A Tragic Beginning
Hi there,
My brother David was born on 28 January 1955. He took his own life on 23 March 2015, aged 60.
He was the second son of my father’s first marriage. His mother, Joan, died in 1958, when David was only three years old. Joan died soon after giving birth to baby Arthur. The baby died too.
Family Ties and Fractures
Just over a year after Joan’s death, at the ordination to the priesthood of his brother John in Rome, his father, Arthur, proposed to Pauline. Six months later, they married.
I was the second child of my father’s second marriage.
A Photograph’s Hidden Story
I look at a photograph of my two brothers, Paul and David, taken seven years before I was born. Over the black and white picture, hanging from the same nail, is a black pouch with some of my brother David’s ashes. And a black trouser belt he wore.
Innocent Childhood Moments
I look again at the photo. Two innocent, young children. David has striking eyelashes. Paul has a winning impish smile on his freckled face. His arms are wrapped around his baby brother’s waist, maybe to stop him from tumbling forward. One of David’s pudgy hands is clasped. He is barefooted. Both little boys wear neck-high jumpers.
They are seated on an armchair which I can remember from my childhood, so this picture was taken at home. But the home in question was in Donard Road, Drimnagh, Dublin; not the home in which I grew up, in Donnycarney.
David's Journey: From Dublin to London
Paul tells me that the picture was taken by our father on a box camera ‘which only rarely saw the light of day’ on David’s first birthday or on Paul’s fifth birthday in 1956.
I can barely remember my brothers living at home. Paul remembers David as ‘very quiet, probably because his big brother was very boisterous’. Paul continues: ‘I had to put him on the bus for school before I went to school. He went to Holy Faith in the Coombe for one year and then to the local school in Drimnagh.’
The Invisible Boys
Paul was banished from home when he was only 16 and I was as young as five, so I barely remember him at home. David vanished from home when he was 16 or 17 at most. He disappeared for ten years. My father died in 1981 without knowing if his son, my brother David, was dead or alive.
Rediscovering the Past
I have no recollection of any photo of my brothers David or Paul hanging in our home. But sometime after my mother died of old age (David would take his own life five weeks later), when I was going through her things, I discovered that lost black and white photo of my two brothers.
It was hidden behind a framed picture of my parents at a dress dance. My mother, by then, had Alzheimer’s and she would ask me who that man was standing beside her. I would tell her it was Arthur, her husband, my father.
But the unseen little boys, hidden behind the photo of my parents, seemed to me to be a metaphor for my family. When I discovered the picture, I felt angry it had been hidden. The banished and vanished boys were out of sight for years; as if they hadn’t existed.
Reflections on Fate and Family
David was gay. Like so many before him of his generation, he felt he had to leave Ireland to breathe and be himself. He became a florist in London. I stayed with him and his partner of the time, Keith, for several weeks after I’d left the Marist Fathers, while I was finding my feet.
On This Day: Family Anniversaries
Today, 14 June 2024, is the 74th anniversary of the wedding of Joan and Arthur, parents of Paul, David and baby Arthur.
I still find it unfathomable that my life was contingent upon the death of Joan, my father’s wife, my brothers’ mother. My children would not exist had she not died. It’s mind boggling and beyond my comprehension.
‘We Are Leaves’ at David’s funeral
I read my poem ‘We Are Leaves’ at my brother David’s funeral ceremony at South Essex Crematorium on 7 April 2015. You can listen here to the new guitar-accompanied narration of ‘We Are Leaves’, with music and guitar by Paul Hulm.
Final Resting Place
Arthur, Joan and baby Arthur are buried together in Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin.
In memory of David John Armstrong, 28 January 1955 — 23 March 2015.
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