Immeasurable loss
Marie Sullivan pays loving tribute to her daughter, Arwen, who took her own life last year, aged just 23
Patrice Harrington talks to Meath woman Marie Sullivan about losing her 23-year-old daughter to suicide last year
In the photograph of her taken the day before she took her own life, physiotherapist Arwen Sullivan, 23, smiles for the camera, looking typically stylish in a wine dress worn over a diaphanous purple top.
It is Easter Saturday 2020 and the striking beauty is relaxing after cooking a Mexican meal with her boyfriend for her parents, Marie and Paul, at their lovely family home in Stamullen, Co Meath.
Earlier that day, Arwen, who was a qualified yoga instructor, had been tidying the back yard so she could shoot YouTube videos there, joking around pretending the sweeping brush was a broomstick and she was Hermione Granger.
“If I look up signs of suicide, I don’t see Arwen there,” says primary school teacher Marie, becoming upset. “For us, it was totally out of the blue.”
It is true that her talented daughter — she was also a great singer and guitarist — had suffered from anxiety since her teens. True, too, that she was annoyed on Easter Sunday evening over a couple of trivial things, but Arwen had a call with old schoolfriends and was “roaring her head off laughing” at 11pm.
Marie said goodnight to her daughter at midnight and found her unresponsive half an hour later. “There was nothing that happened that day that merited anything so catastrophic,” says Marie.
Arwen was on anxiety medication and the dosage had been upped by her GP in November 2019, shortly after Arwen’s graduation from the Royal College of Surgeons. At the time of her death, she was working as a physiotherapist and had been meeting her patients over Zoom since lockdown. The morning of her death she had taught one yoga class and participated in another.
“When Covid-19 happened, Arwen told me, ‘Oh, this is going to be really bad for my anxiety’. I said, ‘What can we do to make it better?’” says Marie. “She was worried about losing her job and she was worried about whether there would be other jobs when Covid was over. So I’d say that probably notched up her anxiety.”
After Arwen was brought by ambulance to hospital, she tested positive for Covid-19 before she tragically passed away.
“Her doctor said to me, ‘Marie, what happened, had she been sick?’ I said, ‘No, she had no symptoms.’ And she said, ‘Did she have cloudy thinking, because you know that can be a big factor in Covid-19?’”
Marie does not suggest that
Covid-related cloudy thinking might be the sole reason for Arwen’s death.
“She was obviously struggling already. So you’re not putting [the idea of] cloudy thinking on a perfectly functioning brain. You’re putting it on a brain that’s already struggling and already having suicidal thoughts.”
In 2015, when she was in first year in college, Arwen confided in her mother about this suicidal ideation.
“Her counsellor told her to tell me, so we talked about it. I was petrified and asked her what the reason was. She said there wasn’t really a reason. It was just a thought that used to come into her head every now and again.”
Marie googled what to do “and they say that you’re supposed to ask, ‘Do you have a plan and what is your plan?’”
At the time, Arwen revealed
what her plan was — and Marie had always kept an extremely watchful eye on that situation — “but that wasn’t what she did at all”.
Arwen had also reassured her mother at the time that she had no immediate plans to do it. “I said, ‘You have to tell me if that changes. I have to know’.”
Two years ago when Marie was putting together a hardback photo book for Arwen’s 21st she learned that the teenage daughter of a family friend had died by suicide.
“I felt so lucky to still have Arwen and realised every day and moment was precious.”
Marie wanted the purple photobook — Arwen’s favourite colour — to be “like a fairytale”. It begins with her ultrasound scan and baby photos and progresses through birthday parties, ballet recitals and her First Holy Communion, to Disneyland and the Debs.
“She got teased a lot in secondary school,” says Marie of her “super-clever” daughter. “And, without a doubt, it affected her confidence.”
Marie, who also has an older son, Cian, arranged for Arwen to have counselling. “The counsellor said that she had social anxiety. She seemed to manage it really well
but obviously the anxiety never really went away. It stayed and became more embedded.”
Arwen worked hard on improving her mental health. “She had read and researched widely and had even written her thesis based on the benefits of exercise for mental health. She put this research into practice, going to the gym every day before lockdown.”
During lockdown, Arwen taught or took Zoom yoga classes “at least once a day, usually two or three times”. She walked the dog or jogged and had started a professional course in meditation.
“She was interested in the intersection of psychology and physiotherapy and hoped to do a master’s on that. I think it’s important that people realise Arwen lost her battle with mental health despite all her knowledge and all she was doing to keep herself safe and well.”
There were still episodes that Arwen called ‘anxiety attacks’ which sometimes manifested as irrational anger with friends. Marie is now keen to flag such outbursts in others as a potential warning sign that all is not well. She appreciates that it is “much harder to deal with” people who are angry rather than sad.
Marie also wants the “awkward” conversations around suicide to change. She believes we need more clarity and fluency and less euphemism in our language around anxiety, depression and mental health. “I am delighted to talk about Arwen because I feel that with suicide there’s supposed to be a shame or a taboo or something. I’m not ashamed at all. I adore her. I’m so proud of her.”
Still in the throes of her unimaginable grief — and tearful throughout our interview — Marie has been dismayed by the absence of public role models for surviving the suicide of a child. “I was looking for people who were able to say, ‘I’m still here. You can do this. It’s awful but it’s doable. And you can hold your head up and be proud of your child. How they die is not who they are. There’s no need to be any more ashamed or embarrassed than if they died of cancer or a heart attack’. And I couldn’t find anybody out there. I don’t hear people talking about the Arwens.”
Spirited and sassy as a little girl, with none of the anxiety that would arrive in her teens, Arwen was always a high achiever. “And I think that might be part of the problem,” says Marie. “She must have thought, ‘I have this [anxiety] under control. I can manage this’. And I think she thought that until the last minute.” Marie warns that appearances can be deceptive.
“We saw the smile and the beauty and just couldn’t imagine that there would be anything wrong behind that. She dazzled us.”
Arwen always wanted to work in a caring profession and had a great bond and banter with older people, in particular. While still an undergrad, she had a research paper published in the journal Age and Ageing, looking at grip strength and walking speed in older adults.
Alongside her studiousness was a love of fun and dressing up — feather boas, face glitter and always with that Julia Roberts smile, as her boyfriend’s mother so aptly described it. She adored her dog Elsa, and on holiday in Thailand with friends, Arwen is cheek-to-cheek with an elephant in a group photo.
Marie treasured her only
daughter, organising annual trips away together around their birthdays and treating her college friends to dinner for “being so good” to Arwen.
The Covid-19 restrictions have added to the family’s sense of unreality since Arwen’s death. Friends have been “wonderfully supportive”, with phone calls, walks and a “magic doorstep” of food, flowers, cards and gifts. But only 10 people could attend the funeral and Marie has been desperate to do something bigger to honour her daughter’s memory.
She told her childhood friend Maeve McMahon about an idea to perhaps sell Arwen’s clothes to raise funds for a mental-health charity. Maeve contacted
Glamour UK Contributing Editor Anne-Marie Tomchak and together they took that idea up a level.
The ShareJoy initiative will use Depop to sell pre-loved clothes donated by 20 accomplished Irish women to raise money for Pieta House. Marie says it is “exactly what I wanted to do, only better”.
Arwen was “on Depop for years. She loved her clothes but the culture with the young ones these days is that they don’t tend to wear the same things very often. So she would have sold stuff and bought stuff on Depop as a way of keeping her wardrobe going.”
Along with ShareJoy, Marie has found other comforts, such as looking at the painting Begin Again by Cora Murphy, which hangs over her fireplace. “It’s Arwen’s colours and my colours together,” she says, explaining the purple, pink and teal palette.
Marie’s friends commissioned an “amazing” portrait of Arwen by Shane Gillen, which hangs above her graduation photograph and a certificate of a star named after her — another thoughtful gift. And in the absence of gatherings, Facebook has been a conduit for Marie’s mourning. “For all we give out about the dangers of social media, that has been an incredible comfort for me. In his book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, David Kessler talks about how grief must be witnessed. I want to talk about Arwen and for people to remember her. I just want to declare my love for her.”
If I look up signs of suicide, I don’t see Arwen there. For us, it was totally out of the blue
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