‘My daughter’s death was preventable’
A grieving mother says she wants her memoir to help parents and children ‘talk about things they’ve kept hidden’. By Joanne Holden.
AN Otago-based author who lost her teenage daughter to suicide urges parents ‘‘don’t be fobbed off, keep pushing’’ when their child appears to be struggling.
Linda Collins’ memoir Loss Adjustment explores her ‘‘complex grief’’ after going to wake daughter Victora McLeod for school one morning to find an empty bed. It was only when police handed over her beloved child’s laptop months later that she discovered the 17-year-old had been grappling with suicidal impulses for years.
‘‘My daughter’s death was preventable and I hope other people can use my knowledge so other lives can be saved,’’ Collins said.
‘‘Sometimes you have to be that parent, not the friend or disciplinarian, but who asks the hard questions. If your child says they’re fine, don’t leave it at that if you think it may not be true. Don’t be fobbed off, keep pushing.
‘‘I like to think my book can enable people to talk about things that they’ve kept hidden.’’
The memoir is mainly set in Otago, Christchurch and Singapore, occasionally detouring to Timaru.
Victoria, born and raised in Singapore, died by suicide on April 14, 2014. She and her parents – Collins and father Malcolm McLeod – considered themselves Kiwis and spent many holidays at their ‘‘modest cottage’’ in Otago’s Kakanui. The family also owned a house in Christchurch, which they rented out until it was ‘‘wrecked’’ in the 2011 earthquake.
While rebuilding this home, and with plans to return to to live there, the family stopped in Timaru for about four months before Victoria’s death – catching up with friends and heading down to the annual Caroline Bay Carnival.
‘‘Victoria had been a bit offhand, but I thought she was just a moody teenager. She actually wrote a short story about it ... While the adults were having fun, she saw someone a
bit dodgy selling stuff out the back of a car; she dwelled on the negative.’’
On the drive back to Kakanui from Christchurch, the family visited their architect in Timaru and, although Victoria was reluctant to leave the car, she ultimately joined the discussion about the new house’s design.
‘‘A lot of what she chose was in the final house: the exterior colour, the colour of the bench tops, the wood for the steps and things,’’ Collins said.
‘‘We had designated a room for her downstairs as well. It was heart-breaking that this house kept on being built after Victoria died. We ended up selling it once it was finished.’’
Collins said she’d been pleased to see the Sheila McLeod rhododendrons, – named after Victoria’s grandmother – and
lavender her daughter picked still growing outside the house when she drove past a few months ago.
Collins passed Victoria’s writing onto researchers, including University of Otago head of science communication Dr Jesse Bering, believing her daughter ‘‘wanted a wider readership because of the way she wrote’’ – and in the hopes of preventing more deaths by suicide.
‘‘I didn’t know she was doing all this creative writing and journaling,’’ Collins said.
‘‘I collected everything she’s written.
‘‘Most of it was on her laptop, but I found a toy basket of handwriting. She started at age eight and wrote 40,000 words altogether.
‘‘When she was 12 or 13, she started talking about her body weight and seeing all the negative things in her life.’’
Collins wrote the memoir in 2017, for the International Institute of Modern Letters’ Creative Writing course at Victoria University of Wellington.
‘‘I wrote nearly 200,000 words. They cut it down to 75,000 before publishing it.’’
First released in Singapore by independent publisher Ethos Books in September 2019,
Collins’ memoir became a nonfiction bestseller and was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the 2020 Singapore Book Awards.
Awa Press has since acquired Australasian rights, introducing the memoir to New Zealand audiences early last month.
The memoir is stocked across the country by major retailers including Whitcoulls and Paper Plus – as well as independent bookshops such as Bay Hill Books in Timaru, Petronella’s Bookstore and Gallery in Lake Tekapo, and the University Book Shop in Dunedin.
Collins is studying remotely towards a Master of Arts in Creative Writing Poetry at England’s Anglia Ruskin University.
Blocked from travelling to the United Kingdom by Covid-19 and unable to renew her work permit in Singapore, she is now based in Kakanui while her husband remains overseas.
Collins will be speaking to her new book at the Oamaru Public Library at 6pm on January 28.