot of time helping people navigate through them, and learning the skills they need to be in them. The mountains were so helpful to me, both physically and mentally. I’m not sure if I would have been helping other people as much if Pete were still alive. I think it’s being open to that and to finding some purpose out of it.”
Writing the book felt like she had gone through a great therapy session. It also helped with finding her sense of purpose. “There’s a reason why, when people are struggling with something, journaling is often suggested as a way of processing what you’re going through.
“I had all these thoughts and emotions and feelings running around inside my head, and in a way, by putting it down on paper, I didn’t have to think about it anymore. My brain felt just wonderfully relieved. And if people do get help out of it, brilliant, that’s a bigger bonus.”
A Quarter Glass of Milk by Moire O’Sullivan, published by The O’Brien Press, is available now.
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