Sorrow and solace

Living in a new town, Chrissy MacKay didn’t know where to turn when her 25-year-old son Adam died suddenly last year. As Kieren Charteris reveals, help proved to be the touch of a keyboard away, on Notebook:’s online forum.

Chrissy’s forum post
Hi, my name is Chrissy. Our son Adam (25) was killed accidentally the day we flew to Dunedin to buy a house. It has been a hard few months – what with moving and leaving our daughter and our support network behind. Does anyone have any pearls of wisdom? I am a music teacher and have only just been able to return to work. My brain is still fogged and stuck back in April. If anyone is able to share from their heart, I would greatly appreciate it. I know it’s real, but still find it hard to believe.

Framed photographs of Adam MacKay and his beloved 1972 Chrysler Valiant Pacer car take pride of place on his mother Chrissy’s dining room cabinet, but the 48-year-old New Zealand music teacher can’t look at them without being overcome by grief. While the bright orange coupé brought the young man many hours of joy, it also brought about his death. Adam died on 20 April 2005, after inhaling deadly exhaust fumes while working on the car in his poorly ventilated Auckland garage.

Chrissy and her husband Rob were at the other end of the country when they received the tragic news. In what was meant to be the start of a happy new life in the South Island, away from the urban rat-race, the couple had flown down to buy a house in the small Otago town of Milton and were staying at Chrissy’s brother Keith’s place in nearby Dunedin. “We’d talked to Adam the previous day about moving and he was really thrilled for us,” Chrissy recalls. “Then we got a knock on the door at one o’clock in the morning. When the police told us what had happened, we went from excitement to devastation in a split second. My brain shut down and I went into autopilot.”

Chrissy and Rob were no strangers to adversity. Before they met in 1980, Rob had been an alcoholic since the age of 13 and Chrissy had survived an abusive relationship, only to become trapped in a cycle of problem drinking and short, meaningless flings. “To say I was a wild child would be an understatement,” she says. “I ended up pregnant. There was no future for the guy and me but I was determined to have the baby. That was Adam; the only good thing to come out of that period in my life.”

Meanwhile, Rob was slowly drinking himself to death, managing to keep himself in check during the working week, but consuming “horrific” quantities at the weekends. “I started passing blood,” he reveals. “I was going to admit myself to rehab.” Fate brought the pair together just in time. A plumber by trade, Rob was updating his qualifications at the training institute where Chrissy’s dad Bruce, also a plumber, lectured. Bruce set the two up on a blind date; six weeks later they were engaged and six months later they were married. Adam, by then 16 months old, was a pageboy at the wedding. “He was so cute; so photogenic,” Chrissy says.

Soon afterwards, on Rob’s 24th birthday, he legally adopted the little boy. “Rob is Adam’s dad in every sense of the word,” Chrissy explains. “We never tried to hide it from Adam and he never wanted anybody else.”

The family was completed when Chrissy gave birth to a daughter, Lisa-Marie. Adam was two when she was born, and revelled in his role as big brother. “I always looked up to him,” recalls 25-year-old Lisa-Marie. “I could tell him anything and not feel like I was being judged. He knew my secrets; he knew my favourite tree to climb; he knew how to make the perfect couch fortress. And he was always extremely protective of me.”

More often than not though, it was Adam who needed extra care. A shy, quiet boy, he was bullied at primary school to the extent that Rob and Chrissy didn’t think twice when the opportunity arose for them to move to Waiuku, a small town outside of Auckland, and home-school Adam and Lisa-Marie. “I’m really glad we did that; we got to spend so much more precious time with the children,” remembers Chrissy.

Adam thrived in the home-school environment but chose to re-enter the state school system at 15, so he could sit what was then the School Certificate. He left school shortly afterwards to work at the local supermarket – something he thought would be a short-term arrangement, while he pursued his dream of joining the Navy. Sadly, his joy at being accepted into the Navy soured when a routine medical examination turned up a mild form of haemophilia – van Willebrand syndrome. In a second blow to his confidence, Adam’s application to join the police force was turned down at the last minute, after it was discovered that he was colourblind. “Adam took that very hard,” Rob says. “It really knocked the stuffing out of him.”

Nevertheless, Adam tried to make the best of life. He continued studying towards a supermarket management degree and focused on car racing, a passion he shared with Rob.

Though he had long since moved out of the family home, Adam enjoyed spending time with the 18 Korean and Taiwanese exchange students his parents boarded at various times between 2000 and 2004. “He was like a big brother to them,” Chrissy recalls fondly.

And she and Rob also got to glimpse a paternal side to their son when Adam started dating a young woman named Kelly, who had a little girl called Amie. “They never lived together because Adam wanted to be able to support them both first,” says Chrissy with quiet pride. “But he and Kelly would bring Amie round to visit us and it was just a delight to see what a natural dad he was.”

Tragically, Chrissy and Rob will never have the chance to see their son grow into that role, or to see him with children of his own. That dream was shattered in the early hours of a brisk Dunedin morning.

Adam’s funeral was held in Waiuku, the town where the MacKays had spent the happiest years of their lives. “So many people showed up to pay tribute to Adam,” Chrissy says. “We didn’t expect that... It was so beautiful. Everyone lit candles in remembrance and of course I just howled.”

Afterwards, Chrissy and Rob had to cope not only with the unfathomable grief of losing a child but also with the disorientating move to their new home in Milton. “We still moved here because the signs leading up to it had all been favourable,” explains Chrissy. “We’d sold our two Auckland properties within a week of deciding and had fallen in love with and bought the first house we looked at in Milton, plus Rob had work with my brother, Keith. It would have been wrong not to come.”

A friendly ear

• The Compassionate Friends assists families in the positive resolution of grief following the death of a child. Visit www.compassionatefriendsvictoria.org.au or call (03) 9888 4944.
• Lifeline provides a free and confidential service offering help, support  and information for many kinds of personal problems: psychological, emotional, marriage and family,
  and people who are lonely, ill or depressed. Call 13 11 14 (Australia);  0800 111 777 (New Zealand).

 

Words: Kieren Charteris. Photography: Sam McAdam. Hair & make-up: Lisa Marie Clarke.