Remembering Fiona

She was my first love and, after a 16-year intermission, she became my best friend.

When a positive relationship with an ‘ex’ takes shape, develops and grounds itself, it is truly a thing of wonder. Special beyond compare. All that interpersonal history, the strengths and weaknesses, the habits and foibles – all acknowledged and dealt with…
It took that long period for Fiona and me to make that transition and re-establish contact – and almost four more special years to bring us to this tragic point.
Death has a way of waking you up.

Our original romance began in Cork in 1982. She was a secretary in an architect’s office; I was in a band doing the occasional piece as HP’s first Cork-based correspondent. No sooner were we going out than I recognised her potential as a writer of considerable intelligence, perspective and wit.
I also recognised her inner turmoil as, on more than one occasion, I witnessed, and assisted, her in the firing and smashing of pre-stored empty Maxwell House jars against the wall of her flat’s back yard…
I introduced her to HP and together we began a series of feature articles and specials on Cork. These were the heady days of Sir Henry’s and Jimmy O’Hara, Co-Co’s and (the late) Dominic O’Keefe, of pirate stations and bands. Simultaneously, we had the great thrill of our new relationship and the excitement of writing for Ireland’s biggest rock mag. We also indulged in the occasional wild cocktail night, culminating in the formulation of our own appropriately-named concotion, Call-A-Taxi!, a copy of the recipe and artwork for which I sent to her just two weeks ago. We had imbibed little else during a rock’n’roll ‘cocktail’ evening in Wimbledon about two years ago!
So, Fiona was with me in Cork until a full-time position became available in HP HQ in Dublin in 1983. Actually, the way it happened is this. I saw that a Dublin newspaper was carrying an ad. looking for a young journalist. I suggested that maybe she should apply, but not before informing Niall Stokes in HP that this was the direction she was going in and, who knows, maybe there would be a position available in HP! She was still very reluctant to do so, given our almost inseparable relationship, but I walked her up to the phone in the corridor of her building (no mobiles, then!) and stood with her. We then travelled to Dublin together for her meeting with Niall, in Bewley’s. Subsequently, she had a more detailed chat with him in the office and she got the job as Staff Writer! In hotpress!
I still had a year in college to complete, and we agreed that this was a great first step for the two of us to be in Dublin in the near future. We were young, happy, buzzing, if a little confused by the swift turn of events, and the implications. Such conflicting emotions made her cry and, naff as it may be to some, I bought her flowers on Grafton Street. With tears flowing, embarrasingly (or so we thought) we bumped into Niall and Mairin in the lane down the side of Bewley’s! Damn! Flowers?! Crying?! How un-rock’n’roll!! Probably blown the job, now!!!
Little did we know then that Niall and Mairin, and Liam, and all in HP, were hugely supportive and always have been. Fiona wrote articles relating to music, religion, sex and drugs and nabbed HP’s first fashion column/page. I was so proud of her and delighted that she was expressing herself creatively. But, the best part of a year shuttling between Cork and Dublin meant the relationship didn’t make it. Geographical distance became psychological distance, we got out of sync and our ‘master plan’ went out the window. I was thinking I had to write the obvious book, How to Shoot Yourself In The Foot In One Easy Lesson.

Fiona spent a few more months in HP before meeting someone else, moving to London and exploring life. She had genuine issues relating to her parents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, that were quite complex and deeply unsettling and scarring for an only child. They needed further self-investigation. As did more general religious and spiritual issues. Throughout her life, these concerns were always at the forefront of her mind.
I still went ahead with my plans to move to Dublin. Indeed, I began working on the staff for HP after she’d gone to the UK. To put it mildly, it carried a strong sense of irony.
Fiona’s changed dress code reflected this period in London. She delved into the occult and other areas. She began using heroin (of which she wrote in HP, some time later) and stopped writing. She went off the radar screens.
The great Bill Graham of HP had maintained contact with her, however, and I had one or two conversations with him about her. Fiona had huge regard for Bill and, when he died, missed his influence and good counsel (many in HP will here learn for the first time that she kept ‘the Bill Graham cover’ of HP, framed, in a corner of her apartment).
Fiona was living her life, and I mine. For 16 years. Then, like a bolt from the blue, she wrote to me in 2000 (ironically, via HP, who forwarded it to my address) to initiate contact and see how things were going.
She was married. I was engaged.
Then I was dis-engaged and she was divorced!
And not for the reasons one might think. Just very curious timing!
During the past few years, we supported each other through our respective personal events and it had come, of late, to develop into near daily contact by SMS – we never went two or three days without texting each other. Some days we’d just exchange jokes or random observations, others we’d have full-blown philosophical ‘discussions’ that would escalate to 20 or more text messages! SMS (instant) had effectively replaced our initial email exchanges (just not fast or convenient enough). I’d be in a cafe somewhere in the world or she’d be in the pub, or we’d both be in our respective abodes, and the messages would start firing! Back and forth, passing each other at a furious rate!
I’d stayed with her on my last three visits to the UK. On each occasion, we stayed up until the dawn talking and playing music that included everything from St Germain to the Velvets, Lisa Germano to Marilyn Manson, Alex Harvey to Ian Hunter, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to Public Image and American Hi-Fi. Wherever the mood took us. During these visits, we’d maybe go to a gig in her local in Kingston or Surbiton (“How the hell did you get her to do table service in this pub?!!), take a long, beautiful, relaxing walk along the Thames or have something to drink (and, maybe, eat). In July, I’d also met Mark, her boyfriend, for the first time, over a drink.
We saw sides to each other that few others got to see. We drew them out of each other. She was inspirational, funny, perceptive, witty, diplomatic and sharp. We were soulmates over a lifetime. We still had so much to discuss, so much to share, to live, to enjoy.

The tragic event of Fiona’s passing, and its manner, illustrates the grip that the condition of depression can exert and how little we acknowledge and respect its power. It manifests itself in so many ways, from obvious symptoms to the invisibly and silently destructive. Diplomatically, Fiona recently told me – I think, by way of putting me wise– that she would never be carelessly or recklessly abrupt or insulting to someone again, because we never know the psychological burden that someone may be carrying. We all need to be a bit more understanding, that’s for sure.
For this reason, I want people to be aware of Fiona’s condition as it may help others to seek help for themselves or watch for any possible danger signs in those around them. For still some others, it may help to explain her death.
I don’t take lightly this decision to take excerpts from some of her emails. The selected quotes relate specifically to her condition.
In an email soon after we had re-established contact (her fear of travel was almost total after two violent encounters), she explained:
“I have rapid cycling manic depression, which is the hardest form to manage because of its unpredictability. Within the space of one day I can go from having all the confidence I need to start a new life, start working again (part-time is all I could handle) and make good choices and decisions to… having no self-confidence whatsoever and feeling deeply stigmatised and scarred by my diagnosis of manic depression. I want to travel the world... and then I’m afraid to even leave the house to go to the shops.”
In the same email, she continued: “My memory is shot to pieces and my personality so fragmented that I say and do things that I truly can not remember later, because it’s stored in a memory bank that only part of me has access to.” Dark forces were at work: “Parts of me don’t recognise other parts of me at all, which can be extremely frightening.”
As if to reinforce the fact that the vibrant, life-loving Fiona had severe difficulty coming to terms with the destructive forces that lurked in the recesses of her mind, she once explained: “The bottom line is, it’s not a psychological condition – it has a biological foundation, is almost certainly genetic, and has something to do with having too many neurotransmitters doing too many things at once and in the wrong directions.”
In a subsequent email, she told me how she enjoyed her meetings with the Manic Depression Fellowship: “Always good to meet with like-minded souls and talk things through.”
But, again, referring to the diagnosis of her condition, she admitted, “Existentially, it’s bad news and really hard to come to terms with.” Dealing with the condition was one thing, but dealing with the stigma became an additional problem. One thing on top of another.
Her manic depression, also called bi-polar disorder, often had a crippling effect: “My psychologist says I’m doing very well considering the circumstances but I feel I’m walking a very narrow line indeed, trying to stop my mind from spiralling off into psychosis. I can’t actually afford to think too much or a million other thoughts all come in at the same time and my grip on reality starts to dissolve. Anxiety levels are through the roof, doing breathing exercises to try to calm down, visualisations too.”
If feeling this way inside made daily living extremely difficult, Fiona’s inabilty to work was also damaging her self worth, the weight gain from certain medications and seeking solace in alcohol was affecting her self image, and heavy smoking and asthma were hampering her physical well-being. Friends offered words of encouragement and advice, continually, but depression had her in its all-encompassing grip.
Fiona loved her friends. Her friends were her real family.
“Am blessed with some true and loyal friends, for whom I am deeply grateful,” she once wrote, “and I don’t know where I’d be without their understanding and support – and ability to bring me out of myself and make me laugh!”
Her various states of mind impinged on partner relationships also, and she knew it: “I think I need someone to give me security and, as soon as it happens, I feel trapped. I know the knack is to find security within yourself but it’s hard to do that …”
On the Monday before the Wednesday night/Thursday morning that she passed away, I’d fired off an SMS joke: “How many lead singers does it take to change a lightbulb? One – as long as everybody is watching!” She’d replied with, “How do you know the stage is level? The drummer drools evenly out of both sides of his mouth!” She’d also recently quoted WC Fields: “A woman drove me to drink and I never had the decency to thank her!”
But, as I’ve mentioned, the exchanges weren’t all sweetness and light and, by way of illustration, during one part of a day she could be joking, then later expressing her fears of a suburbia where “we could all feel safe like Sharon Tate” (John Cale, ‘Leaving It Up To You’).
It’s the sort of quotation that stops you in your tracks. She cited it very recently.

Given the intensity of our ongoing SMS relationship, it was to our mutual benefit that we were in touch so regularly – we had our own private support group, any time of day or night! Unconditionally guaranteed.
Having been texting late on the Monday night to no response, I grew concerned. I texted her on Thursday: “You’ve gone very quiet”. No reply, so I gave it an hour or so. “Everything okay?” No answer. She had been very stressed recently about her looming 40th birthday and I had already told her that, whatever happened, she would not be alone that day. Having had no texts back from her, I decided to cheer her up with confirmation that I’d collected my plane tickets that day and, come what may, and regardless of who could or could not be there, I was going to be with her on her significant birthday on January 27.
Silence. She was already gone.
The next day her boyfriend, Mark, texted me on her mobile phone to call him. I knew then that something serious had happened. With Christmas looming (a further, pertinent consideration), I thought that I was going to hear that maybe she had ‘tried something’, as she had previously.
I did not expect this… finality.
As can only be imagined, having been in the apartment when she died and having tried to revive her, Mark is experiencing an unbelievably difficult time. He is, like Fiona, a strong believer in God and this is bringing him some comfort. I am trying to offer him my support, as is his mother, friends and her vicar at St Paul’s Church, Kingston Hill, London, Reverend Ray de Vial. In addition, Alex, Fiona’s ex-husband, has drawn on all his strength and has been key in making all the necessary major arrangements and dealing with such matters as email and phone calls, in a time of great stress and shock.
Fiona was a Jehovah’s Witness who rebelled and became a Limerick-based punk; a Cork architect’s secretary who became ‘Ireland’s High Priestess of Punk’ (in the words of one Irish women’s magazine); an explorer of life and its many dangers, fascinations, wonders and temptations who came back to finding comfort in God. She became a true Christian with the sort of decent human values that would put some of her former JW ‘acquaintances’ to shame.
Let me illustrate with a heart-warming story.
On one recent excursion with Mark to downtown Kingston, an individual sitting in a doorway on the street had tried to attract their attention with the muttered words, “Help me”. As Mark recalls, he hadn’t a chance to react before Fiona was in there “like a shot”, crouching down, talking to the guy. She and Mark got him something from the nearest food joint, Burger King, and again crouched down and continued the conversation. He had HIV/AIDS. A heroin problem. He lived in a bin shed. There she was, offering comfort, and Mark gave what money he had on him, a quid or two, and she later told him, “For what you can afford, you gave more than any rich man.”
Unable to work due to her diagnosed condition, she had recently attended some introductory meetings designed to provide guidance for those who want to help people with depressive illnesses. She saw such voluntary work as making a contribution to individuals, to society and to her own well being. She had a new goal. If she proved successful at it, her aim was to secure a paid position doing such constructive work.
I know I have left out so much.
So many people are upset – Fiona left an indelible impression on all who met her.
Most of my favourite songs have just changed tense.
I’ve lost my true friend and soulmate, my confidant and my rock’n’roll partner in crime.
She is irreplaceable.
Beautiful, beautiful Fiona. There is neither judgement nor stigma, just understanding and great sadness. I hope that you are with God and that you are experiencing peace.
At last.

In Ireland, there are many local support groups that help with depression and bi-polar disorder. For more details, check out the Aware website, www.aware.ie, or the helpline on 1890 303 302.
In the UK, the Manic Depression Fellowship website is at www.mdf.org.uk. It also has an online chatroom.