A FAMILY TRAGEDY

Within a space of three weeks Mary Kenny lost her two beloved nephews. Both
were intelligent, funny young men with a lifetime of potential ahead of
them. Their tragic deaths propelled their devastated aunt to write Death by
Heroin, Recovery by Hope in the hope that it might save even one life. In
this exclusive extract, Mary Kenny describes the horrific timetable of loss

I see your faces now before me, my darling nephews, as I always will do.
Conor such a clever, witty, big face: intelligent, laughing, jocular one
never knew whether he was codding or not. Patrick, whom Conor sometimes
called PK, to distinguish between the two Patricks in the family, Patrick
Kenny and my son Patrick West. PK, with a fine, shy, sensitive face, pale
and dreamy a sweet person, and as I learned too late, a vulnerable person
who bravely tried to hide that vulnerability.

My father's eyes were replicated in PK's. My father, his grandfather, was
also Patrick Kenny: I look at the picture of my father now, as a young man,
and wonder if there was a family weakness there which foretold the tragedy.
Was there an ``addiction gene'' in the Kennys? A tragedy changes the past
as well as the future, because you look in the past for clues of what was
later to unfold.

I knew that Conor was ``experimenting'' with drugs, because I had been told
by his sister Marie-Louise, who was passionately, and rightly, opposed to
this dabbling. And the last time I saw Conor, which would have been in
November 1998, his conversation was so jerky, so liable to flit from one
subject to another, so hyper-hyper, that even I, inexperienced in the drug
culture, concluded that he must be using cocaine.

But I am now told that this was not the case. He certainly used cannabis
since his late teens. And he might have used ecstasy, as millions do.

And yet, I didn't take the notion, that he might be using a range of drugs,
particularly seriously. It simply never crossed my mind that any harm would
come to Conor. He was strong, he was indomitable; he seemed, in
Marie-Louise's words, indestructible. Cocaine, which I wrongly thought the
prime suspect, is, according to my younger colleagues in the media quite
``cool''.

Did it make your food come out of your nose, after it had destroyed the
mucous lining? No, that was just tabloid hysteria. Cannabis, ecstasy, coke
chill out, get real, only fogeys get into a sweat about these ...

Then it was intimated to me, too, that Conor was latterly using heroin.
Marie-Louise was extremely concerned about this over the previous 12
months, but I said he'd probably get over it. I may even have told her that
she shouldn't fret so much about her brothers. They had their own lives to
live. And people in their thirties don't suddenly become addicts, surely?
Conor was just going through a phase.

I had become aware over the past few years that PK had a heroin problem. It
had been an immense cross to his widowed mother, who had herself been to a
counsellor about it, and who prayed ardently that he might get help to quit
the habit. I knew she had done everything in her power to get him to stop,
and I thought in that airy, everything-will-work-itself-out way that the
situation was improving. Yet of course, Patrick was a worry. But Conor, the
older brother, was different. He wasn't a worry. Conor was motivated. Conor
was in control. He had travelled all over the former Yugoslavia on a
shoe-string, filming. According to a colleague, he had acted with daring
and courage in a war zone.

Conor was a talented film-maker. He was an artist. He had a madcap streak.
But I never imagined that Conor was in any serious danger. He was also
obsessed with his work, with achieving something in film.

I have always believed that individuals who have a strong sense of purpose,
a strong vocational ambition, will not be destroyed by a drug. I believed
that our Conor's passion for film would always see him through. Conor ate,
drank, walked, talked and slept film. He had won an award at the Galway
Arts Festival in 1993; and a documentary he made about the former
Yugoslavia, Journey To Mostar, had been shown to acclaim on RTE.

He made the Mostar film on the ingenuity of his own endeavours, and was
just about to shoot a sequel. On the day he died, he was celebrating, with
effervescent joy, a commission he received to do another Balkan movie.

All through November 1998, I was dogged by an unusual headache. It was
located on one side of my head only and concentrated on the temple. I am
easily alarmed by health worries and I prepared myself for the onset of a
terminal illness. It put me in a morbid mood, and on December 1, driving
from Kent to London, I had a macabre experience which gave me the graveyard
blues.

I know this road well, because I take it regularly, and yet, on this
occasion, I unexpectedly missed an exit. This was to bring me to London via
the East End, rather than through the serpentine suburbs of the south side
of the city. As I drove along the Commercial Road, in Whitechapel, I saw
before me, a horse-drawn hearse, which struck me initially as rather fetching.

The horses were black, and plumed. The hearse was Victorian or Edwardian,
with engraved glass. It is a handsome and theatrical sight, a horse-drawn
hearse. A filmic sight. I'd like that for my funeral, I thought. So
Joycean. And then as I came closer, I saw that the name of the deceased was
spelled out in flowers. ``MARY,'' it said. I do not like to live by
superstitions, but that, I thought, was very like an omen. It felt unlucky.

That night I struggled with sleeplessness, and then dreamed I was in the
presence of the Angel of Death, his great wings flapping as he came to seek
me. The headache grew worse. Yet the following was a routine day: I went to
the office, I wrote a book review, and I had supper with two friends at the
Reform Club.

When I got back to the house, I learned then that it was not for me, yet,
that the Angel of Death had come. ``Sit down, Mum. It's bad news.'' My own
sons had red eyes. Oh, what in God's name ...

``It's Conor.''

``Conor?''

Silence.

``Dead?''

Silence.

Yes, he was. Dead. Laughing, jousting, joking Conor. Found dead in a Dublin
hotel. He'd had a pint, gone into the toilet and died.

I couldn't believe it, and yet, I could. The Angel of Death hovered. I sat
down.

Poor Conor: his big, child's face, still. His talent, his dreams, his
ambitions all halted in a night. Did he know as he died? Had he suffered?

The initial cause of death was given as cardiac arrest. His death had been
immediate. But there was a suspicion that a ``recreational'' drug was
involved.

His brother Patrick left a fragment of an account which painfully describes
how this December day had been for him.

``Today, at approx 2pm, I had the misfortune to call out to my mother's
house in Booterstown,'' he wrote on December 2. He had recently moved into
a new flat, and he wanted to ``collect some bits and pieces for my new
abode. As I got on the Number 45 bus I thought briefly about my brother, to
whom I have always been very close, and I thought that it would be very
nice to go for a pint with him. Anyhow I arrived out at my mother's to find
no one at home. However, I set about making myself something to eat whilst
I waited.

``About 20 mins after I arrived, my mother arrived home and I got the
impression that she was quite glad to see me. We began to chat and she told
me that my brother Conor was somewhat annoyed with me as I had taken four
of his wine glasses, to which I simply laughed. Then she informed me that
he had just bought a new `Ready to Go' phone, at which stage I remembered
the last time he had gotten a mobile phone was about two-and-a-half years
ago, for a film that he was originally producing, called Separation Anxiety.

``So it's 2pm on Wednesday 2/12/98 and me and Mammy are chatting about this
and that when there is a ring on our front door bell. I immediately assumed
it was Conor, that he had no keys. Anyway, Mammy says she will go and
answer it and as she opens the first door, she shouted back to me that
there are two people at the door whom she has never seen before. [The outer
door is glass.] I can tell that there is great deal of fear in her voice.

``As she opens the front door I position myself so as I can hear what is
being said. I immediately sussed that something was amiss. Then I heard
them saying they were dicks and if we knew Conor Kenny. Because a young man
with the name Conor Kenny on him had been found dead in the Central Hotel.
Firstly I tried to convince myself that they were mistaken, even though I
knew full well that it was my lovely brother that they were talking about.''

In that dreadful moment was PK's own death, three weeks later, also
foretold? One can only imagine the pain, the shock, the despair, the
wretchedness of that moment for him. The younger brother had ever been the
older's lieutenant. Their father, my late brother, had often remarked with
pleasure on PK's dedication to Conor.

The State Laboratory reported six months later that Conor's blood and urine
contained a fatal dose of free morphine: heroin is broken down into
morphine in the body. A moderate amount of alcohol was also present, which
was not considered to have played any significant part in his death.

Conor was not a heroin addict, but he had been using it recreationally,
mostly through smoking. The State Pathologist reported that there were no
tracks on his arms or elsewhere which would indicate a history of
injecting. It is likely that he had progressed, as heroin users will do, at
some stage over the previous year from recreational smoking to injection
(which provides a quicker high). There were no reports that this was a
batch of ``bad'' heroin. It was, from all that could be told, a normal
heroin hit. But a ``normal'' heroin hit can kill.

A funeral took place, two days later, after the body was released from the
post-mortem. There is, before the funeral itself, the ceremonie des adieux.
This is the viewing of the corpse in the funeral parlour, the farewells,
the leave-taking. Conor's mother, May, bravely did that, though it was a
terrible thing to have to do, to view her first-born, lying there in his
coffin. What torments mothers have to bear, in grief.

I thought of the day that Conor was born, in September 1962, and then, how
proud my brother James had been when he brought the baby home from
hospital. I was a teenager, and I think I was jealous of the attention
given to this infant. So much fuss was made of him, the first child in the
family since 1944, the first grandchild on both sides. Oh, the billing and
cooing over the little bundle. Conor was wanted, cherished, adored.

``People who become dependent on heroin and other heavy-end drugs,'' says a
standard textbook used in drug education written by Melanie McFadyean,
``have almost always suffered an emotional drama early in their lives which
has never been resolved.''

Sexual abuse is quickly in the frame. Dr John O'Connor, of the National
Drug Treatment Centre in Dublin, claims that among heroin users, sexual
abuse is ``prevalent''. Clinical depression is present among a quarter of
heroin users. Homelessness, loss of contact with biological parents,
physical abuse in the family, early familiarity with the youth courts and
the criminal justice system, and a period in care are also underlined as
common background problems.

I could not apply any of these criteria to Conor. He lost his father my
brother James died from cancer when he was 21: a desperately sad family
bereavement, but occurring too late in Conor's case to have been ``an early
experience''.

Marie-Louise, his sister, in the memorial piece she wrote, could think of
nothing in their collective childhood which indicated the text-book
background of the drug-addict.

``We were a wholly normal, a fabulous family. We had the most easygoing
father. We never wanted for anything. We had a mother who used to try and
chase us around the kitchen every now and then with a wooden spoon. She'd
never catch us, though. My parents had a very happy marriage.''

This I know to be true. Marie-Louise still remembers her own childhood as
an idyllic time.

I did learn later on that Conor did suffer from clinical depression, and
that he sometimes used anti-depressants to combat this. How strange that I
had always thought of him as a joking, cheerful person, and was quite
unaware of his depressive episodes.

The funeral Mass took place, followed by the burial. Conor's mother and
sisters were shaking with misery, and PK seemed completely bewildered. My
sister Ursula had come from the United States and was blind with tears. My
brother Carlos was limp with shock. There were so many young people,
drained and waxy in their dark clothes, black being such a curious colour
theme of youth dress codes.

There were so many tears. Conor's friend, Stephen Mulcahy, spoke a eulogy
which was funny and truthful. Conor was bohemian, Stephen said. He didn't
always turn up when expected, and he often did unexpected things; he was a
joker; he was reckless and wild. His friends loved him for the way he was,
and would not have had him otherwise. So be it.

Conor was buried with his father, a reunion 36 years on from that day when
James had brought his infant son home from the hospital with such elation.
Life and death intertwined so inseparably. Another filmic scene, too. The
tears of women flowed.

Conor's wake, when the mourners returned to his mother's house, was the
usual Irish mixture of sadness and lamentation, interspersed with moments
of joking and even laughter. I think people have such a sense of disbelief,
with the sudden death of a young person, that they forget themselves,
momentarily, and expect him to walk in the door at any moment.

His brother Patrick looked dazed, but he did not seem drugged. We talked.
We expressed our appalled feelings, our shock at what had occurred.
``Nothing will ever be the same,'' he said miserably. ``Ever, ever.''

Cliches are sometimes true.

I held him, and then I felt how thin he was, how slight he had become under
his flimsy jacket. He was shattered and exhausted and I told him that now,
he must live Conor's life for him. He must, I said, sort out his own life,
and remake it from the start.

``Yes,'' he said, absently. ``I must do something now to make Mammy proud
of me.''

Yet how wrong, stupid and naive I was in delivering this lecturette.
Others, including some of PK's friends, made the same mistake, saying that
if there was one good thing that might come out of this dark night, maybe
it would be the saving of Patrick. Maybe now, PK would be motivated to pull
himself together, and quit the drug habit.

What fools we all were. What insensitive, naive, ignorant, under-educated,
ill-informed and complacent bien-pensants. A committed heroin addict does
not, cannot, ``pull himself together''. A heroin addict has spent his
choices. ``You don't decide to be an addict,'' wrote William Burroughs in
his classic testimony, Junky. ``One morning you wake up sick and you're an
addict.''

You may decide to try heroin. Afterwards, it is the heroin that decides
what happens. It is true, as I have since found out, that not everyone who
has tried heroin, or who has used it occasionally, has become an addict.
But about a quarter of people who use heroin will go on to addiction,
because dependency on morphine sets in very quickly. As the medical
profession so sparing in administering it even in mortal pain understands.

Conor's death was unusual even a ``freak accident'' because he was not seen
by any of his friends as an addict. He was just this recreational user. One
of his friends, a successful businessman in his 30s, said to me: ``We all
do drugs, Mary, Conor was just unlucky.'' It is accepted by some
``recreational'' users that some people will take heroin to come down from
ecstasy.

But his younger brother was addicted, and was really powerless where the
drug was concerned. PK needed an open discussion about heroin not
admonitory, supportive but not enabling in which recovery was emphasised.
The vague conversation we had about ``getting your life together'' was a
useless piece of evasion on my part.

Thinking back on that conversation, I realise that Patrick had sought me
out: and since his death I have found so many little messages from him
among various letters and papers. He always kept in touch. He wrote
thoughtful little cards, choosing pictures he knew I would like. He would
give me books to suit my interests. I have a book he gave me, next to my
bed, on ``Celtic Spirituality''. He put some thought into choosing that
book, and wrote inside it, and I can hardly bear to read now the loving
inscription.

I was agreeable to him, but I think I didn't really want to be involved in
his problems. I didn't extend enough of a helping hand. I too was an
existentialist: ``It's his choice.''

Far from Conor's death being an opportunity to motivate PK to get clean, as
some of us imagined, it had quite the opposite effect. It drove him further
into the hopeless spiral of drug dependency. I now know that it is at the
moment of grief and loss that heroin addicts need to be most especially
monitored.

When something awful happens, every moment of that day is freeze-framed for
all eternity, it seems, in your memory. Every minute logged, every detail
fixed in the video of the conscious mind. And always the futile wish: if
only we could rewind the tape, go back and intervene before the tragedy
strikes. This time-machine dream stayed with me for months: every time I
saw a newspaper predating the tragedies, every time I had to do my tax
accounts, or look up any archive. ``That was Before.'' If only one could go
back.

I can see every frame of that fatal Christmas Eve. The search for a taxi to
meet three friends for breakfast. The exact number of coins I paid the
cabbie. The traffic jams around Stephen's Green because of a public party
for Gay Byrne. Then the lunchtime journey out to Glenageary on the Dart:
the bay of Dublin looked clear and lovely that day. Alighting, I said to my
husband: ``We can't stay too long. There's still last-minute shopping to do.''

Every aspect of that Christmas Eve lunch is a movie constantly replayed in
my head: the pate, the fish pie, the delicious gooseberry tart, the merry
bantering over the meal. Every banal thing is imprinted, and when the
memory retrieves it, the caption says: ``At this moment it was still not
too late.''

As the shops closed around 5.30, and my son Edward and I loaded up the car
in Merrion Square, there was a brilliant winter sunset, a crimson sun in an
electric blue sky. At 17.30, it was still not too late. At around that
time, PK was going for a drink in Grogan's pub, just behind Grafton Street
in Dublin. After Conor's death, he did, as a matter of fact, make an effort
to conquer heroin, and to start on a course of methadone. But maybe
Christmas is not a good time to start new habits or chuck old ones.
Especially a Christmas of grief.

I SAY that my younger nephew died of heroin, but that isn't the whole
truth. Clinically, PK actually died of methadone, which he mixed with
heroin and then alcohol.

He had taken 40 milligrams of methadone, as instructed, apparently, by a
doctor, that Christmas Eve morning. He had done his Christmas shopping,
according to his friend Cyane Kingston, who testified at his inquest. He
had deposited the presents, wrapped up, at her mews flat, and left the
bottle of methadone, too, in her care.

He saw some friends at the pub that evening. He had a drink with my son
Patrick, his cousin, and they had a nice time together. The cousins were
good companions, and PK had generously helped my son with some historical
research.

Pat West said to PK: ``I will be your brother now.'' And the last words my
son Patrick said to his cousin were, ``See you tomorrow,'' and PK had
replied he was looking forward to that. He was to join us for lunch in my
Dublin flat on Christmas Day.

When PK didn't turn up at lunchtime, nobody was initially concerned. He
could be late. It pains me to say I was even initially relieved. I loved
him, but he was a worry.

The heroin problem was an embarrassment, especially in the presence of my
elderly uncle who was also coming to the Christmas meal. Uncle Jim, who has
also since died, was a kindly but in some ways an exacting man. You feel
nervous putting on a family meal anyhow, and I'd rather see PK later, less
formally.

Christmas Day itself is less imprinted on my mind now, because by the time
it dawned, it was too late. It was too late to roll back the video. PK died
before midnight. He had gone back to his bedsit, alone, perhaps meaning to
join friends later, and had taken one last shot. It sent him into an
everlasting sleep.

At about 4.30 in the afternoon, my elderly uncle had had enough and wanted
to return to his own home, in Sandymount. I undertook to drive him home. I
returned to the flat, which is in the centre of Dublin. As I came in I
heard my niece Sarah speaking on her mobile phone, and there was something
terrible about her expression. ``Patrick Kenny is dead,'' she cried.

It was unspeakable, unrealisable. It was a scene from a JM Synge tragedy,
when all the men have been taken by the sea: a strange and eerie wail went
up from the two sisters that their second brother was dead. From the
mother, a catatonic stillness. Sarah said the words again ``Patrick is
dead'' and I wanted to run away and hide from what must follow.

Marie-Louise and Sarah, my son Patrick and I went to identify the body,
driving in the silent Christmas evening streets to the South Circular Road,
an area where drug problems abound. We knew the house by the Garda cars
parked outside. PK had moved into this little flat a few weeks previously.
It had been thought a good sign, a sign of progress, a sign he was getting
his life together, that he felt ready to move into a flat on his own.

We ascended the stairs where his friends had broken in. And there was
Patrick, in a kneeling, semi-foetal position, as he had knelt forward,
taking the hit. His face was hidden but his beautiful black hair looked so
healthy, still. He still wore his shoes.

There was a guard there already. An emergency doctor had been summoned,
complaining that he had not had a chance to have his Christmas dinner. He
proclaimed death by opiate overdose.

And so, the wretched funerary drama had to be entered once again. The
funeral parlour where he lay, while we said a decade of the Rosary over the
still effigy of this sweet young man. The funeral Mass, the readings, the
spoken appreciations, the burial. And the weeping, weeping, weeping of
forlorn women, and the pale, white faces of young friends. Oh Patrick, what
a sword of sorrow pierced our hearts at your passing.

Never did the words, from the prayer my mother so loved ``Hail Holy Queen''
seem so apt. ``To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in
this valley of tears: O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.'' How deep
is the need for human consolation from the spiritual springs of the divine.

If the older brother's death was a terrible accident, the younger's began
to take on the shape and form of a tragic inevitability. I began to see, in
retrospect, how his life had been going downhill. I had such a strong
feeling that I had failed him. I failed to do what older people should do
for younger people: to advise; protect; lead; direct. Take an interest, for
heaven's sake.

He wanted to please. He needed help, and I shrugged my shoulders, absorbed
in my own life. Yes, I had given him the AA book, and I had once written to
him, quite sternly. But I should have done much, much more.