Welcome to my website, set up to provide a brief overview of my newly-published book, May I speak to the deceased, please?

The title was chosen, not in honour of any sort of séance after my husband’s death (though one ‘customer care adviser’ came ludicrously close to suggesting it), but because the hideous fact of suicide leaves a whole host of unanswered and desperately painful questions. They can all be summed up, though, in a single cry of anguish: “Why?” And since the dead do not provide any answers, I have had to work through those questions for myself, as a vital part of surviving my husband’s suicide.

Synopsis

While a telephone adviser insists on speaking directly to my late husband, his employers send him a chatty letter after his death, asking him to get in touch immediately. At this point I begin to realise the potential value of holding a séance: a sort of celestial conference call. This would enable me to kill several birds with one phone (ethereally speaking), especially as I should rather like to speak to my late husband, myself.
But the very real horror of suicide engulfs ordinary lives in extraordinary events. This book is a first-hand, contemporary chronicle of dealing with those events, learning to live alongside the horror, and finally emerging to live a renewed life which, although undeniably changed, is both positive and meaningful.
Sadly, suicide and its consequences are both highly topical subjects, with UK suicide rates continuing to rise, particularly among men of my husband’s age group. Hanging, the method used by him, is still the most common means.
As a widow by suicide and the finder of my husband’s body, I continually experience intense interest in my personal story, from acquaintances and strangers alike. A typical comment is “I can’t imagine how you’d even begin to deal with such a massive shock”. My personal account of surviving the impact of my husband’s suicide brings a fresh approach to the subject by emphasising active determination, positive thinking and – perhaps unusually in a book of this genre – humour. These are its consistent themes, rather than hopelessness, despair or self-pity.
The resulting book is neither a ‘misery memoir’ nor a mental health manual, but a measured testament to pure survival, when normality has been swept away by a hideous new reality. That survival is based on self-discipline, the invaluable support of family and friends, an appreciation of goodness wherever it is found, and retaining a wry sense of humour in dealing with the aftermath of this most intensely traumatic experience. It is the story, sometimes harrowing but ultimately uplifting, of how one individual emerged intact from unimagined emotional, practical and financial devastation.
This is my story.

Author

Until I stumbled on my husband’s death, a few days after Christmas 2012, I believed we were an ordinary, happy couple. Our two sons having left home to live independent adult lives, we were settling into our new house and looking forward to our  retirement.

At that time I’d recently started to have my work published in a few magazines, including an article on Charles Dickens’ bicentenary and an account of the friendship between our pets, a dog and a tortoise. This established writing discipline was to provide a vital emotional outlet, as I sought to make sense of the waking nightmare which then burst upon my family. Eighteen months later I moved house again, and  began to organise my notes, diaries and correspondence to form the basis of my book.