A sorrow shared

‘I went to the doctor, guess what he told me
Guess what he told me
He said, “Girl you better try to have fun, no matter what you do”
But he’s a fool’

Sinéad O’Connor was found dead on July 26th. I was saddened when I heard the news – like me she was just 56 years old.

Her best known song is without doubt ‘Nothing compares 2U’. In it there is a line when she describes her doctor as a fool for not appreciating the depth of her distress and imagining that she could climb out of her sorrow by simply having herself some fun. I can’t help but feel the pointedness of those words every time I hear them.

Tragically one can’t help wondering if life has mirrored art in the case of Sinéad O’Connor. Did the depth of her distress go similarly unnoticed? Either way, I just hope that I haven’t been so insensitive myself with the words I have spoken to those who have brought their sadness to me.

Because whilst I’m pretty sure that I’ve never told somebody that the answer to their problems was to simply to go out and enjoy themselves, I do wonder if I have sometimes been guilty of imagining I do have an answer to an individual’s genuine distress when the truth is that I don’t – not in any medical sense at least – not by way of a wholly inadequate and oftentimes inappropriate prescription for an antidepressant, nor in the form of an overly optimistic recommendation for a too highly valued psychological technique.

Well I remember witnessing a young woman who was experiencing a panic attack being encouraged to think of four things she could hear and then being helped to do so by her therapist tapping his feet! Irrespective of how well intended the advice was, rather than somehow lessening the sufferers very real anxiety, it was, in actuality, as embarrassing as it was woefully ineffective.

Because the truth is that sometimes nothing we have to offer ourselves comes close to being able to benefit those who come to us for help. Sometimes the sadness can not be just medicated or rationalised away.

As I write the cause of Sinéad O’Connor death has yet to be determined* but if, as many suppose, it was by her own hand, it will no doubt have come on the back of the years of poor mental health that the singer had been open about having suffered, an openness that extended to how she had, on more than one occasion, attempted to kill herself. Furthermore she has spoken freely about how impossible she found having to somehow come to terms with her son’s suicide last year. Her’s then was an undoubtedly difficult life. What, I wonder, would I have suggested to her had she come to me for help? And would my words have proved that I too was a ‘fool’?

Leaving aside medicine’s ineffectiveness, it was heartening to see the outpouring of affection at Sinéad O’Connor’s funeral. I won’t pretend that I loved her – of course, I never knew her – I simply enjoyed her music, but it would appear she was remembered fondly by the thousands of people who lined the streets along which her funeral cortège travelled. I wonder though if Sinéad O’Conner herself knew the warmth of the affection in which she was held. And if not – why not? Was it that the traumatic experiences of her past were too painful for that affection to penetrate, or was it perhaps because too often, the kind words that could have been said to her, simply weren’t?

But of course Sinéad O’Connor is only one of the many, many people who find their daily life too hard. And, as well as those who struggle, there are those who have given up, those for whom the fight has gone on too long, and who now, with still no end in sight, find everything just too much. And many of them aren’t the recipients of even unspoken affection. Unlike Sinéad O’Connor, nobody knows of their unhappiness. And nobody cares. So alone are they that no one will even ever have the chance to add to their distress by advising the impossible.

So what is to be done about the huge issue of the nations worsening mental health that we all too often try to conceal beneath an imaginary veneer of everything being OK? I won’t make the mistake of the doctor referred to in the aforementioned song but suffice to say that medicine must at the very least stop pretending to have the answer. Not only because it hasn’t, but because by doing so it absolves the responsibility of society as a whole of being a part of the solution.

In short we need to learn how to love and be loved. The plight of those who are desperate needs to be recognised – by all of us. And since ‘nothing can stop lonely tears from falling’, we need to find not only a way to come alongside those who find themselves downcast, but also a way to allow others to come alongside us when it is we who are struggling most.

Because a sorrow shared is a sorrow shared. And though no less sad, it is surely better than one that is encountered alone.

*On January 9th 2024 a coroner judged that Sinéad O’Connor died of natural causes. Though in some ways this changes nothing it is mine the less heartening to know that her death was not a result of poor mental health. Even so, poor mental health is a present reality for many that needs to be better understood by all of us.

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Related posts:

To read ‘Eleanor Rigby is not at all fine’, click here

To read ‘Professor Ian Aird: A Time to Die?’, click here

To read ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’, click here

To read ‘Lewis Capaldi – retired hurt’, click here

To read ‘An Audience for Grief’, click here

To read ‘Life after Life’, click here

To read ‘On not remotely caring’, click here

To read ‘Contactless’ click here

To read ‘The Medical Condition – or Hannah Arendt is completely fine’, click here

To read ‘The Life I Lead’, click here

To read ‘General Practice – still a sweet sorrow’, click here

To read ‘When the going gets tough, what about those who don’t feel strong enough to keep on going?’, click here

To read ‘Reflections on the death of Leonard Cohen’, click here

And a few with a more theological flavour:

To read ‘T.S. Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’, click here

To read “Suffering- A Personal View”, click here.

To read “Luther and the global pandemic – on becoming a theologian of the cross”, click here

To read “Why do bad things happen to good people – a tentative suggestion”, click here

To read “Hope comes from believing the promises of God”, click here

To read ‘True Love?’, click here