The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

My mom committed suicide went I was 22.

The house

It all started with the house. One day, we got a phone call. It was the council. The council were calling to say they had a new house for us. A new council house on a new housing estate. The house had five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a huge garden, a lounge, a den, and a driveway big enough for two cars. All we had to do was sign the lease and move in.

We moved into the new house. Then something unexpected happened: my mom had a nervous breakdown.

Here are her own words:

I was in total shock, I felt paralysed and couldn’t function. That evening, and everyone after, I had nightmares and constantly felt severe pains all over from anxiety and heart palpitations. I’ve no idea why this was happening I could not eat. My hair was falling out and I walked aimlessly round the shops not wanting to go back to the property. I was hitting myself and crying all the time. Spending whole days sitting in the kitchen cupboard unable to cope. Yet It was the most perfect house for everyone.

She went to see a doctor. The doctor gave her antidepressants but they didn't work.

Depression

We moved back to our old, smaller house in the hope my mom would get better.

For the first few days back at our old house, my mom seemed fine. But then she began to deteriorate. She lost ten kilograms. Her hair became thin. Her skin became saggy. Her face became gaunt. She looked ten years older. Her voice changed: her voice was now quiet and hoarse, as if she'd permanently lost her voice.

She smiled to reassure us, but she couldn't change her eyes. You could see pain and fear in her eyes.

She fell into depression because of guilt. She felt guilty about moving back to the old small house, a house where her children had to share bedrooms again. She expressed this feeling in writing:

The severe anxiety has turned to immense grief, guilt and sadness.

She explained it all in a letter to the council, in which she begged them to give her another chance at a new house:

Dear erything happens for a reason they say. Well I cannot find a reason for what has happen to me and my family. We live in a small run down 3 bedroom council property and have been on the waiting list for a transfer for 18 years. Then in November totally out of the blue I received a phone call from Waterloo housing association to offer us a brand new 5 bed room house in a lovely area, to rent, as we could not afford to buy a property of this size. but we had to move in within 2 weeks. I was numb with shock. My husband and some friends hired a transit van and did the move over a weekend about 30 journeys to and from. From the very first night I could not cope I was hysterical and I could not cook anything or even eat, I had nightmares constantly and woke every half an hour. Over the next few weeks although I have little memory of it I did not change my clothes I walked around like a zombie, I had severe anxiety and constant palpitations My hair was falling out too. I lost two stone in weight over that month, I am still 7 and half stone now. I spent hours sitting in a kitchen cupboard or sleeping in the car. My daughters took me to the Doctors she gave me Diazepam which just made me tired. I was going to be referred for therapy which actually came through in the February(too late)I was hitting my head in bed at night saying I want to go home.

Ive no idea why this affected me this way as it was a perfect house, Everyone had a bedroom each, I have two sons and two daughters. It had a bathroom up stairs and a toilet and shower downstairs, The Kitchen was four times the size as my old one, It had state of the art heating system even condensation control. It had a lounge and another small room that was going to be the computer room as my husband is a teacher and my lads are students. It had a space to park two cars at the front. But I was getting worse, Christmas day I stayed on the settee with my cardigan over my head crying and sleeping saying I hated it. It was the almost the last day to hand in our keys for the other property as you had to give a months notice. My husband was hiring a van to bring some garden stuff over and maybe the small shed. but I was so ill with not being able to cope at all in this new house he decided to move all our furniture and belongings back to the ashmead grove house.

It was utter chaos but everyone thought that was the only way I was going to get back to my old self. But it was the biggest mistake we have ever made, We had to put the bunk beds back together for my sons aged 21 and 16 they have been in these all their child life, there is no room to put them separate, also they share one wardrobe. My 16 year old son has Aspergers syndrome (high functioning Autism) he has large collection of books, we had promised him wall to wall book shelves and he was going to have van Gogh poster up on the walls. Also they have no privacy now, my younger lad barely sleeps, his asthma is made worse being in the lower bunk bed. It is likely that our sons will live with us in their adult life. My daughters share a tiny room, me and my husband have the box room it has a double bed and one wardrobe, we were going to have one each for the first time ever There is no floor space at all we sit on the bed to get dressed. The kitchen is tiny it is 8foot by 8 but it has the back door off it the stairs off it, also there is no room for a kitchen door. also two strides passed the cooker on the left, you are in the loo/bathroom. We all queue in the kitchen in the morning to get in the shower, its just not decent we emerge into the kitchen then go up stairs to get dressed. It was all right when my kids were small but now they are all adults .

I have a very old fridge freezer that fits in the gap under the stairs, they don’t make them like this now I am worried what to do when it breaks. In the new house my husband had ordered a big 6 foot one but I made him cancel it. This house is so small you walk in the front door, 10 strides through and you are out the back door. I think about the new house every waking second of the day it is driving me mad, a few weeks ago I was suicidal, my kids had seen me researching on google, I was almost sectioned by the mental health team. Now someone comes in every day to give me sertriline anti depressants and some blue tablets which are not working, they have side effects and has effected my libido, so now \i worry my husband will leave me on top of everything else. We have numerous problems here. The roof is leaking but the council are in no rush to fix it.There is damp in the bedroom. The shoes grow mould on them in the porch. The grove is scruffy, kids ride round on quad bikes.There are gangs around here, my daughter says she has to take her glasses off if she walks passed them as they say stuff. There are stray cats everywhere,

Our quality of life in that new house was going to be enormously increased. It was a secured tenancy we were very fortunately to have been offered it but now someone else has it and I have written to the housing department to ask can we still be on the waiting list and that they should not penalise me for that mental breakdown but they do not reply My GP etc has written too, I am not making this up, I have just paid the fuel bill for the one month at that house I am writing to you to see if you can help us in any way. Its only my 16 year old son that keeps me going, I need to be around for him, He gives me a cuddle when he sees im down, I feel so guilty about what we promised for him to have a room of his own. He is a great person he is clever and thoughtfull and a hard working A level student but theres no space for him to work effectively. All my children are great they are not yobs they are the nicest people you could ever meet, they did not deserve this to happen. I am hoping for a miracle my husband is severely depressed at the decision he made, one night he went for a long drive after looking at that house and he phoned me from Iron bridge in a desperate state. I had to beg him to come home on the phone. He gets in from work and just sleeps now, we are almost four months on from returning but life here is horrible now, I cant drive because if the tablets I am so down I just wanted a better life for my family, we are good people, why did this happen to me we have waited so long, please help im worried my marriage will end, I could not cope. You can come and see the situation we live in.

Suicide attempts

Two months later, my mom took an overdose of medication, hoping to die. It didn't work. Instead she was sectioned - imprisoned in a psychiatric facility - under the Mental Health Act after being diagnosed with depression.

Four months later, she tried to end her life again. She waited for a day when she knew my dad was busy and took a mix of her medication - sertraline, diazepam, zopiclone, and escitalopram - and my dad's risperidone (which he was taking for his own depression) with a shot of brandy. She hid the empty packets in the bin. She fell asleep on the sofa. My dad came home and couldn't wake her so he put a blanket on her and slept on a chair. In the morning he still couldn't wake her so he called an ambulance. She was taken to hospital and resuscitated.

One day, my mom went to a train station to throw herself in front of a train. My sister went to look for my mom and found her standing on the tracks with a train coming. My sister had to jump down onto the tracks and hold my mom against the side while the train rushed past.

Next my mom tried to starve herself. She ate and drank nothing for two days. In the end her thirst was so overpowering she was forced to drink.

She tried overdosing a third time. She waited for a day when she knew her family would be home late. She left a suicide note for everyone. Then she took ninety paracetamol tablets. My sister came home and my mom admitted she had taken an overdose. My sister called an ambulance. My mom was taken to Heartlands Hospital. Once she was physically stable, she was sectioned again in the mental health hospital. She was diagnosed with moderate depression.

In the mental health hospital, she stayed in bed most days. Some days she got washed and dressed. She watched TV in the communal area in the evenings.

One day the doctor asked my mom if there were any activities she would be interested in. She was hesitant, but then she said, "I might like to give anxiety management a try." For me, that shows she wanted to get better. Or at least, she wanted the anxiety to go away.

The suicide

On 22nd August 2010, my mom took a bus to Birmingham City Centre. It was a Sunday afternoon. When the bus reached the city centre, she got off the bus and walked to a multi-storey car park. She climbed the stairs to the top floor of the car park and then climbed up onto the wall.

She jumped from the top floor of the car park. Onlookers were horrified. Paramedics were called. Police put up a tent around my mom's body and cordoned off the street.

For my mom, it was finally over. Her pain had ended.

Newspaper article

The next day, in the local newspaper, there was an article about my mom. The headline read, "Horror as city woman falls to her death from car park".

Funeral home

For a few days before the cremation and funeral, my mom's body was kept at a funeral home. My dad visited every day and held my mom's hand and talked to her as if she was still alive.

I still remember the day I saw my mom's corpse. I went in alone. There she was, lying on a slab. Her eyes were closed and her hands were folded neatly across her lap. A scarf lay across her neck which I guess was there to hide a neck wound.

I wondered what I should do. My family were outside the room, waiting. I didn't want to cry and come out looking all teary-eyed in front of my family.

I decided I would pull up one of my mom's eyelids open and touch her eye. So I reached over. I pressed my finger down lightly on her eyelid. Her eyelid felt cold and doughy. My heart was beating fast. Time seemed to have stopped. I gathered up my courage and gently pulled my mom's eyelid up. Underneath the eyelid was her eye but her eye was gone. Her eyeball was still there, but the pupil and iris had dissolved into floating boundless shapes. They can stop the body from decaying for a few days but they can't stop the eyes from dissolving.

Feeling terrified, I gently poked my mom's eyeball. I don't know why.

When I pulled my hand away, her eyelid stayed open. I had thought her eyelid would snap shut by itself, like a child's doll. But it didn't. Now she had one eye open and one eye closed.

I quickly closed her eyelid. Then I left the room.

The suicide note

My mom wrote suicide letters to us all. Here's the note she wrote for me.

I could have written a note to her of my own:

There is life after depression. There is so much life. So stay alive. You will do great things, mundane things, and everything in between. You will be a friend, a parent, a grandparent. You still have so much life.

But it was too late. She was gone.