A LESSON FOR ALL OF US TO LEARN.

​In last Sunday’s Racing Post there was an illuminating and rather sad article featuring Kayley Woollacott and the suicide of her husband Richard. It was illuminating as Kayley Woollacott was brave enough to fill in the gaps, the pieces of the tragedy thus far untold publicly. She must feel somewhere in the depths of her heart that in some way she either contributed to the fatal actions of her husband or she might have prevented his death if she had made differing decisions to those she made.
I doubt if she was to blame in any way and being someone who inhabits the dark side on more occasions than is healthy for a fulfilling life, I also doubt if there was anything she could have said or done to prevent the inevitable. For the clinically depressed suicide is ever present. It sits on the shoulder as a convenient solution to all of life’s problems. They say love conquers all. Sadly, it is not true. The thought of suicide is a thing of beauty to those who cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel. The love and concern of a wife or parent can even make the situation more untenable as it adds extra weight to the burdensome feelings of inadequacy and failure.
It is not that Richard Woollacott or anyone with his condition cannot feel love. It’s just so depressed by the negativity of the condition that the love so willingly offered to him by family and friends becomes just another burden upon the soul. I would be amazed if Richard Woollacott did not love his wife, his daughter, the horses in his care to the same extent as any other racehorse trainer. Perhaps more so. In fact his love was perhaps so fertile and real that thoughts of letting them down, of not fulfilling all the dreams in which they were a focal part, fragmented his reality, locked him within himself, a state of mind that only allowed the dark side of his personality, the hidden part of the soul people of sound mind can suppress, to dictate his moods, his actions, to plan for a future that could only end with the kindness of a shotgun or the length of a rope.
On many occasions during my life, and I say this honestly and with deep shame, access to a gun would have seen me take the same course of action as Richard Woollacott.
What I cannot understand, though all of us are different, our reasons for having suicide sit on our shoulders as varied as reasons for living, is that Richard lived amongst horses, working in horse racing. My salvation has always been horse racing. Jack Leach wrote in his autobiography ‘Sods I Have Cut On The Turf’, how can anyone die when they don’t know how last season’s two-year-olds have trained on?’ Though I am somewhat indifferent when it comes to how last season’s two-year-olds do as three-year-olds, how Lalor progresses or whether Presenting Percy is as good as I think he is, or will Bryony Frost become the first women to win the Grand National, or will Rachael Blackmore make sporting history also by becoming champion jockey in Ireland, as well a hundred or more questions relating to the sport, give me the hope to carry on making a mess of my life, to be just as much a  disappointment to myself tomorrow as every day that has gone before.
If it is brave to go ‘over the top’ during a battle, to face the enemy straight in the eye, to almost seek certain death, then it is equally brave to take your own life. Perhaps I am too much a coward to follow Richard’s example. Perhaps he knew in the depth of his soul that Lalor would achieve what he felt was beyond him; that in leaving Lalor in the care of his wife he was presenting her with the opportunity of a lifetime, that the horse could look after her future to better effect than he could.
No one knows if my thoughts on this sad topic are right or wrong. No one, I suspect, knows what was going on in his mind when he chose the kindness of the shotgun. Hopefully in taking away his own darkness, in Lalor he has given Kayley a light that will guide her path for the rest of her life.
Don’t do as I do. Seek help. Be brave. Think of those you risk leaving to uncertain future. Not everyone has a Lalor for a saviour.