Daughter’s death ‘preventable’
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 has penned a literary memoir, Loss Adjustment, exploring her ‘‘complex grief’’ after going to wake daughter Victoria McLeod for school one morning to find an empty bed.
The police handed over her beloved child’s laptop months later and 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 are fine, don’t leave it at that if you think it may not be true. ‘‘Don’t be fobbed off, keep pushing.’’ Collins will be speaking to her new book at the Oamaru Public Library at 6pm on January 28.
‘‘I like to think my book can enable people to talk about things that they have kept hidden,’’ she said.
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 the property was ‘‘wrecked’’ in the 2011 earthquake.
While rebuilding this home, with plans to return to New Zealand to live in the Canterbury city, the family stopped in Timaru 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,’’ Collins said.
‘‘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 did and 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 heartbreaking that this house kept on being built after Victoria died. We ended up selling it once it was finished.’’
Collins was 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 on to researchers, including Otago University 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 did not know she was doing all this creative writing and journalling,’’
Collins said. ‘‘I collected everything she had written. Most of it was on her laptop but I found a toy basket of handwriting. ‘‘She started at age 8 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 did not feel she would ever get over losing Victoria.
Collins wrote the memoir in 2017, for the International Institute of Modern Letters’ creative writing course at Victoria University. ‘‘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 non-fiction 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.
Collins is now based in Kakanui while her husband remains overseas.
Where to get help
1737, Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 to talk to a trained counsellor. Anxiety New Zealand 0800 ANXIETY (0800 269 4389) Depression.org.nz 0800 111 757 or text 4202