Review by Angela Long, Irish Times, 31 March 2009
Memoir gives honest account about surviving the loss of a loved one to suicide
I WAS MAKING dinner when John went out to the barn to shoot himself.” Catherine de Courcy doesn’t pull any punches from the beginning of this remarkable memoir of surviving the suicide of a beloved. Her first sentence thrusts the reader into the events on a farm in Australia, in December 2000, when her husband ended his long battle with depression. It was not unexpected: de Courcy, a Dubliner, had known of the torments her partner suffered for years, and especially that things were building to a crescendo within him. But the foreknowledge did not mitigate the terrible pain of loss.
At first it was the practical things, alerting the police, telling John’s adult children from his first marriage, cleaning up the barn – tasks in which she was assisted by a generous group of friends who lived nearby in the Strzelecki mountains of eastern Victoria.
Then as time moved on, the process included the difficulties of going back to work, persuading organisations such as banks that John was dead. She had to live a routine designed for two people, with only one left.
John Johnson was an Englishman from a troubled family background who had run away from home at the age of 14. His difficult relationship with his mother, in particular, it is suggested in the book, could have contributed to later problems. But John ended up in Australia, joined its army in the 1960s and served in Vietnam.
Much attention has focused on the disastrous after-effects of the Vietnam War on US participants, but Australia also suffered, though numerically far less – 500 dead compared to 58,000.
In his nightmares John, a strong, capable and outgoing man, relived the agony of war.
De Courcy intersperses the story of the after-effects of his suicide with flashbacks to the good times, when she met him after she took a post at the University of Papua New Guinea, then newly independent from Australian protection.
They fell in love, married, travelled together and ended up in Melbourne, where she worked at the state library. But in the midst of the excitement of buying and working their farm, John’s subconscious was chipping away at his health.
“I had done my best to live with a man who was being eaten alive by his demons despite his great personal strength.”
This story is told bravely and simply. De Courcy took years to overcome her distress, the “myriad little boxing matches going on underneath my skin”.
The pain was physical, mental, spiritual. After the two years she had given herself to get back to normal, she was disappointed to acknowledge that her journey was far from over.
Often she could not sleep and interaction with strangers was overwhelming. The bank, for example, was unable to take note that John had died. “Short of going to their office Christmas party and announcing it, I felt I had already told everyone who worked there,” she notes wryly of yet another frustrating and hurtful set of questions.
De Courcy worked with friends and therapists to accept and adjust. But with the passing years she felt disappointed that the hurt was still so pervasive, even though she never blamed herself and knew that John’s fate was his choice. Eventually, as she writes, to her own surprise, she resolved to return to Ireland after an 18-year absence. She now lives in Dublin and has just finished a history of Dublin Zoo, following up on a similar book she did for the Melbourne Zoo. The story of her “adventure in grief” is inspiring in its honesty, determination and most of all its deep love and acceptance of the man she married – and lost.