Bereaved by suicide: ‘Conor fought as much as he could ... and I need to respect that’

The pain of losing a loved one so tragically can be hard to bear but as Laura Hallinan Lawlor reveals, the support of family, community and organisations like Pieta can help make sense of the unimaginable

Laura Hallinan Lawlor: ‘Conor fought as much as he could ... and I need to respect that’

Liadán Hynes

Laura Hallinan Lawlor was nine years old when her mother Cora died. She was, she says now, “A fabulous, vivacious Longford woman. By 1998 she was 36 years of age, with myself, the eldest at nine, my brother Eoghan, who was eight, and my youngest brother Conor, who was five.” Laura’s father Padraig, she adds with a smile, is a Sligo man, meaning the children, growing up in Dublin, had a good mixture.

When the children were young, their mother, “a really hard worker”, a nurse and midwife, had set up her own business, a nursing agency called Cora’s Healthcare.