Barry Egan
Sharon Shannon lays bare the reality of grief
IT was 2pm on May 7, 2008. Sharon Shannon, who was on tour, picked up the phone in her hotel room in Cork. It was her friend Tom Joyce ringing from Galway.
Sharon’s long-term partner Leo Healy, a panel beater, had been found dead at their home in Salthill. Tom had thought it unusual that he couldn’t get through to Leo, who was always reliable and obliging. He called over to the house.
The front door was open. The pets that Leo and Sharon shared were out in the front garden.
In the living room, Tom discovered Leo on the couch in his dressing gown. He checked his pulse and knew immediately it was too late. Leo (46) had died of a heart attack.
Sharon’s manager John Dunford drove her to Galway — a distressing journey home to the house she and Leo had decorated together.
“I was in shock and in denial and disbelief, not fully able to acknowledge reality and totally unaware of what the next few days would entail,” says Sharon now.
She couldn’t sleep at all for the first few nights after Leo died. Her mind was “racing at such a ridiculous pace” that she gave up “even trying to sleep”.
In an attempt to find some peace, Sharon listened to John Denver singing Annie’s Song
over and over. “I cried my eyes out listening to his beautiful words,” Sharon says, quoting the lyrics: ‘Come let me love you/Let me give my life to you/ Let me drown in your laughter/Let me die in your arms/ Let me lay down beside you.’
To get her through the pain, Sharon also listened endlessly to Here Comes The Sun
by the Beatles. She remembers that the weather was scorching hot in Galway on the day of Leo’s funeral.
“It was one of the first days of a heatwave that lasted for a full three weeks. And even though the weather was absolutely beautiful — and it helped in a very big way to keep the spirits up — I was feeling extremely anxious about the ‘long and lonely winter’ ahead of me.”
Sharon was aware that the “lovely sunny weather wasn’t going to continue forever. That’s why the lyrics of Here Comes The Sun meant so much to me and still do”.
There were other songs — from John Prine’s You Got Gold to Thin Lizzy’s Sarah,
among others — that helped Sharon in the aftermath of Leo’s death. (Leo’s daughter is named Sarah; and so this song had always been special to him.) Sharon decided to record a CD, A Thing Called
Love: Songs For Leo, with other musicians of all the songs that had been such a comfort to her. To name a few of the tracks, Seamus Begley sang the vocals on Annie’s Song, Mundy did Phil Lynott’s part on Sarah, Aoife O’Donovan did the lead on Here Comes The Sun and You Got Gold.
Sharon believed a CD in memory of Leo would be a much more comforting gift to their families and friends. She remembers how she couldn’t bear the finality of a memorial card. “I couldn’t bear the thought of the words ‘RIP’ or any reference to Leo being in the past,” Sharon says, “that sort of stuff was all too final and too difficult for me to accept. It took me many years to gradually begin to say ‘was’ instead of ‘is’ when talking about Leo. I really wanted to find a way to somehow hold on to Leo and to keep him close for the rest of my life.”
Does listening to the album open wounds in Sharon that she thought were healed?
“I was never under the impression that they were ever healed in the first place,” she says. “But when someone that close to you passes away you don’t want to not think of them. When a time comes — if a time comes — that you’re not sad every day that is sad in itself. Because that means you are beginning to forget about the person.” Sharon says she wouldn’t like that to ever happen.
“The really terrible grief comes in waves and it is unbearable at the start. It might only last for 20 minutes and then it will go away; and you might have 20 minutes of not being incredibly sad and then it will come back again; and it might even be worse. I suppose those periods of time when you get a break from the sadness,” says Sharon, “those periods become longer and longer, as time goes by.”
Earlier this year, Sharon found herself listening to the CD again around the time of Leo’s 12th anniversary. John Prine had died from the effects of Covid-19, along with so many others.
Sharon began to think about the grieving families around Ireland, and the rest of the world, who lost loved ones during the pandemic — “and the awfulness of not being able to have a proper funeral and receive the comfort of family and friends”.
“This time, when I was listening to the CD I wasn’t just thinking about Leo,” explains Sharon, “I was thinking about all the people who died in recent months.
“And for the first time in 12 years I was thinking to myself that it was a pity that the general public have never heard it. We had managed to keep it private for so long, but this time, something inside me was telling me that we should release it to the public and that it was the right thing to do and that it should be in aid of a suitable charity.”
With friendship and charity in mind, Sharon thought of Rosabel’s Rooms, a child loss project in collaboration with the Irish Hospice Foundation.
“Rosabel’s Rooms helps families who are grieving the loss of a child or young adult, up to the age of 21, no matter what the cause of death. It provides financial and therapeutic support. They are also working to develop family-focused bereavement suites in hospitals around the country.”
The charity was founded two years ago by close friends of Sharon’s — Suzanne McClean and Gary Monroe — in memory of their little girl Rosabel. She died suddenly aged 16 months, in April 2017 at home in her cot in Mincloon, Galway.
“I love Suzanne dearly,” says Sharon now. “I love meeting her because she’s one of those people who puts out such great positive vibes and you feel energised when you’re in her company. She is very down-to-earth and gives her full attention when she’s speaking to you.
“She is full of life, good craic and devilment but she’s not afraid of hard work. She is a counselling psychologist and has just completed a doctorate in psychotherapy.
“I think it is truly amazing what she and her husband, Gary, have achieved in the last three years since their little darling Rosabel passed away.”
When I ask Suzanne how it feels to live life without one of her children, she said that while it is “desperately sad, it would be more intolerable to stop talking about her”.
“Rosabel is still my daughter and I am still her mother,” Suzanne adds. “Rosabel is constantly in my conscious awareness. She is carried by me as part of my identity. She is my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night and both myself and Gary think about her no less and no more than our living children. I worry about her like I do my other children and as a family she is integrated into all aspects of our lives.”
What has changed for Suzanne and her husband is that joy has returned to their lives. Rosabel’s big brother Ruben (7) and little sister baby August Rose, born on August 1, 2019, “bring so much joy. But this sits at the same table as our grief. Grief is not an all-ornothing emotion. It is sorrow and laughter, it is fear and hope… all mixed up together. It is silence and it is music.”
A Thing Called Love: Songs For Leo is available to pre-order from irishhospice.ie. It is also available on all usual digital outlets. It is hoped that this project will be further complemented by Songs for Rosabel, a compilation of many Irish artists, which will be released on Rosabel’s fifth birthday next January.
Please text Rosabel to 50300 to make a donation. Texts cost €4 and the Irish Hospice Foundation will receive a minimum of €3.60. Service Provider: Like Charity. Helpline 0766805278