Author: Robyn Dunphy

This is Part III (and final) of a series. Parts I & II should be read before reading this article.

• Part I – The Background
• Part II – My Childhood

In 1971 there was not a lot of no psychological support for myself and my siblings. I think we were just supposed to get on with life. My siblings were placed in a foster home together in a different town. As I was employed, I was placed in a foster home in Timaru. I don’t know if my siblings were offered any counselling, I certainly wasn’t. We were left in the house alone for a week until my mother’s body was found, after all.

Momentary digression here. My foster home didn’t work out so well. One weekend I asked my foster father to cash a cheque for me (no ATMs in those days). He said if I came and sat on the bed with him, he’s give me the money and I didn’t need to give him the cheque. Ah, no way, mate, that ain’t happening. Not today, not ever. I saw the lawyer on Monday to seek permission to move. He assumed I was making it up (after all the guy was a “respected” member of the community while I was the daughter of two suicides) and sent me to see a psychiatrist. I was furious. Not sure of the psychiatrist’s “diagnosis”, but I did move out. Into a share house with three other young women.

I don’t remember Mum’s funeral at all. I know I went, but I have no memory of it. I have little memory of my father’s funeral either, although I know what I wore and that The Last Post was played.

I struggled with feeling guilty. If I hadn’t left home when I did, would Dad have survived? Was my leaving the straw that broke the camel’s back? I felt guilt over my siblings. Mum and Dad were genetically my parents, not a lot I could do about that. But they had sought out adoptees and then just deserted them too?

Yes, I pushed such thoughts aside, to survive, but they were there. The fear and/or sadness of somehow being responsible. After all, I hadn’t been a golden child. I’d had febrile convulsions as a baby, tonsillectomy at four, meningitis at boarding school, appendectomy, measles, mumps, chickenpox, I’d run away from boarding school…..

To lose one parent could be deemed careless: to lose both, the child must have been really unloveable, even evil.

“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Oscar Wilde

There was the sense of abandonment. I wasn’t good enough, my parents hadn’t loved me enough to stay. Obviously this contradicted my feeling of guilt about leaving home but I was 15. None of it made sense. I also went through, and still go through, phases of blaming my mother for my father’s death. Yet I know she wasn’t well, so I shouldn’t blame her.

Maybe I’d just been too much trouble…It is only now, now I know about PTSD and the risk of cortisone psychosis, that I can truly comprehend a) it isn’t genetic (a GP assured me of that once I’d “survived” past 50) and b) there were situational factors in their lives over which I had no control. But that is logic. Emotions linger even when facts are known.

If my own parents couldn’t love me enough to stay, how would anyone else love me? As an adult I know that is not rational given the circumstances, but at 15 it was very much a real emotion. My life would be loveless.

The risk of suicidal tendencies being genetic worried me for many years. This was consolidated in my mind when a life insurance company loaded my premium because my parents had committed suicide. I’ve never touched gin as an alcohol. For many years I had a fear of taking valium – until a GP convinced me to use it as a muscle relaxant when I had awful back spasms. Have to say it worked brilliantly for that.

In February 1974 I came to Australia on holiday simply to “see where Mum came from”. I had contact details of Mum’s oldest friend in Sydney. I couldn’t get a direct flight to Sydney so I arrived in Melbourne. I’m still here. I did go to Sydney and met Mum’s friend, but I don’t remember much of that trip at all.

Why did I stay in Australia? I think it was because in Australia I had no past haunting me. In Timaru, everyone knew who I was – that teenager whose parents knocked themselves. I felt I was expected to either do the same or end up pregnant. Here in Melbourne I was just another person. I was judged on my own merits, if you like. There was a freedom to that. So I decided to stay here. I didn’t have to tell anyone anything and generally, people didn’t ask. I was just a young adult migrant.

Hopefully my children have broken the generational cycle. As I look back I am proud of the fact I’m still here. I got an education. I did try to study medicine as an adult. The dream was still there. I went back to school here in Australia, did my HSC part-time while working full-time and raising two young children. I missed medical school entry by two marks. Started a science degree in the hope of doing well enough to transfer. Both kids got chicken pox in the first semester (not vaccines back then). Husband complained about me studying, wanted me to get a job. I gave up. In the end I did a business degree part-time while working full-time: it was easy, I’d been working in that field for years.

I’m unhappy about the four divorces and the disruption to my children’s lives but I suspect that family history has a lot to do with how my life “panned out”. As mentioned in the first of this series, psychologists will tell you two people from dysfunctional backgrounds are not an ideal match for a stable, long-term relationship. My partners were also from disrupted childhoods of one sort of another. Different situations in each case, but no white picket fence childhoods either. Of course, I did not know about these studies until it was too late.

When I was young, I just got on with life as best I could. I pushed the deaths to the back of my mind. There was nothing I could do about it, I couldn’t bring them back, it had been their decisions. All I could do was build a life for myself. It is only now, in these later, health-challenged years, I look back and wonder what trauma did I “inherit”? What trauma have I passed on? Would I be a chronic illness patient today if I had grown up in a stable home? I will never know. Hopefully, in time, science will determine if there is a link for people like me. My GP once said to me she felt I’d been misdiagnosed as a teenager. Misdiagnosed? I’d not been to a doctor as a teenager, there were too many funerals happening.

I did the best I could. I tried. To all those out there with traumatic histories, I salute you. It isn’t easy.

The picture is me in 1973.

Other related articles readers may be interested in:

What is Psoriatic Arthritis?

We Don’t All Look Sick – Invisible Illness

This is Part II – continuing on from The Background. This details parts of the journey, it is not comprehensive. Partly because it was traumatic, but also because my memory was impacted by the trauma of the suicides. I remember catching eels with my father. Spraying gorse bushes. Helping in the woolshed. Dipping sheep. Giving mouth to nose resuscitation to a calf we pulled out using a tractor. Birthing lambs because my hands were smaller than Dad’s. Fleeting snippets of my life.

The lamb in the above photo is Felicity. The dog is Cloud.

My understanding is my parents had difficulty conceiving. My mother underwent a procedure to “clear” her fallopian tubes. I am not sure what that entailed in 1954. For whatever reason, after successfully producing me, they decided or were unable to conceive again and adopted my brother and sister.

My mother was really not very suited to country life. I think she thought the idea of life in the country frightfully romantic. Thinking the ferns and the waterfalls are beautiful is one thing: the practicalities of farm life are a little different. For example, although Mum had been a licenced driver in Sydney, she refused to get an NZ licence and drive on the gravel country roads.

One memory I have is Mum and Dad going to collect my sister. I was left with friends for several nights. I remember crying my heart out at being left. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t enough, they needed to go and find another child. I was four at the time. Of course as soon as my sister arrived, I loved her dearly, but the suddenly being deserted for reasons I didn’t understand was confusing to a four year-old. I loved her dearly and still do, despite the fact when she was about five she hit me on the head with an axe.

Another memory I have is the little puppy I saved. A rat or a possum or something had bitten one of his front paws almost in two down the middle. Dad said he would never be a working dog and needed to be put down. I pleaded to be allowed to try and repair the paw. I didn’t have sutures, I could only disinfect and bandage the paw. The puppy survived and we found a home for him on a dairy farm, where the dogs did not have to be as agile as on our farm. That was when I decided to be a doctor.

Mum and Dad spent a fair amount of time arguing. Mum would throw china and shatter things and slam doors. Every Christmas Day was a battlefield. Mum would want to be driven 22 miles to church and Dad would refuse. It was his one day off a year. One Christmas, Mum set off to walk the 22 miles. I think she got as far as the neighboring farm. Heels are not great footwear on gravel roads. I have very little memory of Mum ever being outside helping Dad – for example steering the tractor while he fed the hay to the cattle. I have one memory of her on a tractor. I started steering the tractor at about eight. I realise now Mum was never happy about having the Māori shearers in her home for meals.

When I stuck a pitchfork through my foot, of course it was my father who took me to receive medical care.

I studied by Correspondence School. Once my sister was approaching school age my mother decided she could not supervise two students. There was also, by now, my adopted brother. He is seven years younger than I. So at 10.5 years old I was sent to boarding school in Christchurch. Consequently, I missed a lot of what went on at home in the five years from then until the deaths – I wasn’t there.

When I was hospitalised with meningitis, it was my father who came to collect me when I was discharged. Here is a note my father wrote to my mother another time he visited me at boarding school. The sentence “So you see what a little encouragement does” strikes me in the heart.

On April 10, 1968 the Wahine sank. The students hadn’t been told this and I was laughing about something as I walked down the school corridor. The headmistress sent me back to the boarding house in disgrace for being disrespectful. I was not impressed and ran away from school. How could I be disrespectful if I didn’t know the ferry had sunk? It was, of course, my father who came to find me. I’d managed to get myself to two elderly spinsters in the Cashmere Hills. I have no idea how they were related to us, but I believe they were.

At one point the Anglican priest came to see me. My mother had been hospitalised for exploratory surgery as the doctors had suspected cancer. I was not to be concerned, as Mum did not have cancer. When I was home on the next holidays, Mum gave me this great long medical name for something and told me if I ever got sick as an adult to tell the doctors my mother had whatever this big long name was. I remember saying, “Mum, I’ll never remember that!” She thought for a moment then said, “OK. Remember the wolf”. The only thing I can think of is lupus. Lupus is Latin for wolf. I don’t have lupus, but did my mother? We will never know.

My mother spent many years urging (insisting?) my father sell the farm and move closer to civilisation. He did it, but I think it broke his heart. The farm was the first thing that was really his and he’d built a great farm and a good reputation. But he sold it. The family moved to Greymouth while Dad searched high and low for a new farm to buy. Eventually he bought a farm in Washdyke, near Timaru.

I had won a scholarship to St Margaret’s in Christchurch, but I wanted to live at home. The headmistress of my primary school was horrified. She told me to tell my parents they were wrong to decline the scholarship. I stuck to my guns. As we had not yet taken possession of the Washdyke farm when I started high school, I boarded for the first term. Thereafter I was a day pupil.

Here we were, a few miles from Timaru on sealed roads. Two-way roads, even. Mum still did not get her licence.

When I collapsed on the floor in agony my mother told me there was nothing wrong with me, to stop being a drama queen and making a fuss. Thankfully my father took me to hospital – I had my appendix out a couple of hours later. I remember being absolutely horrified with the emergency department doctor asked if there was anyway I could be pregnant Standard question, I realise as an adult, I didn’t know that then!

My mother attempted suicide and was hospitalised. I don’t remember the year, I only remember standing in the hospital corridor with Dad. I do not know, but I suspect this may not have been the first time. I had been at boarding school for three years: I was possibly not told of previous attempts. People didn’t tell kids things in those days and my siblings were too young to remember.

Even though Dad had sold the farm, there were still horrific arguments. I remember my mother drinking an awful lot of gin. Consequently, I’ve never touched the stuff. As well as the cortisone, she seemed to have an endless supply of valium and sleep medication.

Towards the end of 1970 I just couldn’t take it any more. I moved in with the local minister and his family for a break. It was school holidays and I had a holiday job at a Timaru retailer. One day in late December I received a call from my mother asking had I seen my father. He was missing.

The neighbouring farmer found his body in the car in a back paddock. He had connected the exhaust. He’d also written a suicide note, but I don’t have that. I keep meaning to ask Timaru Police if they can dig it out of the old files. For years I carried guilt about leaving home. Would he still be alive if I had stayed?

My siblings were not allowed to attend the funeral and my mother attempted suicide the night before the funeral so was in hospital. I was the only immediate family member there. Dad had traced his mother’s family when he returned from WWII and some cousins and an uncle did come to the funeral.

The farm was sold and the some of the proceeds used to buy a house in Timaru. I left school at this point. I started a full-time junior position in a chartered accountants office. Mum, who had not worked since 1953, looked for work. There was another suicide attempt and she was hospitalised again. I tried to have her committed, but I was only 15 – my pleading carried no weight. However, when she ran away from hospital it was me they called to try to find her.

I remember her being completely hysterical one night and I slapped her as that is what I had read could shock a hysterical person out of the episode. It sort of did, but I was so traumatised by the whole thing.

One afternoon in April 1971 I came home from work to find my siblings playing in the cul-de-sac. It was after 5 pm, why where they not inside? They couldn’t get inside because Mum wasn’t home. I knew immediately what was happening, but again, no-one would listen. I rang the police but they couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything for 48 hours, despite her medical history. My boyfriend of the time and his friends tried searching but to no avail.

A week later a local resident was waiting for the bus at a nearby bus stop and smelt a suspicious smell. Called the police. It was the body of my decomposing mother.

Three generations of trauma.

As I mentioned in the preceding article, I suspect my father had a degree of PTSD from WWII. I think he and my mother were an unfortunate pairing. Had she been a strong and supportive partner, he may have survived. If, as we suspect, my mother did have the disease I have, I can understand that facing the prospect of raising three children alone could have been more than she could face, especially given her previous suicide attempts. We will never know, we can only hypothesise.

Read on in Part III – The Impact. How did I deal, or not deal, with all of this?

I have deliberately not spoken much of my siblings. It is not my place to tell their stories.