Running for Ross & hope

HUGG Member's Conor & Cathy share their lived experience of living with suicide loss and finding hope and healing. 

Cathy and Conor McCarthy, August 23, 2023

We lost Ross on the first of May this year, two weeks shy of his 25^th birthday. And so our grief journey began. A journey we know we will both travel on for the rest of our own living days. A journey we could do without but one we will undertake together as we try to find a way to live without Ross. And as we take our first steps along that journey, we are grateful to have found HUGG and grateful for the support and shared understanding that we have received from the HUGG fraternity, support and understanding that we know will help us cope with the immense grief and loss in the months and years ahead.

Ross was a beautiful boy, always in good form, always smiling, always stuck in the middle of the action, centre of the party, centre of attention. He had wonderful friends who he loved, and they loved him. An exceptionally gifted sportsman, literally any sport he took up, he excelled at.  The aerial skateboard jumps, the gifted golf swing, the back flips from the cliffs into the sea from the high cliffs at Rosses Point, the darts at Christmas time and of course the one sport he truly loved, soccer and boy was he good at that. A true artist, his technical skills honed on the football pitch across the road from our house, his happy place where all the kids arrived to play for hours on end.  All at Camp Cathy, as our house was known, an open house for sport, games, for food and most importantly for fun.  

And so, it is to sport that we have turned and in particular to running as our mechanism to cope with our grief challenge and for our own wellbeing and health. Although long committed to positive thinking and to the principle that a healthy body breeds a healthy mind, we both thought our days of running the Dublin City Marathon had ended in October last year, when Cathy comfortably completed her tenth marathon while I struggled and battled the 42-kilometre route to finish my seventh.

Ross’s death changed all that. To his memory and to promote awareness for HUGG, in June Cathy decided we would once again put our feet on the start line and set about the challenge of completing another Dublin City Marathon. Undeterred by the fact that entries were long closed, Cathy contacted Jim Aughney, Race Director, and told her story of Ross and her intention to run for Ross and for HUGG, whereupon Jim immediately offered two free entry spaces to the race.

And so we are training once more to a set running plan with a target of being ready for the morning of Sunday, October 29, 2023 and the start line of the Dublin City Marathon at Fitzwilliam Square. But that is not the only target, we have a tangible target, not only to raise awareness for HUGG, but also to raise €10,000 for HUGG to assist with training and upskilling Facilitators for HUGG Groups in addition to supporting funding for general day to day operations.

Rather than wait until October, we promote HUGG at every opportunity. We took part in the Clontarf Half-Marathon in July and, earlier this month completed the Wild Atlantic 10-mile road race in Ballina. We wore our specially designed HUGG running vests on both occasions, clearly displaying the “Hope and Healing after Suicide” messaging. Our next race will be the Swinford three-quarter Marathon of some 32 kilometres on 2nd September, a distance which will let us know where we stand ahead of Dublin. Then, it will be the “Coast to Coast” from Strandhill to Rosses Point at the end of September, which at a mere 10 miles will seem like an easy jaunt as we close in on Dublin at the end of October. Meanwhile, through all of this time, we will either be running or undertaking strength and conditioning work practically every day to be as best prepared as we can for the 42-kilometre challenge, the Dublin City Marathon.

We both find comfort and healing in the Coping Power of Running. It distracts us from the tiredness, the exhaustion, the breaking into tears for no apparent reason, the lack of concentration, the absence of focus and interest, and of course the physical pain, all of those many symptoms of the grief we endure on a continual basis as we deal with the stress of the loss of our beautiful boy, Ross.

Ross’s struggles are over now.  He is finally at peace.  We will think of him every day.  We will miss him terribly.  Dublin City Marathon 2023 is for you Ross, and for HUGG.

If you wish to support us and raise awareness for HUGG, and would like to contribute to Cathy’s Fundraiser for HUGG, please see the link below:https://bit.ly/ConorCathyDublinMarathon