CW // A content warning that this excerpt is about suicide.

A note: Gillian was living with vascular dementia during these interviews but had shared her story many times prior to its onset and believed strongly in the power of speaking openly about suicide and mental health.

Gillian talks to her daughter Ruth about her own mother’s suicide in 1958 and the secrecy she had to maintain about it…

Gill: Well I mean it was an awful time because I wasn't allowed tell anyone what had happened.

Ruth: That she killed herself.

Gill: She was supposed to have just died. Gone to bed like and not got up again. Which wasn't a great help as you can imagine. Because it was I found her. I got out of the car at home at lunchtime and walked up the back path and looked in the window.

Ruth: Was it you and dad— you and granddad?

Gill: Yeah… we were at work. It was lunchtime. On a weekday. And he used to— we used to go home at that time for lunch. And I walked up the back path and there she was.

Ruth: She must have known that you'd be coming home for lunch?

Gill: Mm. She left a note on the kitchen table.

Ruth: What did the note say?

Gill: I can't remember Ruth, I probably put it out of my mind directly. Intentionally, I mean.

Ruth: Do you think granddad was shocked Mum or do you think he—?

Gill: He was.

Ruth: He was shocked?

Gill: Yeah.

Ruth: Do you think he had any inkling that she might have—?

Gill: He might have because I think somebody else in her family had done it previously. She didn't have any brothers and sisters but somebody in the family had.

Ruth: But you wouldn't have had a clue.

Gill: She left a note, but I don't know what it said, I can't remember, I probably didn't want to.

Ruth: You wouldn't have expected it, he might have.

Gill: I didn't. I had no expectation whatsoever of it. And I was told I mustn't tell anyone like, it was a shame.

Ruth: By granddad, you mean.

Gill: Yeah. Well the family in general. But like I found out from Ethel and that afterwards that people guessed.

Ruth: And was granddad devastated?

Gill: Yeah, he was. I think he might have half expected it somehow. Maybe she'd threatened it before or something.

Ruth: Yeah, because they were quite close, weren't they?

Gill: They were, yeah. But he was a bossy man like … Set ideas, you know.

Ruth: Controlling, do you mean? When you say “bossy”?

Gill: Yeah, yeah. 

Ruth: What, do you think he was hard to live with?

Gill: I'd say so. But I think she— there was a history in her family of it. But it was very hard not being able to tell anyone but Ethel told me afterwards that people guessed.

Ruth: Was that the hardest thing about it?

Gill: It was, yeah.

Ruth: Did you miss her though at home, around the house?

Gill: Course we did, yeah.

Gillian talks to her daughter Ruth about her home Dalmally on the Ballinlough road in Cork, Ireland and about her mother and sister. She talks about going to church 'socials,' i.e. dances, and her friends and boyfriends in the 1960s. She recalls the stigma of her mother’s suicide in 1958 and her time in the Baptist Church in Cork.

In the second interview, Gillian talks about attending Rochelle School in Cork in the 1950s, about her first summer job and her first full-time job in a stockbroker’s office. She revisits her mother’s suicide and what she remembered of her mother and father meeting, and speaks again about her time in the Baptist Church.

For more information on accessing Gillian’s full interview or transcript please email faisneis@unaganaguna.org