Suicide And Charlotte Dawson
Without Prejudice
It is with great sadness that I say Rest In Peace to Charlotte Dawson, another death to suicide. She was a warm engaging outrageous and sparkling woman. Beautiful. Funny. She lived, she mattered. So sad that she gave up the struggle against her inner demons, her " monster " , her depression.
My Mother was a clinical depressive, a survivor of war trauma and she suicided at 53, leaving behind a devastated family and husband. She gave up the fight. I was 24 and pregnant with my fourth girl child. My younger sister, Helen, at that time was just 10.
Mum acted very normal in the day she suicided. She told my Brother In Law she was off to put a bet on the Melbourne Cup. She hated Dad losing money on the horses but she loved a flutter on the Melbourne Cup.
She hung up the phone and disappeared into her own mind. She was found the next day in a park by a man who was walking his dog. Her head on her handbag, a bottle of pills and a can of soft drink lying next to her. Gone to heaven to meet again with her son, my sweet brother James, who died at 11 in a tragic accident.
The warning signs were there. She had attempted it before once, a month before, in Hospital. But she was home, taking her medication of lithium, which made her enormously fat. A woman that had always been nervously thin.
She was on 11 tablets a day and slept most of the time. There were no S.S.R.I meds in those days, no antidepressants that put back the feel good hormones in a brain that is chemically imbalanced. Sometimes depression is inherited, or endemic and sometimes it can be just the circumstances the depressed person finds themselves in.
She had a family that loved her. She had Dad and Helen there to look after, support her but she still suicided and never advertised the fact. Up in the top of her wardrobe were presents for my two girls,Debbie and Yvette. Their birthdays in late November and it was early November.
She didn't drive and ended up in a place we had once lived in, Redcliffe, three hours away by public transport. Melbourne Cup day, 1976.
She had fugue states when she was really bad in her depression and wandered off, sometimes just in a nightie.
To be continued.....
It is with great sadness that I say Rest In Peace to Charlotte Dawson, another death to suicide. She was a warm engaging outrageous and sparkling woman. Beautiful. Funny. She lived, she mattered. So sad that she gave up the struggle against her inner demons, her " monster " , her depression.
My Mother was a clinical depressive, a survivor of war trauma and she suicided at 53, leaving behind a devastated family and husband. She gave up the fight. I was 24 and pregnant with my fourth girl child. My younger sister, Helen, at that time was just 10.
Mum acted very normal in the day she suicided. She told my Brother In Law she was off to put a bet on the Melbourne Cup. She hated Dad losing money on the horses but she loved a flutter on the Melbourne Cup.
She hung up the phone and disappeared into her own mind. She was found the next day in a park by a man who was walking his dog. Her head on her handbag, a bottle of pills and a can of soft drink lying next to her. Gone to heaven to meet again with her son, my sweet brother James, who died at 11 in a tragic accident.
The warning signs were there. She had attempted it before once, a month before, in Hospital. But she was home, taking her medication of lithium, which made her enormously fat. A woman that had always been nervously thin.
She was on 11 tablets a day and slept most of the time. There were no S.S.R.I meds in those days, no antidepressants that put back the feel good hormones in a brain that is chemically imbalanced. Sometimes depression is inherited, or endemic and sometimes it can be just the circumstances the depressed person finds themselves in.
She had a family that loved her. She had Dad and Helen there to look after, support her but she still suicided and never advertised the fact. Up in the top of her wardrobe were presents for my two girls,Debbie and Yvette. Their birthdays in late November and it was early November.
She didn't drive and ended up in a place we had once lived in, Redcliffe, three hours away by public transport. Melbourne Cup day, 1976.
She had fugue states when she was really bad in her depression and wandered off, sometimes just in a nightie.
To be continued.....
