10 years on: A poignant weekend for Sligo family
THIS weekend will be one of incredibly mixed emotions for a west Sligo father-of-four who, in the space of 24 hours, will celebrate his daughter’s 10th birthday and the passing of his wife a day after their beautiful daughter was born.
On February 5, 2013, Sally Rowlette (pictured left) died from a stroke one day after she gave birth to her fourth child, a baby girl, also called Sally. Sally’s husband Seán has spent the last ten years doing everything he can to make sure his children have full and happy lives. It has been a decade laced with challenges, sadness, and many happy days too as he and his four children learned to live life without a much-loved wife and mother.
In 2014 a jury at the inquest into the death of Seán’s wife Sally returned a unanimous verdict of medical misadventure. It was found that the hospital did not properly manage her HELLP Syndrome, which is a severe form of pre-eclampsia. She suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and died the day after she gave birth to her daughter, who in her memory was also named Sally. Ten years have elapsed since that fateful weekend in February 2013, but the memories don’t fade and the circumstances of Sally’s death, then aged 33, remain painfully crystal clear in her husband’s mind as he recalls the elation of the birth of their fourth child and the devastation of losing his teenage sweetheart who he first dated at a disco in Enniscrone.
This Saturday Sally Junior will have “a massive” party to mark her birthday.
“It will be great, she’s flat to the mat planning and organising. She’s a normal 10-year-old, she’s very excited about her big day and we will have a great day,” Seán told the Sligo Weekender earlier this week.
ON SUNDAY, at 11.30am Mass in their local church in Dromore West, young Sally, her siblings Leanne (17), Abbie (15) and Joseph (12) will go with their dad, Séan, and their hugely supportive family and community to remember their mother at her 10th anniversary Mass. Later they’ll go to the grave at Churchill. It’s a familiar ritual and while a 10th anniversary has a certain ‘special’ resonance for some, every anniversary brings back a huge mix of emotions for Séan and the wider family.
“From Christmas it starts. Christmas Day obviously has so many memories for me but again I have to say we still have a great day, but Sally would be in our thoughts.
“January is a hard month for everybody in the country, I know that, but I find it is one of the tougher times.
“People move on with their lives, and they have been and are a huge support to me and the kids, but it’s just there – it will always be there and so it should be,” he explains.
He said both families, his own and the Golden family, have been really good to him and the children. “I’m never stuck for a babysitter, they have been brilliant in loads of different ways, Sally’s mum Bina and my mother Patricia, Sally’s sister Geraldine McNamara, have been incredible and everyone else has played their part. Family is what it is all about and for me my family has been the most important thing, they are always there for us.”
He lights up when he talks about his late wife: “Sally loved kids, it was all about the kids. No matter where she went the kids were with her and even if we went away for a night, she couldn’t wait to see them and get back to them.”
Seán has shown remarkable mental strength since her sudden death. He’s very much a ‘bottle half full’ man, and firmly believes that his wife’s death, the ensuing inquest and the issues it highlighted, in terms of securing an inquest as an automatic right in maternal death cases in Ireland, as a positive. Perhaps more importantly, he feels her death has played a role in ensuring that Ireland is now a safer place for women to have babies. “The only positive thing about the inquest was that we got the answers we were looking for.
“I do believe maternity is a much safer place to be because of the outcome of that inquest. “I believe Ireland is a safer place for women to have babies because of the impact the findings from Sally’s inquest had and more so because inquests in circumstances such as those encountered by Sally are now automatic.”
He has campaigned for the right to automatic inquests to be extended to other countries, most recently returning from an awareness sharing gathering in Brussels where he spoke of his personal experience. A sheep farmer who also renovates buildings for re-sale or rent, Seán is not your typical campaigner, but life and the sudden death of his wife has brought him on this path. “The inquest was difficult, but there was the additional problem of actually trying to get an inquest. The inquest and the time leading up to it was tough.
“I was in Brussels last week to speak about what we achieved here in Ireland in terms of changing the law and ensuring inquests are automatic and I do believe we will get the law introduced in Europe also,” he said.
Going back to the inquest in 2014 is a difficult ask for Seán, but he sees it as important to explain it to those who may have been too young to know what happened or to those who may have forgotten through the passage of time. For Seán sharing the memories of what happened has become a regular occurrence as the story of Sally’s death attracted very considerable attention nationally and locally and he was asked on numerous occasions by media in 2014 and since the inquest to relive those memories.
The birth began normally at their home in Croagh, Dromore West, with Sally mentioning stomach pains at around 11.30pm. “I remember that night before we went to the hospital, she went into the room and gave them all a kiss and told them ‘see you tomorrow’. That sticks in my head, it was the last time she touched them,
things like that stay with you.”
They travelled to what was then Sligo General Hospital. Seán recalls how after 15 minutes in maternity, “all hell broke loose”.
“The baby’s heart rate had dropped.” Sally was brought to the theatre and the baby was delivered without further complications. Seán went into the theatre to see her, where Sally was holding her new-born, red-haired girl.
Sally was brought down to the intensive care unit. After a couple of hours with her, due to her not responding to questions from him, Seán suspected something was wrong. He stayed at the hospital but was told to leave Sally’s bedside around 5.30am. An hour later he was told his wife had suffered a brain haemorrhage, and to contact family immediately. She passed away the following day, February 5.
Ten years later it’s slightly easier to talk about the weeks, months and now years since Sally’s death. “In the early days after it happened and Sally had died, to be honest a lot of mornings I found it hard to get up, to keep going.
“There were a lot of those days where I was just exhausted. I would leave the kids off to school and I would pull the blinds again and often I jumped back into bed to try to sleep, try, and maybe shut it out.
“But as time went on, I remember one morning looking at the kids. They were there, running around, happy, smiling. I just took it in my head and asked myself ‘what would Sally want?’ “I decided they were the most important thing and any time I think I might struggle, I look at the kids and that gives me a lift, that keeps me going.
“I just feel they should have a normal life so that is the difference now, that’s my approach and it works for all of us.
“We don’t want people to think we’re sitting there sad all the time, sure there are times, and this weekend will be very mixed on that score, but you can’t let it stop them from having their lives and we have good craic. You’ll hear plenty of laughs in Croagh too. I’d said we’re fairly normal now, good days and some sad days, but we get on with it.”
He has some regrets, and it saddens him that his children don’t know what it is like to have a mother.
“I find it very hard that the kids won’t know what it is like to have a mother in their lives, that loving care and touch. When you think about that I suppose, it would stop you in your tracks. “They don’t know what it is like to have a mother in their lives, and Sally was such a great mother to them. Things like that hit me every now and again, so there’s no point pretending those feelings aren’t there either.”
Seán says two things helped him to deal with the tragedy and how it might eat him up after Sally’s death. “What saved me was two things, the kids and exercise. I started going to the gym and started walking and exercising in general. I never, ever took a tablet or medicine, although I was offered it loads of times.”
He did try counselling. “One of the family booked a session for me as they felt I needed it. I went to that, and I left early because I couldn’t do it, it wasn’t for me. I know it works for many people, but not for me. For me it is the kids and the gym in Ballina or Enniscrone which works for me, and we all love the outdoor life.
“It’s important to keep busy and I spend as much time as I can with the children, and it works.”
He said there was professional counselling provided for the children through ‘Rainbows’ and they are doing well. “They are all involved in sport, and we keep busy all the time. We love hiking and walking, and we try to get away for the odd break here and there. We are always busy.” While some people might be more guarded, Seán is very open about how he struggled with some of the practical demands of rearing four children on his own.
“Cooking and nappies were a foreign country before Sally’s passing and he is not afraid to admit that. “I was always an outdoor person. If I changed a nappy, you could be sure Sally would be checking it two minutes later to make sure it wouldn’t fall off!
“I had to learn new things. I had to learn, and people will laugh at this, I didn’t even know how to turn on the fecking cooker. I had to get a coloured marker, and someone showed me what was what and I put marks on the cooker showing the difference between the grill and the oven, look I was an outdoor man. But let’s put it this way, I don’t need the markers anymore.” Laughing he says: “I’m a pro now, but it was a wake-up call too. I know my limitations too. Sally is gone and I try to fill her shoes, but I don’t think any man can fill the shoes of a mother or a woman in any house, no matter what you do.” Keen to point out that there are good days mixed in with the memories of a difficult time, he says it is important people understand he and the family appreciate the support and good wishes they have received over the past 10 years but also to know that there are good days too. “Look, it has been sad and difficult at times, but please don’t give people the impression we are all ‘doom and gloom’ because that’s not the case.” He added: “Sally wouldn’t have wanted that. We have our memories and our quiet times, but we have our fun too and it can get lively here in the house, we have had some great nights too and I think we are a happy crew and that’s how Sally would want it.”