How one mother learnt to breathe again after the suicide of her son

All royalties from the publication of Waterboy by Glynis Horning go to the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag), which is important to the author because handing her private pain to a public audience was not an easy decision to make.

“It was an internal struggle,” Horning says. “Initially it wasn’t going to be released to the world. I was just putting myself down, putting myself on paper, thinking I would burn it at the end. Then my three best friends said this can help other people, and at the same time a few people had reached out to me saying that chatting to me might be helpful. I shared what I’d written with a few more people and they said it helped, so I thought if it can help, then I must put it out there.”

She was persuaded to publish her thoughts and reflections on the basis that they might help others, but was also concerned that it would not in any way be “a cookbook for suicide”, which is one of the reasons she has not publicly shared her son Spencer’s suicide note.

“I just didn’t want to share that,” Horning says. “I could only read it to people who I felt needed to hear it because everybody does that self-questioning thing. Everyone goes, ‘maybe I could have had done something’. This is what Spencer’s friends have gone through, amazing boys, each now with their own private pain, and I know of at least one of his buddies who had to go for counselling. Whatever we are going through, friends and others go through.”

The questions about what one could have done are eternally unanswerable, and Horning’s reservations about sharing this experience were not about what people might think of her. “It sounds terrible but nothing actually matters on a certain level any more. I can’t feel any worse about anything. So if sharing this can touch just a few people, and make a difference, and I’ve already seen that it has, then that’s enough.”

Horning’s reluctance to share the story had more to do with not wanting to cause further pain for her family. Apart from their shared grief, her husband Chris has Parkinson’s  disease and she is also intensely aware of the effect on son Ewan, who, as she says, “can’t compete with a dead person”. But both were supportive of the book’s publication.

“I had to clear it with Chris and with Ewan,” Horning says. “They also have to live with this, and it’s so hard, especially for Ewan. You’re a young guy and you have to carry this ‘brother of’ burden. They thought it was a way of honouring Spence and helping him to help others, and he was that sort of kind and caring person. He was always the quiet one, helping kids and trying to lighten people’s burdens. So it seemed appropriate.

“Because Chris is not well, and Ewan is still young and studying, one just has to keep as upbeat as one can, as positive as one can. I know it’s what Spencer would want. You just have to keep moving on and make the best of it, and my way of making the best of it, I suppose, is to try and reach out and make it mean something, not just to me but to other people, in a little way, some small way, give some fresh insight to people who might be in that situation.”

Horning has had an “incredible response” from people who are in similar situations and who have found comfort from her account.

“You feel bad for these people,” Horning says. “You feel terrible for them, but in a way you think if we can just open up and get everybody talking, there’s something in there that silvers the lining.”

Horning has had much contact with Sadag and is acutely aware of increasing mental health problems among adolescents in particular.

“Sadag has gone up from 600 calls a day to more than 2,200 calls a day. The pre-pandemic figures are 23 suicides a day in SA. That’s nearly one an hour, and it doesn’t count attempts that were not ‘successful’. And it can only have got worse during the pandemic.” (In a recent survey, 52% of respondents in SA  registered at least some depressive symptoms.)

Horning is adamant that she is not a counsellor and will insist that anyone who contacts her for help gets in touch with a professional, but she also understands how important it is for people to engage with someone who has been through a similar experience. 

“I immediately put them in touch with Sadag and tell them to download the Panda app, which puts all sorts of mental health information directly onto your phone and helps you start or join support groups. There is a woman I speak to on one of those groups who I’m trying to support. Her husband committed suicide and she sees no point in carrying on and all I can say to her is just, please, you might not think you matter any more to your grown kids but you do, you make a difference to their lives, so I am trying to encourage her to keep going. I am just here to be a voice in the middle of the night, trying to be for her what my friends were for me.”

You just have to keep moving on and make the best of it, and my way of making the best of it, I suppose, is to try and reach out and make it mean something

—  Glynis Horning

Part of Horning's own attempt to make sense of Spencer’s suicide has involved somehow trying to respect his autonomy and his right to make the choice he did, which has perhaps been hardest of all, and is not something any parent can countenance.

“There’s a mother I’ve met with a couple of times, whose daughter has attempted suicide so many times, and this sounds appalling but I think in some ways it would almost be a relief for there to be a resolution. It is devastating to even have that thought. Nothing is worse than knowing you can never open a door again and find your child there, but to live with that terror ... I had a taste of this three years before Spencer died, when he vanished for a few days, and I don’t know what is worse, the agony of knowing he’s gone, the certainty of knowing he’s gone — I can’t even tell you how hard that is to live with — but not knowing where a person is, how do you ever rest? I don’t know how you weigh these agonies against each other.”

Having to deal with so many other people’s pain is both affirming and devastating, she says. These are some of the messages she has received:

•  A mother whose son died of suicide at 32: “I read Waterboy with tears running down my face and pain in my heart because our experiences were so similar. Your book helped me tremendously.”
•  A mother of two whose partner died by suicide: “Throughout your book I had to pencil comments and underline phrases; they spoke to my core and helped me understand aspects of what had happened.”
•  A father whose son died by suicide: “I chanced on your book at the airport. My son took his life in 2018 at the age of 28; he was also a mechanical engineer and was working for a top company ... I can relate to your son and felt the need to reach out; your book has helped me on my journey to understanding  what can’t be understood.”
•  Another mother: “I have been struggling but I feel calmer now, like I can breathe.”

Horning credits her own support system for her survival. “Those school buddies who are still with me every day, they are amazing. I’m so lucky, I have my husband, and Ewan, and so much love, so much to be grateful for. I feel bad in a way for Ewan because everyone is entitled to a really happy life, and I can try really hard, but to find unadulterated happiness becomes hard. Even when you remember happy moments, and there are lots of them, and we know Spence would want us to be happy and to move on, but even the happiest things are kind of tinged with sadness, and you can’t help that.

“There are still days when I wake up and think the whole thing was a dream. But this is a reality and you move on and you take each day and you get through it. It’s one little step at a time, that’s all you do, and it’s fine. People say that it maybe gets easier over the years, I don’t know. Someone told me that the pain never goes, but life grows around it.”