I feel like GRIEF is Ireland’s last taboo
Zoe Holohan should know – she’s faced more heartache in the past three years than most do in a lifetime. But in this extraordinarily uplifting interview, she proves the strength of the human spirit
ITHOUGHT there was a chance I might cry during my interview with Zoe Holohan. I’m not brought to tears often — it’s actually an extremely rare occurrence — but I’d been so moved by Zoe’s story when reading her book As The Smoke Clears that I thought there was a chance I would break down.
I certainly didn’t think I’d be crying with laughter during our chat but that’s exactly what happened as Zoe proves that the human spirit truly is indomitable.
The tragedy she went through in July 2018 — losing her newlywed husband Brian O’Callaghan-Westropp in the fires that swept through their idyllic Greek honeymoon destination of Mati — changed her entire future. On top of that, her dad died three weeks later, while she dealt with horrific injuries herself and faced death several times on her long road to recovery.
Yet during our interview, the most common sound was that of laughter — Zoe has an infectious, throaty belly laugh that you can’t help but join in with. She has an uplifting outlook on life that I really wasn’t expecting. But I love it.
One thing that struck me as I read Zoe’s book — which has been shortlisted in the RTÉ Audience Choice Award category in this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards — was just where she found the strength to get through it all. The list of horrors thrown at her would feel like overkill in a work of fiction, but the blows just kept coming.
She reveals that she doesn’t really know the answer to that, only that you have to find the mettle somewhere.
‘I don’t think you ever know in advance how you’re going to deal with any kind of trauma,’ she says. ‘I know I’m stubborn. I laugh every time somebody uses the word
‘Mental survival took a back seat to physical survival’
resilient — if you talk to anyone who knows me, I’m renowned for being ever so slightly stubborn. I think that probably in a really strange way helped me get through.
‘There are no predictors in life. Over three years on, if I’d known back in the beginning of July 2018 what was going to happen and you’d asked me, would you be able to cope with this, I would say absolutely, undoubtedly no. But your survival instincts, I suppose, do kick in at some stage, and you just take it, in the very literal sense, day by day, minute by minute.
‘I think that’s why my daily victories were so important because I felt that I was just achieving the most miniscule thing. It could be being able to hold a fork and actually feed yourself for the first time or it could be moving your toes for the first time — all of those little victories built into bigger victories as time went on and they kind of gave me the added impetus to keep going.’
She’s also very aware of the importance of having good people around you when fighting a battle as big as the one she faced. ‘I certainly wouldn’t say it’s my own resilience or my own strength that got me through,’ she says. ‘I’d say there are a myriad different factors that helped me.
‘I would say very clearly that there was a little army of people from the very beginning, when I was in the Mitera hospital to the present day.
‘I still have immense support, certainly in the medical fields and from my friends, but particularly I will say, focusing on those in the medical arena. I wouldn’t be here, full stop, if it wasn’t for all of the energy and all the care and love that they put into putting me back together again. So I wouldn’t say it’s all me.’
Her road to recovery was difficult and lengthy — she had to learn to walk again and regain use of her limbs, facing major surgery every two to three days. It was kickstarted in the Mitera Hospital in Greece, continuing in St James’s Hospital in Dublin when she was finally well enough to come home. Or so they thought.
Unfortunately, as she was being transported back to Ireland, Zoe acquired a rare form of sepsis and ended up in a coma, with her family told to expect the worst. I wonder if part of her resilience comes from the fact that so many people across the world worked so hard to save her, that she feels a sense of responsibility to them to live the best life she possibly can.
Would she have a different mentality if she’d walked away uninjured, able to get on a plane the next day and fly home? ‘I’ve never really thought about it like that before,’ she muses. ‘I think that’s actually a really interesting way of looking at it, I think you’re spot on.
‘Initially, my focus was on physical recovery. I don’t think the trauma really fully hit me, of Brian’s death and of my father’s death, until way further down the line, probably until November, when I had finally been discharged from St James’s. Up until then, obviously I was very aware of what had happened, I was heartbroken and devastated, but I don’t think the full extent hit me.
‘I was focusing on learning how to walk, to talk, to breathe for myself, to use my limbs. I was focusing on actual survival, physical survival. So the mental survival probably took a back seat.
‘Then when I finally left St James’s, it was like that grief bomb that had been festering away, just dying to explode, eventually went off. In fact, to be more accurate, it probably only really registered after Brian’s funeral, after December 1. So yeah, I think the brain kind of divides itself up and it says, right, if you want to live, you’re gonna have to put all your energy into your physical recovery and that’s what I did.
‘Every day, I’d have tasks to keep me going. The amount of physical energy it takes, I can’t describe, to learn how to walk again, to learn how to even just move your fingers, to learn how to talk again — as you can tell I’ve been very well healed in that area,’ and there’s that big booming laugh again.
When Brian died alongside 101 other people in the wildfires, it
took Zoe’s brothers John and Stephen a day or two to get out to Greece to be by her bedside — something which she surprisingly says was a blessing and a curse.
‘There were days when I was in so much pain and so out of it that I wasn’t really fully able to cope with visitors — that sounds kind of a little ungrateful maybe,’ she laughs. ‘Obviously something like that happening, it’s very hard to do without family there and I was over the moon when I saw John and Steven, and then some of my very close friends. There was part of me that found it a phenomenal comfort. But there were times when you’re better off being left alone, just to deal with the struggles.
‘Only afterwards, in fact very recently, I’ve had very honest conversations, particularly with my brothers, about how them seeing me that way affected them. You don’t think about that at the time. I was very severely burned and I was very severely disfigured, my face was basically melted at the early stages.’
Not being able to have visitors in hospital is something which has affected so many families across Ireland in the past year and a half, and it’s given Zoe a different perspective on her own situation. ‘I think about all those people at the moment suffering from Covid in hospital and god help their relatives,’ she says. ‘If the cards were turned I’d be banging down the doors to try and get in, so I understand that sense of urgency of being near to your loved one.
‘But when your loved one is suffering and is fighting for their lives, sometimes — particularly if it’s very unpleasant — there’s certain things that they’re going through, it’s easier if the people they’re closest to don’t see, or at least don’t see the nitty gritty.’
Radiating throughout the whole book is Zoe’s gratitude to the medical staff who cared for her, particularly those out in Greece, who helped her get through those initial horrific days. It’s had a profound effect.
‘The way those, as you say, strangers looked after me and cared for me, the level of compassion, the empathy that they showed me, actually changed my perception of pretty much everything in life. I really find myself seeking out the goodness in everybody now.
‘Now I’m not a moron — there are good eggs and there are bad eggs and I’ve encountered some bad eggs, particularly since the book has been published. There have been trolls and there have been some pretty unpleasant things happen, but they’re very much in the minority.
‘I continue to be blown away by the kindness of people. I’m inundated by letters and messages every single week, from people who are good enough and kind enough to take the time to tell me that my book affected them, or my story or just send love.
‘It’s so powerful to get that energy from a total stranger that you’re likely never to bump into. It’d be very strange if that didn’t change your perception of the world around you.
‘A lot of people have wanted to share their stories with me, particularly during the pandemic, where there’s this issue of sudden grief. It’s horrendous — you have no preparation, you think you’re going to have your husband or your father or your mother or your wife or your child forever. ‘People have written to me about losing all of these so suddenly. There’s tremendous honesty that comes from those messages and that’s very, very touching.’ While she admits that sometimes this sharing of tragedy can feel like a huge responsibility, one that she may not be equipped to cope with, she recognises the prestige that comes with it. ‘You know how somebody keeps their grief inside and it festers and it rots, and when somebody tries to share, even in the tiniest sense, their grief with you, I feel very honoured by that,’ she says. ‘I had one a couple of weeks ago. A message [on social media] from a man, a farmer, his wife passed away suddenly during Covid. He basically wrote to me and said he felt he had no one to talk to. So then we just started to have the loveliest conversation all about her and this went on for half the night. It was just the most beautiful, heartwarming, open conversation because all he desired was to talk about the person that he had lost. In doing so he was keeping her energy alive in the here and now. That’s been a great gift about writing this book.’
Of course, everybody’s situation is different and how they cope with a sudden loss is totally a personal thing, but Zoe has some advice for people facing it.
‘Actually talking about it is absolutely where I would advise people to start,’ she says emphatically. ‘In Ireland, we do amazing funerals but we’re absolutely crap when it comes to talking about death, or bereavement or grief, particularly with sudden loss. You absolutely have to find some way of discussing what’s going on within you and find a trusted source.
‘I’m a huge fan of therapy so I will say if you have the option, go to a grief therapist, go to a specialist, go to an expert in the field. But if that is not open to you, find somebody in your circle that you can trust and talk to them about this. I feel that grief is one of the last hidden taboos in Ireland. One good thing — probably the only good thing — about the pandemic is this isolation has actually intensified the urge for people to reach out and talk to each other and help each other, certainly that’s been my experience.’
Because Zoe was in such bad shape in hospital when her dad died just three weeks after Brian, she wasn’t at his funeral, so she understands all too well what so many people affected by death in the past 18 months have faced.
‘Funerals are a major process — I mean certainly Brian’s memorial was hugely healing to me, to be able to do just even that wake process of being able to talk about the person and tell the best stories,’ she says. ‘That has a tremendously healing effect. And I didn’t get that with dad. It’s honouring the person that’s gone, then when that’s stolen from you, the process doesn’t start properly.’
Losing two of the most important men in her life in such a short space of time had an enormous effect on Zoe, but she believes they’re both still with her in some sense — to the point that it’s led her to some very existential questions.
‘I said in the very early stages of the book that I am an avowed atheist but the last few years have really thrown up a few mental challenges for me on that topic,’ she laughs. ‘I suppose the only way I can describe it is, I really do believe that their energy has not totally left this plain, so to speak. I talk to them and I ask them for help when I feel that I need it.
‘The irony is both my father and Brian were two of my biggest advocates and they were always the ones that used to say, write the bloody book, stop talking about the book, write the book.
‘I don’t think they thought it was going to be this book somehow,’ she laughs uproariously.
Does she think Brian would be proud of her? ‘I hope he would be,’ she says plaintively. ‘I find myself constantly asking him am I doing okay. He doesn’t answer...’ there’s that laugh again. ‘But yes, I hope they would both be very proud of me. I know Brian was always very encouraging so I hope so, because I’m so proud of him. He really was my hero.
‘He probably would have thought I should be a little bit further on down the line. One of the first things he asked me was, what’s your five-year plan? I was going, I don’t have a five-minute plan!
‘So I think maybe he would think I should have moved on a little bit more by now but I’m doing the best I can. I wear his ring every day and I like that that keeps him close to me so I feel that wherever I go, he’s coming with me.’
‘I seek out the goodness in everybody now’ ‘Irish people are crap at talking about death’
ZOE HOLOHAN’S book As the Smoke Clears has been shortlisted in the RTÉ Audience Choice Award category in this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards. Visit irishbookawards.ie to vote now