What A Difference A Day Makes: Aaron McCormack on a call from home while abroad
Aaron McCormack: "It’s a shock… Your mind goes quickly to… first, his wife, children, parents, siblings. And then you’re asking how, and why, and could anything have been done? Could I have done anything?"
I got the call in Boston – September 2013. I’d just started my day’s work as a biomedical researcher. My father rang – that was the first thing, it’s my job to ring him.
He said ‘I’ve got some very bad news. Your cousin, Edward, is dead’. For anyone in our diaspora, far from home, we know we’re going to get calls – I’d had a call a few years earlier: ‘you’d better come home, your mother has metastatic breast cancer’. So we know these calls might come.
But the call I got that morning, I wouldn’t have expected. I’d talked to Edward the day before. Suicide – it’s a difficult message to give. But the truth is the truth and eventually my dad said ‘Edward took his own life’.
It’s a shock… Your mind goes quickly to… first, his wife, children, parents, siblings. And then you’re asking how, and why, and could anything have been done? Could I have done anything?
I got a flight home. We had the wake. His wife asked me to do the tribute at the funeral. Edward had lived a great life. When people have made a difference in their community – it’s nice to be remembered that way.
He was a bit of an older brother to me, seven years older. He was around from an early age – I remember sitting in the back of a car, him beside me, at the time my grandfather died, I must have been two-and-a-half. We lived just yards apart in Omagh, I’d see him all the time.
He was gregarious, active, a keen cyclist, a bringer-together of people, a great cousin, sibling, father, very, very funny. When I was 15 my family was going on holiday to Dungloe and Edward said ‘let’s ride up there on our bikes’ – me, him and my 13-year-old brother. That day we rode 90 miles. It was hard, but so much fun. We stopped for lunch twice. Like I say, he was quite spontaneous, but you’d follow him and you’d have fun.
Some people I’ve known who’ve taken their life by suicide, they’ve been in a mental health battle, but there are other cases where it’s a bolt from the blue. With Edward, I’d no idea it was remotely possible.
These deaths feel different to death from cancer, old age, an accident – ‘unexpected’ death from suicide, you do reflect a bit more on what might have been different. You ponder…
Life rolled on. It was some time before I reawakened into a world of mental health and suicide prevention.
Out of Edward’s love of riding a bicycle, which he introduced to me, I became a racing cyclist. In Massachusetts, I ended up living a few miles from one of my childhood heroes, Paul McCormack. He was one of Ireland’s most famous cyclists, who’d gone to the Olympics. He and I became friends. He’d organise for groups to come to Ireland to ride cycling events for charity. Mostly for breast cancer research. I got involved in 2014.
John McQuaid, who’d also gone to the Olympics, reached out in 2021. He wanted to organise an event for the charity Cycle Against Suicide (CAS), a grassroots fixture of the Irish community since 2013, people basically just raising awareness on a two-week cycle.
When I found myself immersed with these riders, the families, volunteers, charity staff, it very quickly hit me: this was different from riding a breast cancer charity event, even though my mother had died from that. The CAS community, their spirit, their stories, realising there are so many people who’ve had experience of suicide – seeing their desire for something positive to come out of what had been tragic in their lives… It felt like I’d met my tribe that I hadn’t known existed for this facet of my life.
It created an unexpected desire to do more. Back again in America we decided to bring more people on the cycle, raise more money, awareness. I was asked if I’d consider being chair of the charity’s board. I signed up – it’s a big part of my life now.
For me, Edward was a very important shaping influence, in terms of attitude and interests. Cycling’s a huge part of my life which I wouldn’t have without him. It feels fitting that 12 years after he died I’m helping run a charity that’s trying to help Irish society deal in a better way with mental health and suicide.
Some people who come on the cycles feel the loved one they lost is right with them on the route. I rode so many miles on the roads of Tyrone, Derry, Fermanagh with Edward and I too can feel like he’s beside me when I do these rides.
In CAS we run buddy programmes, training communities, workplaces, sporting organisations in the basics of mental health and suicide awareness, in seeing signs of mental health stress, in positive coping skills, in knowing when to encourage people to seek professional help. I wish this had existed in the 1980s.
The money we raise is going straight to something very real. I like that the communities we ride through benefit from our time on the road. And I hope the Edwards and Aarons in these communities will have a chance for a material difference in their mental health because of this.
- Aaron McCormack is chair of charity Cycle Against Suicide, which promotes awareness, education, and open conversations about mental health and suicide prevention. See cycleagainstsuicide.com or contact info@cycleagainstsuicide.com.
