Description
Elaine is the mother, Kelly the elder sister and Gareth the 20-year old elder brother of Lewis, a 16-year old technical college student who took his own life by hanging, some 18-months prior to the interviews. Elaine was divorced some years ago and her ex-husband has re-married and had only limited contact with his previous family.
Lewis had done very poorly in his GCSE examinations in the summer and had refused to show his results to any member of the family. He expressed interest in carpentry and with his mother’s encouragement, signed on at the technical college for a carpentry course. Apparently he liked the practical work but not the theory and took to missing classes. In November, 1999, his brother rebuked him for taking and letting-off some of his fireworks. A few days later, his sister rebuked him for skipping classes and this led to a heated argument between them. Very shortly after this, Lewis took the cord from his sister’s dressing gown and hanged himself on playground monkey bars fairly close by. The family had nicknamed him, Stormin’
Norman because of his tendency to go off in a huff when things were not going in the way he wanted them to. Lewis’s death was totally unexpected and came as a great shock to the whole family. However they tend not to talk to one another.
Gareth, 18 months on, remains in an extremely distressed state and, as Lewis’s big brother, carries a tremendous amount of guilt. He was off from work for many weeks, alone, and largely crying in his bedroom. He compares seeing his brother’s body to being hit with a sledgehammer, has wanted the ground to eat him up and feels like dying himself. He cannot talk about it to anybody, nothing else maters and he doesn’t think he’ll ever heal.
Part of the series The Suicide of Young People and its Impact on the Family.
