June 27, 2024 • 27 mins
For us to make sense of what the Griffin family of Batemans Bay has been through, you can only try to understand their heartache through a mother's words. Deanne Griffin shares the pain and enormity of picking up their lives after losing her 17-year-old son Sean to suicide in 2019.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why are fast South Coast. We are a family that
are broken and there's a piece of us missing and
we can't ever put that puzzle back together entirely.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This episode might be tough for many to listen to,
so we'll be upfront and issue a warning that this
content does contain discussions on death by suicide. Hello, I'm
James Fantasy. If you're a local of Bateman's Bay, you'd
have noticed a few months back the large water tanks
sitting near the Hanging Rock Sporting Complex, just next to
(00:34):
the Rugby Union field are now in blazons with bright
and bold, colorful murals, one of which has the words
you're somebody someone. For Dianne and Pat Griffin, that someone
was their son Sean, who took his own life in
twenty nineteen. He was seventeen years old, the youngest of
three kids, and crazy about sport. Suicide is the leading
(00:59):
cause of death in Australians aged between fifteen and twenty four.
The Griffin family of Bateman's Bay beliefs suicide prevention needs
to be community led and the mural project was very
much that. It's not only helped in their healing, but
has touched many coping with the why around a loved
one's death. Although finding it tough to find the right
(01:20):
words or actions to save someone who may be struggling,
Dianne Griffin is brutally raw about the terrible heartache her
family has been through. Can you tell us about Sean?
What kind of boy he was as a young boy
and then how he developed as an adolescent.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, when he was really small, he was so cute.
He had a husky little voice. He loved balls, He
slept with balls in his bed. He had a teddy
as well, and everything for him had a literal name,
so Teddy was teddy. He was always very boyish. He
still would get dressed up by the girls and that
sort of thing. But as he grew who he was
(02:01):
very much into soccer or cricket, depending on the season.
When they're growing up, you always tend to say, oh,
what do you want to be when you grow up?
And you'd go, first, I'm going to play for Central
Coast Mariners, and then I'm going to play for Manu
And then if it was cricket season, yeah I'm going
to play for Australia.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah. That was him.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
He was totally fixated on his sport.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Dan says, Sean eventually got over wanting to play for
Australia and man you and started contemplating other options. After
doing one week of work experience with an architect and
a week with an electrician, Sean confidently decided he wanted
to be on the tools. As a sparky, Dan says,
there was nothing that would have indicated to her or
(02:42):
Pat that their boy would take his own life if.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
You told me I was going to get a call
about Sean. It was never this. There was never a
moment in his life, not even in the last six months,
where I thought that this could be potential out come
at all. There was no mental health struggles. There was
no long term in and out of treatment or even
(03:08):
episodes of depression. There was no difficulties with mates or
problems there There was no girlfriend, nor a breakup with
a girlfriend. There was not really personally any warning sign
that this could be a potential outcome.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Can you take us to that time just before, I
guess in the lead up you mentioned to me it
was around the time of the bushfires.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah. So he finished school and started an apprenticeship in
mid September. He still seemed quite normal, in the first
few weeks, even though I expected a dip, I expected
some tiredness and everything, but he still seemed his normal self,
and I was going, Wow, this kid is amazing, Like,
how's he not to come to the tiredness or anything yet?
(03:54):
And then we had from early November the bushfires were
start to become a real threat. And that became real
when Hailey's in laws had to come back from a
holiday and come and stay with us for a couple
of days because they couldn't they weren't allowed to go
to their property in East Lynne, So you know, there
(04:17):
was that more imminent threat. You know, it was on
the radio all the time where the fires were, how
close they were getting and all of that. And it
had started to be a problem in the workplace because
sort of into December we had smoke in the air
all of the time, and then we had highway closure.
You know, how do you tell if that's bothering a
(04:38):
person or it's not. He did start to seem more
tired after about maybe six to eight weeks, Probably about
the eight week mark was where it really became noticeable
that he was tired. But aside from that, again, I
thought that he was still connecting with his friends. There
(05:01):
were times when early on in his apprenticeship he would
still go and meet friends down at the beach after work,
or he'd say oh, he'd text me and say, oh,
so and so it is going to be in town
after school, I'm going to meet up with them. Yeah, cool,
no problem. He was arranging a camping trip, just doing
(05:21):
normal teenage boy stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
If you're comfortable talking about it, can you tell us
what date it was that Sean took his own life,
and can you talk us through that day again without
going to too many specifics. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So, earlier in that year, we had accepted an invitation
to go to our best friend's son's wedding in Argentina,
and Sean was still at school, so he was going
to be continuing on so far as we knew at
that point in time, And so we had probably deferred
doing a lot of things we'd been invited to because
(05:57):
of our commitment to our news agency. And we accepted
the invitation to go to Argentina, and this for us
would be a trip of a lifetime. We're not confident travelers,
and to be going with lots of other friends made
it safe, made it, you know, not so scary for us.
So we decided we would go. And obviously not realizing
(06:19):
that Shaun was going to a finished school and be
starting an apprenticeship. Even when he started the apprenticeship, you know,
we'd talked to him and said, you know, we cannot
go because you know, this is a really important time
for you. Am fine, why would you not go? And
even to the point where we left, and you know,
we said, look after yourself, eat properly, get lots and
(06:41):
lots of rest. You're working really long days and you know,
even sometimes weekends, and so it's really important that you
really look after yourself. Left some food, left some money,
and you know, we kept in touch with the kids
via WhatsApp, sending them pictures and you know, calling them.
We'd actually only talked to him on the Saturday and
(07:04):
we'd gone from Cusco to Bolivia and we'd done a
tour that day and we got back to our room
and we were going to give the kids a call,
and then we got a call. And that's really difficult
to talk about, so I'd rather not talk about that.
(07:25):
But from that point on is when our world fell apart.
And that's something that you never want to hear and
I won't go into the specifics of what was said,
but basically then we had to try and get from Bolivia,
where the phone communication was very difficult, and we were
fortunate to be with a lot of really close friends
(07:47):
who took control of our travel arrangements and got us
on a plane to come home. And we were very
lucky that Nigel and his family and my parents took
care of the girls and kept them safe until we
got back.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
I don't think you could ever be anywhere where that
you know where you want to hear that news, but
there must have been a sense of helplessness being so
far away.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, well, the plane trips a bit of a blur.
We were fortunate to be looked after on the plane
and be put up the very front in pods in
first class, even though we didn't pay for that. People
checked on us constantly. I tried to sleep all the
time because I didn't want to be conscious. I just
(08:36):
wanted to be not in this world. I think Pat
spent most of the time doing the practical things and planning.
We came back and our really good friends, the father
of one of Sean's best friends, came to Sydney to
pick us up, and that was extremely hard because the
moment you see somebody from your everyday life, it's real.
(09:00):
Up until that point, it was kind of like, this
can't be happening, this is not real. But the moment
we saw him, it's there. And so we came home
and then our parents brought the girls to us, which
was extremely hard seeing them because now we are a
(09:20):
family that are broken and there's a piece of us
missing and we can't ever put that puzzle back together entirely.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Deane says. The Bateman's Bay community got around the family.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
The friends who just surrounded us. I mean, on the plane,
we thought we can't go back there. We have to sell,
we have to move, we have to sell everything, and
just everything's too familiar. Everything is a reminder everything is
going to be about him, and now we're those people.
But when we found ourselves surrounded by all of Sean's friends,
(09:56):
all of the parents of Sean's friends, all of the
news agency friends and customers, our business partners, everyone, even
people that we didn't know that well, it was like
they were there and they were forming part of this
sort of like cushion or cloud around us to help
(10:16):
carry us. And you know, there was one really good
friend who had arranged a doctor's appointment for us as
a family, who scheduled casse roles and you know, organized
drop offs and just managed everything. There were a group
of them, really close friends who came to home and
(10:39):
cleaned up, tied it up for us, to make everything
prepared for us to arrive home. There's just so much
that was done that I probably don't even know about
to this day. And those people aren't looking for pats
on the back. They were just there because they loved
us and cared about us, and they loved Sean. So
there was this kind of set. It's the real world
(11:01):
that you're floating along in for a good period of time,
and that's different for everybody where things were taken care
of or where things just kind of happened. And then
family all carmens around you and you've got people around
you all the time, which is exhausting in itself, but
they all understand if you dip out for a while
and go and rest, and they're all trying to make
(11:22):
you eat and look after yourself because you can't do
that for yourself. It's like becoming a child and being
happy for everybody to just lead you along in whatever
has to be done. And it's still in some ways
like that. You still there's parts of life that you
just choose not to really engage in. You just let
(11:45):
it happen.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
After Sean died and you had that initial period, how
did you impart each handle your grief?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Grief is one of those things that's so individual, and
even though in some ways you're as a couple the
only person on earth that can possibly understand how you feel,
you both still have different feelings and you both still
have different ways of grieving and coping with what has
(12:15):
to be done. There are a lot of couples who
don't survive the loss of a child, and I must
admit that's one fear I had that maybe we wouldn't
make it through this. It's so cliche to say that
it's made us stronger, but we just have such an
understanding of each other and each other's different ways of grieving.
(12:39):
For me, it's been talking and having that close connection
with my girlfriends, whereas Pat is not one to confide
or talk, and that's okay. I have to understand that,
and he understands of me what it is I need.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
To do more soon from Deanne Griffin, including the work
being done by several key services here on the Far
South Coast looking after families and friends impacted by the
suicide of a loved one.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I art Far South Coast, I art Far South Coast.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
This episode of Iheartfar South Coast isn't meant to be
a light and easy listen and through a mother's words
we can gain a glimpse of what the Griffin family
of Bateman's Bay has been through the pain and enormity
of losing their seventeen year old son and brother Seorn
to suicide in twenty nineteen. Mum Dianne says death by
(13:38):
suicide isn't always about mental illness. She attributes situational distress
to Shann's circumstances and says this can happen to any family.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Just because you're struggling right now in a particular set
of circumstances doesn't mean you suddenly have a lifetime ongoing
mental health diagnosis issue. It just means that you're struggling
in these circumstances and need some help and support to
get through those. For some people it will be a
lifetime of struggle. For some people, it will be learning
(14:11):
how to cope in different situations. They're not thinking of that.
They're not thinking, oh, I can't do this because it'll
do that. They're not thinking about the beyond that moment.
All they're thinking about is I need to stop this
pain in my head. And so I think that we
need to be more understanding of all of those different
situations that might bring some circumstances about for people and
(14:34):
be better adults. I know that through having access to
Sean's phone now, that he had conversation with a friend
where he was concerned about them and was recommending that
they speak to somebody, but they had a fear around
their parents finding out. And I guess that's where we
(14:57):
need to change attitudes as adults. You deal with your
kids dramas all the time, and it's easy to say
to be so busy, to not take it seriously, and
to say sticks and stones, Oh, get over it. Oh
tough enough. I don't know what you're whinging about, or
your life is so much easier than mine was when
I was your age, and blah blah blah, And that's
(15:19):
what the kids here is blah blah blah. My parents
don't care, they don't want to listen. They don't get
it anyway, because they were born this age and then
they never had thoughts or feelings or desires or any
of that. And I remember thinking that as a kid myself.
You know, my parents were born this age. How would
they know what it's like to feel in love and
to feel hurt and upset by a comment. You don't
(15:41):
attribute your parents to having those feelings. So I think
it's still not getting through to the kids that there
are places to go for support that will actually listen
to them and help them work through their feelings and
thoughts and put them into some symbol of order, learn
(16:01):
how to deal with them, and still be able to
move forward.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
You've touched on your message to the community there and
what you'd like to see in terms of some community change.
What would be your message to the young people on
the South Coast today who may be either struggling with
mental health distress or in situational trouble as you mentioned,
what would you say to them?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Oh, it's so hard to know what to say, because
as an adult you have so much more insight into
other facets of life. Whether the message is just pause
for a moment because you know a platitude this too
shall pass. Seems glib, but in a lot of cases
(16:45):
it will pass. Some things do pass, and they may
recur if you didn't deal with it well or it
wasn't handled well by the people around you. Those feelings
may recur throughout life. But just pause a moment and
reach out, not necessarily to the kids around you that
(17:06):
are the same age, because they don't have life experience
or don't always recognize that something more here is going
on that I think I can handle as just a friend,
as just a confidant. It's great to confide because it
can make you feel not so alone because you get
that person then saying back to you, oh, yes, I've
(17:27):
felt this and I've done that, and I you know
this is going on for me too, and you empathize
with each other in that moment. But you don't always
have answers or solutions. So I think it would be
great if kids felt that there was somewhere that was
really for them, that they could really go to. And
that doesn't mean a counseling room in the middle of
(17:47):
the school where everybody's going to see that. They go
in and then from then on their labeleders having mental
health or whatever is. You know, kids can be cruel.
They don't always intend for the damage that they do,
but it does do damage. So I think, you know,
for kids to know that there are adults who have
(18:09):
lived their situation who don't necessarily want to push their
experience onto them, but are prepared to listen and hear them.
And it's important for us to validate how they feel.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
In regards to the water tank project, tell us how
that got started and your involvement in it.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
So, I mean, Sewan and Pat obviously spent a lot
of time at the cricket nets and playing cricket at
Hanging Rock and up and down the coast as well.
And you know Sean being so obsessed with cricket when
he was younger, it was somewhere that he just loved being.
Perhaps has remained part of the Cricket Club, though it's
been difficult at times because he's seeing other father and
(18:51):
sons come through and he's missing that now. He was
still treasurer of the club when they started talking about
revamping the cricket nets that were there, making them better, safer,
and it became a big project and they rebuilt an
amazing new indoor outdoor facility which is going to be
so great for junior cricket moving forward. And the old
(19:13):
blokes love it too. There's a group of them that
get down there on a Monday afternoon and have a
hit with each other. And isn't that just amazing that
you know, at ages, even into their eighties, they can
still get down there with their mates and be active
and participate and have that camaraderie. And we had to
go down there to take some photos of the nets
(19:35):
to send off for final acquidal for grants, and it
was then that I said, Oh, I can't not get
those tanks in the background. They're so ugly. What is
that go with those tanks? Do they do anything? Are they?
There's moss and gunge and graffiti, and I guess over
the coming weeks the ideas sort of percolated and I thought, well,
(19:57):
couldn't we tidy them up? Couldn't they be made to
look a bit better. Could they have a mural on them?
Even maybe could the mural have a message. And that's
sort of where it started, was this idea and then
talking to different friends and them encouraging me and saying well,
you should do that sounds like a great idea. And
(20:17):
my idea for the message was something around you as
young people matter. You are our future, your ideas, your thoughts,
all of it matters, and you're important to us as parents,
as a community, and how would we convey that in
a piece of art. And I became involved with people
(20:40):
from the Suicide Prevention Collaborative and they all sounded excited
about the idea. So then I started putting together something
on paper as to what I wanted to get out
of that, and then had a little bit of a
subcommittee going on that we would toss the ideas around
and we started organizing the actual painting of it and
(21:03):
finding an artist and all of that. So, and the
message is for young people and for the community that
everyone matters, and everybody is important to somebody, and there's
so much support out there if you would just reach
out and take advantage. And you know, sometimes the first
port of call might not be the right option for you,
(21:26):
but don't give up. Try something else.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Just lastly, how do you and Pat like to remember Sean?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
That's a tough one. I mean, where he's in our
every thought every single day. One of the hardest things
has been that we suddenly became empty nesters. You know,
the girls had grown up and gone off to do
their thing, and you just you should be able to
assume that that's what's going to happen with every one
(21:54):
of your children. And that's been snatched away from us
so quickly that we didn't have time to work out
what we were or who we were beyond children, and
you know, not beyond them, because you never beyond them.
They're always You're always a parent, you know. For some
people they like to, you know, is it go to
(22:16):
the cemetery, Is it always light a candle on birthdays
or all of that sort of thing. We've found all
of those things incredibly difficult and haven't really known what
to do with ourselves. We've had all sorts of suggestions
thrown at us, and you kind of just smile and go, hmm,
that sounds lovely. What you actually do in privacy is
(22:39):
completely everybody's own individual choice. Whether you choose to leave
everything as it was, whether you clean out, whether you
keep certain things, whether you throw away things. You know,
all of that is so individual and should never ever
be judged. And we've all done it. We've all seen
things on TV on movies where some one's kept the
(23:01):
husband's clothes in the closet for the next twenty years. Great.
If that is what keeps you comfortable, then do that.
And there's no rush to do anything in particular. So
the things that we do regularly is we have a
video call with the girls on Shawn's birthday and on
the anniversary. Those are incredibly difficult calls because we all
(23:25):
know why we're talking on that day, and it's incredibly
difficult when each of us has our own such individual
ways of grieving. We do that and we just let
each other be how we're going to be in that moment.
So we're in a lot of ways still kind of
stuck on what are our rituals, what are our remembrance
(23:46):
or memorial things.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
But that's okay absolutely, And I guess in terms of
how you like to just remember him, if you're thinking
of him, is it him playing cricket, or is it
him as a young boy, or is it just lots
of little things.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
It's lots of little things. It's the things that are
hard as well. We don't make three cups of tea anymore,
we don't hang out his clothes. I don't go crooked
in for leaving dishes in his room. You know those
strange things, those everyday things, other things that make it
difficult to cope on a day to day basis. There's
(24:24):
cheers every day for me. I know that he was
my fun boy. He was funny. I remember that last
hug and telling him that he's my best boy, and
I if I think about that for too long, that hurts.
(24:47):
But I love that he got to play so much
cricket with Pat. I love that Hailey adored him and
begged for years when am I having a baby brother
or sister. She just thought that he was the ants pants.
And I love how close he and Emily were, and
that when she came home for UNI and we thought
(25:09):
she was coming to see us, she'd disappear and next
thing I'd find them giggling in his room and she
was coming to see him, not us. They're all beautiful
memories of him. A lot of the memories are hard
because they make us so sad as well. And the
thought of the future is difficult because we won't have
(25:30):
the girlfriend to get to know. We won't have him
getting married or you know, moving out or having children
or any of those, and even for our own girls
having children, you know, there's always going to be an
element of sadness because he's missing from all of those.
But mostly for me it's an internal feeling. It's he's
(25:53):
my boy, and for Pat he was his boy, and
same for the girls, and that's never going to go way.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Dan. That's thank you so much for for your openness
and sharing your story. And you know, just my heart
goes out to you guys, and I'm sure the whole
South Coast community does, and even if one person is
helped by this conversation, then I think it's a wonderful
thing that you've done. So thank you. You welcome. Absolutely
(26:21):
incredible of Deane Griffin to find the strength and courage
to speak so frankly and compassionately when her grief is
still clearly just beneath the surface. But like the Bateman's
Bay water Tank murals that sport those bold and beautiful words,
you're somebody someone, Dan has faith. The phrase will speak
volumes to anyone finding life too hard. You can get
(26:44):
help here on the far South Coast. There are services
like the Bigger Safe Haven Headspace, the Bigger Valley Euribidella,
suicide Prevention collaborative and stand by Support after suicide, which
we're going to discuss in more detail next week. You
or anyone you know is struggling, You can call Lifeline
on one three double one one four at any time
(27:06):
for twenty four hour crisis support. I'm James Fantasy. This
is Iheartfar South Coast, proudly supported by the new South
Wales Government.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
iHeart Far South Coast
Why are fast South Coast. We are a family that
are broken and there's a piece of us missing and
we can't ever put that puzzle back together entirely.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This episode might be tough for many to listen to,
so we'll be upfront and issue a warning that this
content does contain discussions on death by suicide. Hello, I'm
James Fantasy. If you're a local of Bateman's Bay, you'd
have noticed a few months back the large water tanks
sitting near the Hanging Rock Sporting Complex, just next to
(00:34):
the Rugby Union field are now in blazons with bright
and bold, colorful murals, one of which has the words
you're somebody someone. For Dianne and Pat Griffin, that someone
was their son Sean, who took his own life in
twenty nineteen. He was seventeen years old, the youngest of
three kids, and crazy about sport. Suicide is the leading
(00:59):
cause of death in Australians aged between fifteen and twenty four.
The Griffin family of Bateman's Bay beliefs suicide prevention needs
to be community led and the mural project was very
much that. It's not only helped in their healing, but
has touched many coping with the why around a loved
one's death. Although finding it tough to find the right
(01:20):
words or actions to save someone who may be struggling,
Dianne Griffin is brutally raw about the terrible heartache her
family has been through. Can you tell us about Sean?
What kind of boy he was as a young boy
and then how he developed as an adolescent.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, when he was really small, he was so cute.
He had a husky little voice. He loved balls, He
slept with balls in his bed. He had a teddy
as well, and everything for him had a literal name,
so Teddy was teddy. He was always very boyish. He
still would get dressed up by the girls and that
sort of thing. But as he grew who he was
(02:01):
very much into soccer or cricket, depending on the season.
When they're growing up, you always tend to say, oh,
what do you want to be when you grow up?
And you'd go, first, I'm going to play for Central
Coast Mariners, and then I'm going to play for Manu
And then if it was cricket season, yeah I'm going
to play for Australia.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah. That was him.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
He was totally fixated on his sport.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Dan says, Sean eventually got over wanting to play for
Australia and man you and started contemplating other options. After
doing one week of work experience with an architect and
a week with an electrician, Sean confidently decided he wanted
to be on the tools. As a sparky, Dan says,
there was nothing that would have indicated to her or
(02:42):
Pat that their boy would take his own life if.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
You told me I was going to get a call
about Sean. It was never this. There was never a
moment in his life, not even in the last six months,
where I thought that this could be potential out come
at all. There was no mental health struggles. There was
no long term in and out of treatment or even
(03:08):
episodes of depression. There was no difficulties with mates or
problems there There was no girlfriend, nor a breakup with
a girlfriend. There was not really personally any warning sign
that this could be a potential outcome.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Can you take us to that time just before, I
guess in the lead up you mentioned to me it
was around the time of the bushfires.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah. So he finished school and started an apprenticeship in
mid September. He still seemed quite normal, in the first
few weeks, even though I expected a dip, I expected
some tiredness and everything, but he still seemed his normal self,
and I was going, Wow, this kid is amazing, Like,
how's he not to come to the tiredness or anything yet?
(03:54):
And then we had from early November the bushfires were
start to become a real threat. And that became real
when Hailey's in laws had to come back from a
holiday and come and stay with us for a couple
of days because they couldn't they weren't allowed to go
to their property in East Lynne, So you know, there
(04:17):
was that more imminent threat. You know, it was on
the radio all the time where the fires were, how
close they were getting and all of that. And it
had started to be a problem in the workplace because
sort of into December we had smoke in the air
all of the time, and then we had highway closure.
You know, how do you tell if that's bothering a
(04:38):
person or it's not. He did start to seem more
tired after about maybe six to eight weeks, Probably about
the eight week mark was where it really became noticeable
that he was tired. But aside from that, again, I
thought that he was still connecting with his friends. There
(05:01):
were times when early on in his apprenticeship he would
still go and meet friends down at the beach after work,
or he'd say oh, he'd text me and say, oh,
so and so it is going to be in town
after school, I'm going to meet up with them. Yeah, cool,
no problem. He was arranging a camping trip, just doing
(05:21):
normal teenage boy stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
If you're comfortable talking about it, can you tell us
what date it was that Sean took his own life,
and can you talk us through that day again without
going to too many specifics. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So, earlier in that year, we had accepted an invitation
to go to our best friend's son's wedding in Argentina,
and Sean was still at school, so he was going
to be continuing on so far as we knew at
that point in time, And so we had probably deferred
doing a lot of things we'd been invited to because
(05:57):
of our commitment to our news agency. And we accepted
the invitation to go to Argentina, and this for us
would be a trip of a lifetime. We're not confident travelers,
and to be going with lots of other friends made
it safe, made it, you know, not so scary for us.
So we decided we would go. And obviously not realizing
(06:19):
that Shaun was going to a finished school and be
starting an apprenticeship. Even when he started the apprenticeship, you know,
we'd talked to him and said, you know, we cannot
go because you know, this is a really important time
for you. Am fine, why would you not go? And
even to the point where we left, and you know,
we said, look after yourself, eat properly, get lots and
(06:41):
lots of rest. You're working really long days and you know,
even sometimes weekends, and so it's really important that you
really look after yourself. Left some food, left some money,
and you know, we kept in touch with the kids
via WhatsApp, sending them pictures and you know, calling them.
We'd actually only talked to him on the Saturday and
(07:04):
we'd gone from Cusco to Bolivia and we'd done a
tour that day and we got back to our room
and we were going to give the kids a call,
and then we got a call. And that's really difficult
to talk about, so I'd rather not talk about that.
(07:25):
But from that point on is when our world fell apart.
And that's something that you never want to hear and
I won't go into the specifics of what was said,
but basically then we had to try and get from Bolivia,
where the phone communication was very difficult, and we were
fortunate to be with a lot of really close friends
(07:47):
who took control of our travel arrangements and got us
on a plane to come home. And we were very
lucky that Nigel and his family and my parents took
care of the girls and kept them safe until we
got back.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
I don't think you could ever be anywhere where that
you know where you want to hear that news, but
there must have been a sense of helplessness being so
far away.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, well, the plane trips a bit of a blur.
We were fortunate to be looked after on the plane
and be put up the very front in pods in
first class, even though we didn't pay for that. People
checked on us constantly. I tried to sleep all the
time because I didn't want to be conscious. I just
(08:36):
wanted to be not in this world. I think Pat
spent most of the time doing the practical things and planning.
We came back and our really good friends, the father
of one of Sean's best friends, came to Sydney to
pick us up, and that was extremely hard because the
moment you see somebody from your everyday life, it's real.
(09:00):
Up until that point, it was kind of like, this
can't be happening, this is not real. But the moment
we saw him, it's there. And so we came home
and then our parents brought the girls to us, which
was extremely hard seeing them because now we are a
(09:20):
family that are broken and there's a piece of us
missing and we can't ever put that puzzle back together entirely.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Deane says. The Bateman's Bay community got around the family.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
The friends who just surrounded us. I mean, on the plane,
we thought we can't go back there. We have to sell,
we have to move, we have to sell everything, and
just everything's too familiar. Everything is a reminder everything is
going to be about him, and now we're those people.
But when we found ourselves surrounded by all of Sean's friends,
(09:56):
all of the parents of Sean's friends, all of the
news agency friends and customers, our business partners, everyone, even
people that we didn't know that well, it was like
they were there and they were forming part of this
sort of like cushion or cloud around us to help
(10:16):
carry us. And you know, there was one really good
friend who had arranged a doctor's appointment for us as
a family, who scheduled casse roles and you know, organized
drop offs and just managed everything. There were a group
of them, really close friends who came to home and
(10:39):
cleaned up, tied it up for us, to make everything
prepared for us to arrive home. There's just so much
that was done that I probably don't even know about
to this day. And those people aren't looking for pats
on the back. They were just there because they loved
us and cared about us, and they loved Sean. So
there was this kind of set. It's the real world
(11:01):
that you're floating along in for a good period of time,
and that's different for everybody where things were taken care
of or where things just kind of happened. And then
family all carmens around you and you've got people around
you all the time, which is exhausting in itself, but
they all understand if you dip out for a while
and go and rest, and they're all trying to make
(11:22):
you eat and look after yourself because you can't do
that for yourself. It's like becoming a child and being
happy for everybody to just lead you along in whatever
has to be done. And it's still in some ways
like that. You still there's parts of life that you
just choose not to really engage in. You just let
(11:45):
it happen.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
After Sean died and you had that initial period, how
did you impart each handle your grief?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Grief is one of those things that's so individual, and
even though in some ways you're as a couple the
only person on earth that can possibly understand how you feel,
you both still have different feelings and you both still
have different ways of grieving and coping with what has
(12:15):
to be done. There are a lot of couples who
don't survive the loss of a child, and I must
admit that's one fear I had that maybe we wouldn't
make it through this. It's so cliche to say that
it's made us stronger, but we just have such an
understanding of each other and each other's different ways of grieving.
(12:39):
For me, it's been talking and having that close connection
with my girlfriends, whereas Pat is not one to confide
or talk, and that's okay. I have to understand that,
and he understands of me what it is I need.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
To do more soon from Deanne Griffin, including the work
being done by several key services here on the Far
South Coast looking after families and friends impacted by the
suicide of a loved one.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I art Far South Coast, I art Far South Coast.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
This episode of Iheartfar South Coast isn't meant to be
a light and easy listen and through a mother's words
we can gain a glimpse of what the Griffin family
of Bateman's Bay has been through the pain and enormity
of losing their seventeen year old son and brother Seorn
to suicide in twenty nineteen. Mum Dianne says death by
(13:38):
suicide isn't always about mental illness. She attributes situational distress
to Shann's circumstances and says this can happen to any family.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Just because you're struggling right now in a particular set
of circumstances doesn't mean you suddenly have a lifetime ongoing
mental health diagnosis issue. It just means that you're struggling
in these circumstances and need some help and support to
get through those. For some people it will be a
lifetime of struggle. For some people, it will be learning
(14:11):
how to cope in different situations. They're not thinking of that.
They're not thinking, oh, I can't do this because it'll
do that. They're not thinking about the beyond that moment.
All they're thinking about is I need to stop this
pain in my head. And so I think that we
need to be more understanding of all of those different
situations that might bring some circumstances about for people and
(14:34):
be better adults. I know that through having access to
Sean's phone now, that he had conversation with a friend
where he was concerned about them and was recommending that
they speak to somebody, but they had a fear around
their parents finding out. And I guess that's where we
(14:57):
need to change attitudes as adults. You deal with your
kids dramas all the time, and it's easy to say
to be so busy, to not take it seriously, and
to say sticks and stones, Oh, get over it. Oh
tough enough. I don't know what you're whinging about, or
your life is so much easier than mine was when
I was your age, and blah blah blah, And that's
(15:19):
what the kids here is blah blah blah. My parents
don't care, they don't want to listen. They don't get
it anyway, because they were born this age and then
they never had thoughts or feelings or desires or any
of that. And I remember thinking that as a kid myself.
You know, my parents were born this age. How would
they know what it's like to feel in love and
to feel hurt and upset by a comment. You don't
(15:41):
attribute your parents to having those feelings. So I think
it's still not getting through to the kids that there
are places to go for support that will actually listen
to them and help them work through their feelings and
thoughts and put them into some symbol of order, learn
(16:01):
how to deal with them, and still be able to
move forward.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
You've touched on your message to the community there and
what you'd like to see in terms of some community change.
What would be your message to the young people on
the South Coast today who may be either struggling with
mental health distress or in situational trouble as you mentioned,
what would you say to them?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Oh, it's so hard to know what to say, because
as an adult you have so much more insight into
other facets of life. Whether the message is just pause
for a moment because you know a platitude this too
shall pass. Seems glib, but in a lot of cases
(16:45):
it will pass. Some things do pass, and they may
recur if you didn't deal with it well or it
wasn't handled well by the people around you. Those feelings
may recur throughout life. But just pause a moment and
reach out, not necessarily to the kids around you that
(17:06):
are the same age, because they don't have life experience
or don't always recognize that something more here is going
on that I think I can handle as just a friend,
as just a confidant. It's great to confide because it
can make you feel not so alone because you get
that person then saying back to you, oh, yes, I've
(17:27):
felt this and I've done that, and I you know
this is going on for me too, and you empathize
with each other in that moment. But you don't always
have answers or solutions. So I think it would be
great if kids felt that there was somewhere that was
really for them, that they could really go to. And
that doesn't mean a counseling room in the middle of
(17:47):
the school where everybody's going to see that. They go
in and then from then on their labeleders having mental
health or whatever is. You know, kids can be cruel.
They don't always intend for the damage that they do,
but it does do damage. So I think, you know,
for kids to know that there are adults who have
(18:09):
lived their situation who don't necessarily want to push their
experience onto them, but are prepared to listen and hear them.
And it's important for us to validate how they feel.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
In regards to the water tank project, tell us how
that got started and your involvement in it.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
So, I mean, Sewan and Pat obviously spent a lot
of time at the cricket nets and playing cricket at
Hanging Rock and up and down the coast as well.
And you know Sean being so obsessed with cricket when
he was younger, it was somewhere that he just loved being.
Perhaps has remained part of the Cricket Club, though it's
been difficult at times because he's seeing other father and
(18:51):
sons come through and he's missing that now. He was
still treasurer of the club when they started talking about
revamping the cricket nets that were there, making them better, safer,
and it became a big project and they rebuilt an
amazing new indoor outdoor facility which is going to be
so great for junior cricket moving forward. And the old
(19:13):
blokes love it too. There's a group of them that
get down there on a Monday afternoon and have a
hit with each other. And isn't that just amazing that
you know, at ages, even into their eighties, they can
still get down there with their mates and be active
and participate and have that camaraderie. And we had to
go down there to take some photos of the nets
(19:35):
to send off for final acquidal for grants, and it
was then that I said, Oh, I can't not get
those tanks in the background. They're so ugly. What is
that go with those tanks? Do they do anything? Are they?
There's moss and gunge and graffiti, and I guess over
the coming weeks the ideas sort of percolated and I thought, well,
(19:57):
couldn't we tidy them up? Couldn't they be made to
look a bit better. Could they have a mural on them?
Even maybe could the mural have a message. And that's
sort of where it started, was this idea and then
talking to different friends and them encouraging me and saying well,
you should do that sounds like a great idea. And
(20:17):
my idea for the message was something around you as
young people matter. You are our future, your ideas, your thoughts,
all of it matters, and you're important to us as parents,
as a community, and how would we convey that in
a piece of art. And I became involved with people
(20:40):
from the Suicide Prevention Collaborative and they all sounded excited
about the idea. So then I started putting together something
on paper as to what I wanted to get out
of that, and then had a little bit of a
subcommittee going on that we would toss the ideas around
and we started organizing the actual painting of it and
(21:03):
finding an artist and all of that. So, and the
message is for young people and for the community that
everyone matters, and everybody is important to somebody, and there's
so much support out there if you would just reach
out and take advantage. And you know, sometimes the first
port of call might not be the right option for you,
(21:26):
but don't give up. Try something else.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Just lastly, how do you and Pat like to remember Sean?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
That's a tough one. I mean, where he's in our
every thought every single day. One of the hardest things
has been that we suddenly became empty nesters. You know,
the girls had grown up and gone off to do
their thing, and you just you should be able to
assume that that's what's going to happen with every one
(21:54):
of your children. And that's been snatched away from us
so quickly that we didn't have time to work out
what we were or who we were beyond children, and
you know, not beyond them, because you never beyond them.
They're always You're always a parent, you know. For some
people they like to, you know, is it go to
(22:16):
the cemetery, Is it always light a candle on birthdays
or all of that sort of thing. We've found all
of those things incredibly difficult and haven't really known what
to do with ourselves. We've had all sorts of suggestions
thrown at us, and you kind of just smile and go, hmm,
that sounds lovely. What you actually do in privacy is
(22:39):
completely everybody's own individual choice. Whether you choose to leave
everything as it was, whether you clean out, whether you
keep certain things, whether you throw away things. You know,
all of that is so individual and should never ever
be judged. And we've all done it. We've all seen
things on TV on movies where some one's kept the
(23:01):
husband's clothes in the closet for the next twenty years. Great.
If that is what keeps you comfortable, then do that.
And there's no rush to do anything in particular. So
the things that we do regularly is we have a
video call with the girls on Shawn's birthday and on
the anniversary. Those are incredibly difficult calls because we all
(23:25):
know why we're talking on that day, and it's incredibly
difficult when each of us has our own such individual
ways of grieving. We do that and we just let
each other be how we're going to be in that moment.
So we're in a lot of ways still kind of
stuck on what are our rituals, what are our remembrance
(23:46):
or memorial things.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
But that's okay absolutely, And I guess in terms of
how you like to just remember him, if you're thinking
of him, is it him playing cricket, or is it
him as a young boy, or is it just lots
of little things.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
It's lots of little things. It's the things that are
hard as well. We don't make three cups of tea anymore,
we don't hang out his clothes. I don't go crooked
in for leaving dishes in his room. You know those
strange things, those everyday things, other things that make it
difficult to cope on a day to day basis. There's
(24:24):
cheers every day for me. I know that he was
my fun boy. He was funny. I remember that last
hug and telling him that he's my best boy, and
I if I think about that for too long, that hurts.
(24:47):
But I love that he got to play so much
cricket with Pat. I love that Hailey adored him and
begged for years when am I having a baby brother
or sister. She just thought that he was the ants pants.
And I love how close he and Emily were, and
that when she came home for UNI and we thought
(25:09):
she was coming to see us, she'd disappear and next
thing I'd find them giggling in his room and she
was coming to see him, not us. They're all beautiful
memories of him. A lot of the memories are hard
because they make us so sad as well. And the
thought of the future is difficult because we won't have
(25:30):
the girlfriend to get to know. We won't have him
getting married or you know, moving out or having children
or any of those, and even for our own girls
having children, you know, there's always going to be an
element of sadness because he's missing from all of those.
But mostly for me it's an internal feeling. It's he's
(25:53):
my boy, and for Pat he was his boy, and
same for the girls, and that's never going to go way.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Dan. That's thank you so much for for your openness
and sharing your story. And you know, just my heart
goes out to you guys, and I'm sure the whole
South Coast community does, and even if one person is
helped by this conversation, then I think it's a wonderful
thing that you've done. So thank you. You welcome. Absolutely
(26:21):
incredible of Deane Griffin to find the strength and courage
to speak so frankly and compassionately when her grief is
still clearly just beneath the surface. But like the Bateman's
Bay water Tank murals that sport those bold and beautiful words,
you're somebody someone, Dan has faith. The phrase will speak
volumes to anyone finding life too hard. You can get
(26:44):
help here on the far South Coast. There are services
like the Bigger Safe Haven Headspace, the Bigger Valley Euribidella,
suicide Prevention collaborative and stand by Support after suicide, which
we're going to discuss in more detail next week. You
or anyone you know is struggling, You can call Lifeline
on one three double one one four at any time
(27:06):
for twenty four hour crisis support. I'm James Fantasy. This
is Iheartfar South Coast, proudly supported by the new South
Wales Government.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
iHeart Far South Coast
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