When heartbroken mum Mia Scally found herself in that situation, she struggled to find the right words – which is why she’s now using her voice to help other bereaved families, she tells Tanith Carey
Photograph taken by models
Parents look forward to the moment when their child goes to school for the first time. Mia Scally was holding Jasper, her 4-year-old son, in her hand on the first day of school reception. She had never felt so alone.
Mia (34), a Middlesex University lecturer in Forensic Psychology and Criminalology, had just buried Damon, her husband, seven years earlier. He had died from suicide three weeks before, ‘leaving her as the sole carer to their two young children, Jasper and Robin, six.
‘Damon hadn’t said anything to suggest this was the route he was going to go down. It was like he was there and then he wasn’t,’ Mia remembers. ‘Jasper’s first day at school was the day after the funeral and he was still in shock. The world around him was moving, and it was as if he had stopped.
On a day when he should have been so excited, I could see there was no happiness in my child’s eyes. It was an unbelievable amount of sadness.
‘Then he looked up to me and said: “My Daddy won’t be coming to get me, will he?” I said: “No, he won’t. Mummy will be always there to pick your up. Will that make it better?”’
It’s now been seven years since Damon, then 28, took his own life. His body was discovered at the base of a rock after he failed to show up at Ladbrokes’ London headquarters. He was also a brand manager.
True, we’re talking about male suicides rising, which currently stands at approximately 4,000 per annum in England, Wales and the United Kingdom, according to recent figures from the Office for National Statistics.
Mia and Damon at the children’s baptism in 2011. ‘He was a brilliant dad, a complete natural,’ says Mia of her late husband
Less talked about are the consequences for their partners and the children who they have left behind. It is difficult to grieve the loss of a parent. It is not just the loss of a parent, it is also the loss of a caregiver and role model.
As well as the sadness and the loss, experts say youngsters also experience feelings of anger which build, rather than fade, with time – as well as guilt that they could have somehow prevented it.
It’s for these reasons that Mia and her children, who live in Buckinghamshire, have written a new book called Everything Changed, which details how they coped after Damon’s death and gradually moved forward with their lives.
Although suicide was Damon’s end, it marked the beginning of an entirely new life for Mia, Jasper and Robin. As if that weren’t enough, Mia found herself feeling blamed for becoming a single parent in a matter of hours, and her children felt like their father was taboo.
Sobbing, I laid down with them. I couldn’t eat for five days after
Mia said it was a double whammy: ‘I felt I was being held responsible when I got questions from family and friends like, “Didn’t you see it was coming?” and, “Did you have an argument before it happened?”
‘On top of losing my husband, it seemed everyone needed a reason so they could reassure themselves that the same could never happen to them.’ Robin and Jasper, meanwhile, have been left wondering why their father made the choice to leave them when his job was to nurture and protect them.
After meeting at Lincoln sixth-form college, Mia fell in love and was soon able to see a different future. ‘Damon was charismatic, the kind of person who always had people around him because he was telling a funny story. When I shared a joke with him, we started to talk and I promised to send him the punchline. We started messaging – and it turned into a relationship.’
Damon and Robin, three years old at their family home in 2010,
They were so close that it was difficult for them to part ways when university came around. Both applied to London to continue their studies. While studying together for their degree, Damon gave Mia a ring, and she asked him to marry her.
‘It seems very young but I said yes immediately,’ Mia says. ‘Damon was my soulmate and my best friend. Our families told us to wait, but we were like: “If this is the way we feel about each other, why waste time?”’
In the third year, they married in a ceremony in Italy, near Mia’s parents’ home – and by the time they graduated, Mia had already given birth to Robin. When Jasper arrived three years later, the young couple were already on track for high-flying careers – Damon in marketing and Mia in academic research.
‘The year Damon died – 2014 – we’d bought a new house, got the kids into good schools and I thought it was the start of us being a proper family. ‘He was a brilliant dad, a complete natural. He took the children to adventures and the park with him. Nothing was ever too much.’
Mia started to feel the strain of trying to do so many things so young in December, just before his passing. ‘He started drinking more and staying out late and not telling me why. His attitude was: “I’m just going to do what the hell I want.”
‘Looking back, I guess there were signs of mental-health issues, but I interpreted them as an indication that he didn’t want to be part of our family any more. We both agreed that he needed to get his life together and leave. When he didn’t turn up for work, he said he’d gone to his mother’s.’
Damon didn’t arrive there. Instead, he drove towards a high cliff. Four days later, he was still not seen. Mia recalls: ‘I was aware he had gone away for a few days and no one knew where he was, but I thought he’d turn up. When his mother called, I was in my car. I was forced to stop. She said: “Damon’s been found” and I said: “Great, where?” And then she said: “No, they have found his body.”
‘At first it didn’t compute. I just couldn’t believe that he’d done something so final, something he couldn’t come back from, when we had two small children together.’ Telling young children that their father has died is the hardest thing any parent could do, and that’s when it’s not a suicide. Mia didn’t want to tell the children it was an accident. She felt that they needed to know.
My struggling young son would say, “If Daddy loved me, why did he leave?
‘When I had allowed time for it to sink in, I drove home to my parents, who were looking after the kids as it was the school holidays. Their play was so intense that I called their parents to bring them on my sofa. They saw I’d been crying and asked me what was wrong. I answered, “Daddy’s not coming home. There’s been an accident.”
‘Jasper wasn’t old enough to have an idea of the permanence of what I was saying. So he said: “It’s OK, Mummy. We will go to the wishing well to make a wish and he’ll come back.” Robin, who was six, was full of questions, wanting to know every detail, like how I knew he wasn’t coming home. As I worked in a psychology department, I realized that it was important to communicate my thoughts clearly from the beginning. I didn’t want them believing he would return. I had to say, no, he wasn’t coming back and it was a choice he had made to take his own life because he wasn’t very well.’
It lasted for ten minutes before the children stopped asking any questions. Mia says: ‘By the end, they just looked like statues. Sobbing, I laid down with them and threw a blanket on top. It was such a horrible situation that I couldn’t eat for five days after.’
It took several weeks to arrange the funeral and complete paperwork. When the children went back to school, Mia’s life became a routine of dropping them off, driving to the burial site in her car and howling with grief until it was time to go and pick them up – and trying to be both mother and father to her kids.
Mia had to deal with her grief and the different approaches that her kids took to the suicide. She says: ‘Jasper really struggled with the feeling that he wasn’t enough to keep his father around. We’d be driving and he’d say: “If Daddy really did love me, why did he leave?” ‘As a mum, I’m not sure how to make that go away because no matter how many times I tell him he’s amazing and wonderful, those voices are in his head now.’
Mia and her kids in France 2017, 2017
Jasper also felt terror at the thought of losing Mia. ‘When I needed an operation in 2017, I was in hospital for seven days,’ she remembers. ‘When I came back, Jasper wouldn’t talk to me for a week. He’d distanced himself because he was so fearful I wasn’t coming back.’
For Robin, who was incredibly close to Damon, there was much more anger – anger that was directed at Mia as the surviving parent. ‘I’d ask Robin to do normal things like homework or to stop watching television. Things would quickly escalate and Robin would say: “It’s your fault. Why didn’t you stop him?”
‘As much as I wanted to wrap my child up in my arms at those moments, I had to reply: “Can we talk about this later? Now we’re talking about homework. Dad isn’t here, but I am.” I had to set the boundaries for both parents.
‘That really hurt because I was the one getting the rage, when it was Damon who had chosen to leave. ‘In response, I had to explain that people planning to kill themselves keep it secret because they don’t want anyone to stop them. If I had known, I explained to Robin that I would have done everything I could to stop him.’
Mia searched for books to help her kids but couldn’t find any that were written in the perspective of grieving children. She was also frustrated by the attitude of some teachers and parents at school, who took the view that suicide was a subject that children shouldn’t even know about. ‘It’s like everyone wants to know what happened before a suicide. However, no one really wants to know the aftermath. It’s this hidden subject. If my kids mentioned how their dad died at school, I’d get a phone call from the staff saying they were traumatising other pupils and asking them not to mention it again.’
In order to fill the void, Mia suggested to her children that they write down what it had been like for them – and their diaries, observations and pictures are now a powerful book told in their words. ‘They agreed because they wanted to help other children. Robin felt it important to discuss the reality that you may lose your friends if you are the child of someone who committed suicide. That’s because other kids don’t know what to say or parents don’t want to invite you to parties because they want to avoid the subject around their children. Robin wanted to talk about how to be a good friend to someone going through this.’
Today, the family is more united than ever before and Mia can now be both her mother and dad. ‘We have a much more intense bond because of this horrific thing we’ve been through,’ she says. ‘Now the children don’t just call me Mummy. Mummy-Daddy they call me. I’m so glad that they feel they have both figures rolled into one in me.
‘Of course, they’re still angry because they recognise how much their life changed because of Damon’s decision. But then I remind them that, yes, parents are supposed to be able to fix everything, and be these formidable superheroes, but Damon was a person, too.’
Mia, a psychologist by profession, is acutely aware that children of suicide parents are at greater risk of developing mental health problems. It is a cycle that she is determined to help break – not only for her own kids, but the children of other families.
‘Children who have a parent who died from suicide are up to three times more likely to die from suicide themselves,’ she says. ‘The only thing that reduces that risk is having clear, honest and open conversations from the outset about what happened. ‘I also talk to Jasper and Robin about how although Daddy thought he was going to feel sad for ever, feelings pass. We talk about how there will always be dark periods in life, but just because you’re feeling bad this week doesn’t mean you will feel the same next week. ‘Mental health among men of Damon’s age group is so hidden. The suicide figures show how many don’t want to talk about it or admit there could be something going on. ‘But being scared of suicide won’t stop it happening. We need to talk about it.’
To buy Mia, Robin and Jasper’s book Everything Changed, go to amazon.co.uk. At least 50 per cent of the book’s profits will go to the charity Child Bereavement UK (childbereavementuk.org), which supported the family with their grief
Get emotional support by calling call the Samaritans’ 24-hour Email or call 116123 for assistance Contact Jo@samaritans.org. Or visit: samaritans.org