Suicide: Shattering the stigma
Published in The Australian Jewish News
September 13, 2018
“Dad’s gone, Dad’s gone.”
As Jewish Federal Member for Berowra Julian Leeser stood before Federal Parliament to deliver his maiden speech two years ago, he recounted the moment that his sobbing mother flung open his bedroom door 20 years earlier.
After comforting her, Julian went down the hall to his father’s office where he often worked late into the night.
“There I found his pyjamas in a pile and on the glass-topped table in the hall, was a note, like so many of the notes from my father, written in red pen on the back of a used envelope,” told Julian.
“It said simply – ‘I am sorry Sylvia, I just can’t cope. Love, John.'”