‘You have to find the strength to reach out’

BARRY GRACE has found solace in the most unthinkable of places.

He's most comfortable, most at peace and closest to his two daughters and former wife on the eerie shoreline of Kaats Strand.

It was on the stony stretch of waterway overlooking Wexford town that a distraught Sharon Grace drowned their daughters and then killed herself.

"Over four months have passed now," Barry says, swallowing deeply, still fighting back the tears. "It seems just like yesterday, yet it also seems like a lifetime ago. It's been a huge emotional roller coaster.

"The girls' birthday is on September 24. Every day, every week, every month there's some reminder. It doesn't get easier, not a bit. Whoever said time is a great healer is wrong. Every single day is a struggle.

"I'm in counselling. I had to go. Everyone who is in a situation like mine has to get counselling, get help. There are so many outlets for help. I didn't even know half of them existed. But you have to find the strength to reach out, to admit you need help. That's the toughest part. If you don't, it just eats you up."

Twenty-nine-year olds Sharon and Barry, a base operator with Wexford Cabs, had split up a few months before the tragedy.

Sharon had been on a low for several days.

The mother of three had called into a private hospital, where social workers were based, looking for help on the night they died. But it was outside of office hours and none of the counsellors were on duty.

She went to Kaats Strand, a walk of about 10 minutes. She drowned her daughters, four-year-old Mikhala, and three-year-old Abbi. She then walked into the river, drowning herself.

Barry brings flowers to their grave behind St Alphonsus's Church, Barntown, Co Wexford, most weeks. He's never gone back to their former home, a cottage on a hill about two miles away. And he never will.

"I visit their graves quite a bit. When I go there, I talk to Sharon and I talk to the girls. I tell them what's going on in the bit of a life I have without them.

"But I spend more time on Kaats Strand. It's where I'm closest to them all where I come to try to work things out. I went through a very bad time after the funeral. I hit the bottle big time. It was a very, very black time and I nearly went off my head.

"But in the middle of it all, there were voices saying to me, stop Barry, give it up. I think it was my daughters' voices. They somehow helped me through this."

Barry says it's difficult to understand what drives people to suicide.

"I've gone through all the stages. There are days when I'm angry, days when I'm depressed, days when I go looking for answers but there are none. But I've never, ever blamed her.

"Sharon was dead before she hit the water. Some people blamed her, others blamed me. But nobody is to blame. Some days I'm lost, other days I'm lonely. Now I'm hurt and confused. I will never understand why she did it it was so out of character. That wasn't what she was like.

"Sharon loved those kids. She wouldn't harm a hair on their heads. I still believe to this very day that she was a brilliant mother. She just snapped. Something good has to come out of their deaths, it just has to."

With the help of others, Barry Grace hopes to set up a support organisation for single parents mothers as well as fathers. He says their break-up was a factor in what happened.

"With so many marriage break-ups, separations, divorces and couples parting, often leaving children behind, people need support, they need help. I'm hoping to set up something like Gingerbread [a lone-parent organisation] so that people don't feel alone. Because that's the worst feeling of all. There's nothing worse than being isolated, being left alone," he said.

His advice to others who are suicide bereaved is to get help the quicker the better and not to be afraid to talk. He also says there's no point trying to apportion blame because in most cases, there's simply nobody to blame.

However, Barry has called for promises made by the Suicide Task Force, due out later this week, to be kept this time.

"It's really time for the Government to keep its promises, to put its money where its mouth is on this one.

"The recommendations made last time round should have been followed through years ago.

Suicide is everywhere and it impacts on everyone. It's well documented and it's happening every day," he said.

"We need more organisations willing to help people not just let everything to the Samaritans.