Category: Spouses & Partners

03 complicated jargon, red

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She was diagnosed
with ovarian cancer:
major surgery
chemo
sickness
hair loss
complicated jargon, red
tape.
As well as working
her husband cared for her.
‘Having chemotherapy makes you see
everything through a mist.’
One day
she came downstairs
to discover her husband
lying on the living room floor
dead.
Afterward
the Department told her
she could no longer claim employment support
because her bereavement benefit
was five pounds more a week
and she was not allowed
to claim for both.

[Grimsby Evening Telegraph, 26/01/2011, I didn’t ask to be ill, I just asked for support]

31 when this also failed, she walked

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One of the first officers to arrive at the scene
noted evidence of a poor attempt
to clean up the mess;
watered-down blood in the kitchen.
Officers noted how her husband had blood on his clothes.
His brother, who received a call at work
urging him to rush round to the house,
had dirt on his hands.
Both men were arrested
but cleared of any involvement;
close examinations of the pattern of blood
ruled out foul play.
Her husband had woken up to find her missing.
He discovered an empty packets of painkillers,
blood,
a note.
She had been worrying about a meeting she was due to have
to discuss her entitlement to disability benefits.
Her health problems meant she had to give up
her job at the bakery. She was described
as cheerful, hardworking and trusted.
Her husband’s model shop had recently collapsed,
plunging the couple into financial difficulties.
They were forced to sell her childhood home.
It was likely
she had walked to the shed to fetch craft knives
in order to cut herself
after finding a serrated kitchen knife
was not sharp enough.
When this also failed, she walked to the Drain –
fifteen minutes from the couple’s home –
where her body was found.
She had died of drowning,
more than ten self-inflicted cuts
on her wrists.

[Hull Daily Mail (via Black Triangle Campaign), 12/07/2011, Woman who drowned in drain was upset about health check]

42 down the stairs, fussing

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Two years after his wife’s death,
her widower was visited
by the husband of his niece.
‘I went in the back door.
The dog came flying
down the stairs, fussing.
He must have been in the room with him.’
He had suffered depression
following his wife’s death.
‘I went upstairs. I had
an awful feeling.
I put my head round the door.
I could see him lying at the side of the bed.
His face was straight down and
I just knew.’
Police officers searched the home;
empty packets of insulin.
An officer found a draft text message on his phone.
It gave the name of his niece.
It said, ‘I’m so sorry,
I hope you can forgive me one day.’

[Hull Daily Mail, 16/05/2013, Man found dead after wife drowned in Holderness Drain]

45 everything through a mist

Posted on
She was diagnosed
with ovarian cancer:
major surgery
chemo
sickness
hair loss
complicated jargon, red
tape.
As well as working
her husband cared for her.
‘Having chemotherapy makes you see
everything through a mist.’
One day
she came downstairs
to discover her husband
lying on the living room floor
dead.
Afterward
the Department told her
she could no longer claim employment support
because her bereavement benefit
was five pounds more a week
and she was not allowed
to claim for both.

[Grimsby Evening Telegraph, 26/01/2011, I didn’t ask to be ill, I just asked for support]

51 they took

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One night
she heard him sobbing
downstairs.
He worked long hours on the farm.
He would leave at five AM.
Some days she would not see him again
until eleven. He wasn’t scared
of work.
Over the years he developed heart trouble,
diabetes, terrible ulcers.
His health deteriorated from there.
He became depressed.
She was borrowing money off everybody.
Last winter
they couldn’t put on the heating.
They sat
with blankets round them.
He was called to his Jobcentre
in late 2012.
They took his blood pressure.
They never checked his back or
asked about his diabetes
and the terrible ulcers he had on his legs.
A computer told them
he’d been on the sick
for twenty-four years –
that’s the only thing
they really knew.
It was decided
that he was capable of limited employment.
His benefit was cut.
He appealed;
a ruling would take almost a year.
He didn’t have a year.
It started in his neck,
spread rapidly.
A very rare form of cancer.
He kept saying
“I wish I could win this case
before I die.”
One night she heard him sobbing downstairs.
He told her
“I can’t go on.”
The cancer took his sight,
his hearing,
finally
his life.
They
took his dignity.

[Daily Mirror, 19/10/2013, Cancer killed my husband, but Atos took his dignity a long time before his death]

53 it’s not as if nobody knew

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They kept food in plastic bags
in the shed;
the cold night air.
They couldn’t afford a fridge,
couldn’t afford to heat their house.
They lived in one room.
Every Sunday they walked
six miles each way
to a soup kitchen
to have something to eat
and pick up food bags,
free vegetables
to cook into a broth
on a camping stove.
It’s not as if nobody knew.
 
A year ago,
they appeared in a film
about living below
the breadline.
She had learning difficulties
and needed support from her husband,
an army veteran.
He was her full-time carer.
The Jobcentre decided she couldn’t sign on;
she wasn’t fit
for work.
Her benefits were stopped.
He worked in the army
as a PE instructor,
but fell on hard times
after the service.
Struggled to cope with
civvy street.
Their 12-year-old daughter
was taken into care.
He fought to get a carer’s allowance
but they wouldn’t recognise his wife’s disabilities.
He was told he could not claim
until she had been fully diagnosed:
month after
month after
month of specialists, living
hand
to mouth.
They were terrified she was about to be sectioned.
They stayed with relatives and friends
to avoid the authorities.
They walked everywhere
hand-in-hand
like young lovers.
Neighbours raised the alarm.
They had not been seen for several weeks.
This is where despair ends.
They were found
lying side by side
on the settee.
A police spokesman said
post-mortem examinations
had been carried out.
The deaths are being treated
as unexplained.

[The Daily Mirror, 11/11/2011, The tragic story of suicides Mark and Helen Mullins is a tale our politicians should pay attention to; Coventry Telegraph, 08/11/2011, Bedworth ‘suicide pact’ couple found lying side-by-side; Coventry Telegraph, 11/05/2021, Death of Warwickshire couple included in review into serious harms of people claiming benefits; Channel 4 News, 09/11/2011, Police investigate death of couple; BBC News, 09/11/2011, Inquiry call over Mark and Helen Mullins deaths; Metro, 08/11/2011, Married couple driven to commit suicide by utter poverty; Mail Online, 09/11/2011, Army veteran and his wife die in tragic ‘suicide pact’ after becoming ‘too poor to live through the winter’]

57 how all seemed normal

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In a statement read by the Coroner’s Officer,
her husband of 36 years
told how all seemed normal
when he went to work,
but when he returned home
the following morning
with their son
his wife was in the back room, lying half
on the bed.
They phoned 999.
The operator talked them through CPR
until the parademics arrived.
She had been unable to work for about ten years
due to a dengerative back disease.
She had depression for about five years.
She had started suffering from stomach pains
and had also been extremely upset
due to a tribunal regarding her incapacity benefit
which had taken from her.
The pathologist who carried out the post-mortem
said she had eight times the lethal dose
of dothiepin, a prescribed anti-depressant,
and four times the dose of propanolol,
a beta-blocker
which stabilises the heart,
in her system.
He also found codeine and paracetamol
in her body.
The coroner said
‘Her husband had gone
to work,
she was alone.
Things must have just
swept over her,
suddenly
she found her life
intolerable.’

[Blackpool Gazette, 09/12/2008, Back problems led to fatal dose; via Web Archive at 19/04/2016]

60 making it right

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Tests revealed
blood clots in both lungs.
2009. He was a landscape gardener
working for the Council
when he fell seriously ill.
He was discovered to have
deep vein thromboses
in his legs.
Hughes syndrome.
Often referred to as ‘sticky blood’.
A life-threatening condition.
His big toe was amputated.
Horrendous headaches,
frequent bouts of illness.
He couldn’t do any hard physical work.
He was put on something to thin his blood.
Would be on it
for the rest of his life.
Still
he hoped his condition would stabilise enough
to let him get a job
or go to college.
He had savings.
He and his fiancee
had just taken out a mortgage on a new flat;
he hoped to spend the money
making it right.
He had been signed off as unfit to work by his doctor,
but received no money from the agency
for 10 weeks.
An ongoing battle.
One morning
after she got up
his fiancee
discovered his body.

[Daily Record, 08/05/2013, Benefits row dad takes his own life and is found dead in his flat by his fiancee]