“Out of the Shadow - Responding to Suicide” (Veritas, Dublin 2009) was launched on 1 December in Belfast. At the launch, kindly done by Philip McTaggart, I spoke some words. Since then a few people have kindly expressed an interest in having these few words. Here they are:
‘Out of the Shadow’ is a little book about a big topic. My name is on the cover of the book but it is dedicated to you and many like you here this evening. It’s not my story but the story of many families who have walked out of the shadow of death when one you loved died. The pain doesn’t leave you because the loss is in your heart day and night. This is your book and I thank so many people who let me into your hearts and homes at an absolutely awful time in your life. It is a book that was born in the shadow of Holy Cross in this aea of North Belfast.
When Veritas Books suggested to me that the launch be here in Donegall Street, I was delighted because this where the story was born - in the shadow of Holy Cross. The shadow was not the first that I had seen and witnessed in this area. When I arrived in Summer 2001 the teachers and parents of Holy Cross Girls’ Promary School were under the shadow of a denial of the rights of their pupils and children to go to school without opposition. It was not acceptable to the wider community or to me that pupils and parents had not been able to walk to school by Ardoyne Road for the last two weeks of June 2001. It is my hope that the rights of the child, clouded by the shadow of blocking their path to school, will be vindicated in a judgement from a parent’s appeal to the Strasburgh court of justice.
When in September 2001 parents decided to bring their children to school by Ardoyne Road, there could only be one response from the school’s board of governors - yes, we will not live under the shadow of the denial of the rights of the child.
When a 17 year-old died in Holy Cross Monastery garden on 23rd April 2003, he too was a child and many others were to follow in the five years before my transfer to Paris. Even those of an older age who died by suicide are, in my eyes, chidren - children of God and His Kingdom. I will never forget being with families who were to bury a Mother, Father, a Grandparent - they too were children of God under a shadow of sadness and unbearable suffering.
All the time while you, the families and friends here and throughout Ireland, were battling to move out of the shadow of loss of young and old by suicide, there was another shadow involving children. It was the criminal activity of some priests and religious who were putting children under the shadow of abuse and a life-sentence of suffering. Through the collusion of some of their bishops, religious superiors and some State agencies, these criminal acts of priests and religious were covered up and hidden. Only through the bravey of some of God’s children did the story begin to emerge in the Ryan and Murphy reports published this year.
I offer this small book as a beacon of light form brave people bereaved by suicide, many here this evening, to others who may one day find the shadow of depression, suffering or loss come over them. If there is anything I can ever do, please contact me.
On a lighter note, it is great to be back, if only for 24 hours. Your welcome - thanks for it. Since my transfer to Paris many of you have kept up contact that means so much to me. Others have visited me in Paris. Some have simply rung the door bell at St Joseph’s and said ‘we are here to say hello’.
On an even LIGHTER note, rumours have been doing the rounds about my health - that I am sick because I have lost some weight. A little secret - I’m back jogging, walking and have lost 9 kilos in the past year. Another story is that I am mentally sick and even suicidal. This hurts, because of how unfair it is to families who know what these things are really like. Any of us - of course, me included - can become depressed or sick. I make you a promise this evening - should that happen to me, I will tell you the truth. But until you hear it from me, take such rumours with a pinch of salt!
Thanks to Veritas Publications for keeping a belief that one day I would finish this book and to Philip McTaggart for lauching the book this evening. AT