A knock on the door no mother wants to get

Carol Anne Milton wrote a book to help her cope after her youngest son Alan took his life. Here in an extract from the Coldest Night, she recalls how a day that began like any other, turned into her biggest nightmare.

FRIDAY, 1 March 2002 began as any ordinary day would in our house. By 9am my husband, Noel, and our sons, Stephen, 25, and Niall, 24, had left for work.

Our daughter, Noelle, 15, had gone to school where should would complete her Junior Certificate mock exams that day. Our youngest son, Alan, 22, was, I presumed, still asleep. My eldest son, David, 28, lived and worked in Copenhagen at the time and has since married and settled in Denmark.

I finished breakfast and sat down in my favourite armchair by the patio doors leading out to the back garden, savouring the silence that ensued when my family had left, after the noise and the rushing around that was normal in our home as everybody prepared for their day.

As much as I loved the vitality, the music, the voices, all the sounds and noises of our lively household, I deeply appreciated these time of tranquility, when I could gather my thoughts and prepare for my own day. I remember closing my eyes for a moment and asking for the protection of all my family, something I had done every day since each of them in turn had moved from under my wing and into the wider world of school when they were children.

I was the co-ordinator of a school retreat team at the time and one of my tasks was to liaise with the religious education departments in schools, so I was waiting for two schools to open in order to finalise arrangements for upcoming retreats.

Having made my calls, I was just about to stand up and go into the kitchen when I glanced outside and saw a row of gardaí in yellow jackets moving down the back garden, side by side. There was a garda at the patio door beckoning me around to the front of the house.

I opened the front door to find two young gardaí waiting. I invited them in and asked what was going on. One of them replied: ‘There’s a young lad in a tree in your garden.’

My first thought was that a young guy who was trying to escape would not have a chance against the burly gardaí in the garden. Not once in those few seconds did my thoughts turn to anything more sinister.

We went into the room where I had been sitting moments ago and one of the men drew the curtains. The other guards sat beside me on a settee and asked if I had sons. I told him the whereabouts of David, Stephen and Niall, and as I was saying that Alan was upstairs in bed, an odd stirring began in the pit of my stomach.

I thought it strange that they didn’t stand back, but went ahead of me up the stairs, while I gave directions to Alan’s bedroom. I then began to realise that this was no hunt for a runaway youngster, and that ‘young lad in the tree’ meant something else — something that I would not articulate to myself.

By the time I reached the room the curtains were drawn here also, as Alan’s bedroom faced the back garden of the house. Alan’s bed was empty and had not been slept in.

My immediate thought was that he had stayed in his friend’s house, but as that was practically next door to our own it didn’t make sense. Then I thought he might have stayed in his girlfriend’s house, but ruled that out also because she had called late the previous night looking for him.

He had gone for a drink with his friends, but would have let me know if he had been doing somewhere after that. Standing in Alan’s room, my mind searching desperately for possibilities that would explain his empty bed, I could feel my heart beginning to race and my throat constricting.

I took a deep breath and told myself to get a grip on this silliness! There had to be a perfectly logical reason why Alan was not in his room. Maybe he had gone for a spin on his bike; maybe he had just gone for a walk. My mind would not accept what I knew in my heart.

Downstairs once more, one of the gardaí asked me to describe Alan, which I did, and the garda said he would check outside. I was glad of this, because it would prove once and for all that I was being silly in thinking it could be Alan.

Any moment now, Alan would walk in the door having been for swim. I brightened up: That’s it! He went for a swim ... or something ... or anything. God, no ... this will be perfectly okay, right? Confusion.

The young garda returned, took my hand and very gently said that from my description, it could be Alan. I told myself that there was still nothing certain so it would be okay. A second later, another garda came into the kitchen holding a bank card. He held it out to me, and as I read Alan’s name etched clearly on the card, all hope died.

Alan had carried out the final act that he believed would relieve him of the anguish with which he had struggled valiantly for his last three.

At that moment, my life and the lives of Noel and our family were irrevocably changed. The joie de vivre that I was beginning to recapture after the death of my father and my brother, in 1998 and 1999 respectively, was shattered as the bank card confirming Alan’s identity was shown to me.

I recall that as soon as I knew that it was Alan, that he really had gone from me, my immediate feeling was one of gratitude to God that Alan had been released at last from the agony of the unpredictable mood swings, the crippling anxiety and the periods of depression, which had dogged his life for years.

This was a very fleeting sense of gratitude, barely lasting a second, and I have wondered why I can remember it so clearly, or indeed how I could feel grateful at all in a situation so terrible. I have learned since that this is quite a common initial reaction; that when depression, despair and previous suicide attempts have been experienced by a family, there may be relief following the final successful attempt, because the deceased is no longer in despair and the constant threat of suicide is over.

I only have snippets of memory of the time following that and I am inclined to confuse the sequence of events, but I do remember trying — and failing — to swing into ‘mother mode’, wanting to protect Noel, my sons and my daughter from this horror. We got everybody home except Noelle, whom we decided to leave to finish her exams. David would have to learn the devastating news over the phone. It was heartbreaking to watch as Niall and Stephen learned what had happened, and I felt so helpless that there was nothing I could do to alleviate their pain.

The hurt on Noel’s face as he tried to take in the horror of what had happened to his child is one of my most terrible memories of that day. Here was a father who had taken part in every moment of his children’s lives, who had been involved in every stage of their growing up, who had taken them out for drives and treks in the mountains every weekend, talking to them about the wonders of nature, teaching them the history of places they visited. Here was a father who had passed on to his children his love of the mountains and waterfalls, summer days and the joy of swimming and fishing in a river, who had so often brought them home, muddy and dripping wet after a day of adventure, who had so often lost patience with their squabbling in the car, threatening to throw them out and make them walk, until they all collapsed in giggles at their dad’s irritation — all squabbles forgotten.

Here was a man who deeply, deeply loved his children, and who now had heard that his treasured youngest son had just been cut down from the tree where his children, and he himself in his childhood, had played. I found this almost unbearable. I would have taken all his pain on myself if I had been able to. It was dreadful to watch his heart breaking like this.