Family’s tributes to ‘delicate and amazing’ Flur
THE heartbroken family of a 24-yearold woman who took her life have paid tribute to “the most delicate, beautiful and amazingly clever young woman”.
Flur Mcdonald was killed by a Merseyrail train in Birkdale, just after 2pm on Tuesday last week.
The pharmacology student lost both of her parents within a few years of one another, and struggled to come to terms with the loss.
Flur, from Southport, was a bright, talented young woman who became the first member of her family to go to university, studying in Newcastle after she left college.
Friends from her pharmacology classes set up a fundraising page to raise money for Mind, the mental health charity, in her memory and her family paid emotional tributes to their beloved sister who battled mental illness for much of her short life.
In a poignant message shared on social media, her brother Ryan Mcdonald said: “As most people are now aware, my beautiful baby sister, Flurry, tragically cut her own life short the other day.
“I don’t know that much about mental illness or mental health but I know it has claimed the most delicate, beautiful, amazingly clever young woman I have known, who I’m absolutely proud and fortunate to have had in my life for 24 short but amazing years.”
Ryan said his baby sister “never really got over” losing her dad, before the family was hit by another tragedy when their mother died a few years later.
Flur’s family also expressed their overwhelming gratitude to Tommy and Paula Pearman, the couple who Flur went to live with in November last year and who looked after her and tried to offer her the stability she needed.
Ryan said: “I have seen over the years so many people who think there is no other way out. But I never, ever dreamed in my worst nightmares that Flur would ever do this.
“But then you start thinking, analysing each message, each phone call, every time you were in her company. Was there something I missed, was there something more I could or should have done for her?”
Ryan’s tribute included a photo of a message Flur left the week before her death, when she stayed at his house.
The heartbreaking message simply read: “Love you Ryan. Love Flur. P.S. I’m trying, I’m just a lost soul.”
In his moving message to his sister, Ryan said: “You stayed at ours last Wednesday and left me this note. You were trying so hard Flur, you really were and it makes me sad you saw yourself as a ‘lost soul’.”
Flur was one of six sib-