Let's Stick Together

It’s the Christmas issue of Hot Press. It’d be nice to be able to write The Message in a big booming voice, full of good cheer – but it isn’t that kind of moment.

Yesterday brought the news of the death of Gary Speed. Anyone who loves football will have been aware of him, as one of the outstanding figures in English soccer over the past twenty years. He made his name originally with Leeds United, shining in a superb all-British midfield alongside Gordon Strachan, Gary McAllister and David Batty. With that powerful quartet as a platform, Leeds won the League Championship in 1992, the final year of the old structures, before the Premiership was established.
In all Gary Speed played 312 games for the club and scored 57 goals before moving to Everton, the team he had supported as a kid. After a successful stint there, he moved to Newcastle United, where he flourished again, becoming a mainstay and scoring 40 times in 284 appearances. He was 35 – an age when most players would have been happy to coast towards retirement – when he joined Bolton Wanderers, where he achieved the milestone of making his 500th appearance in the Premier League. In all he played 535 times in the English top division, a tally surpassed only by Ryan Giggs and David James. And he is also the most capped player ever for Wales, with a hugely impressive 85 international appearances to his credit.
Lots of players had a bit more than Gary in all sorts of ways. There were better dribblers, better passers, more technical players, ones who bossed the midfield with a bit more vision and so on. But he was a fantastic all-rounder. He was intelligent, committed, and hard-working. He had a great engine. He was tough and knew how to make a tackle. He could strike a ball well, do the simple things at the right time and was a powerful header. As a midfielder, he had the knack of scoring more goals than most. But in an emergency he could be used in either defence or attack. As a result, he was a brilliant asset to every club he played for. His managers always knew they would get an honest shift out of him, and he had a really good footballing brain. He was a thinker as well as an old-fashioned action man.
He understood the importance of nutrition before most players. He trained hard. He had leadership qualities, captaining most of the club teams he played for at some stage. Described as an inspirational figure, he was a model professional, an example to any young footballer coming through as to how to make the very best of your talents and your career. And he had gone on to take over the management of his national team, Wales – a team of no-hopers for years, they had won five out ten games under his stewardship. The future promised so much.
All of which makes the details of his sudden death all the more distressing. Gary committed suicide by hanging himself at his home in Chester. He leaves his wife Louise and two children, Tommie and Eddie, and his wider family, utterly distraught.
There is little known about the circumstances of his death right now, but it has come as a brutal hammer blow to people who knew him. There are indications that he may have been suffering from depression, but no more than that. We will have to wait and see. It may indeed be that we will never find out. Suicide is, after all, an essentially private act. Unless he left a note explaining why, then perhaps there is no reason for us to know any more than we do.
The tragedy of Gary Speed’s death does, however, offer a terrible reminder of one thing as we enter the party season. For all the good cheer and bonhomie that circulates at this time of the year, Christmas is a very rough ride for many people.
Anyone who feels isolated or under-appreciated is at risk of having those feelings intensified. People who live on their own can – and frequently do – experience deep loneliness that can descend into desperation. Those who have been separated from their families or loved ones – and especially from their children – are especially vulnerable. And it is more difficult again, if there are feelings of guilt involved or if an individual blames him or herself for whatever caused their estrangement.
Normal routines grind to a halt. People are left with time on their hands. An absence of purpose only exacerbates the lack of self-esteem that often lurks beneath the surface among those who are prone to concluding that the glass is almost completely empty. Depression, once it sets in, can be hard to lift without help. The short, dark days of winter are a blight. Sleep, perversely, becomes harder to find. The sense of isolation, of bleakness, of being hopelessly cut off from the happiness that others are (assumed to be) fortunate enough to share presses in through the long hours of night till it becomes difficult to see anything beyond the black tunnel of waiting in the murky depths of anxiety.
Anyone who has been suffering from mental health issues; anyone who is a victim of debilitating long-term illness; anyone who is prone to hitting the bottle or the pills too hard; anyone who is cut off from the social rounds or who has lost a loved one recently... I could go on. Many are the vulnerable.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that – in these fiercely dark times especially – we are all in this together. There is no point in trying to suggest that everyone has to stay serious and totally sober all the time. It won’t happen. And besides, there is a place for partying. There is a place for conversation and fun and laughter and music and sex and presents and food – and all of the other good things with which Christmas is associated. These are among the elements that make life worth living, that make it a pleasure to be part of the human project.
But there is a need too, particularly in the bitterly difficult circumstances into which we have been plunged, to stay alert to the vulnerability of others. The incoming budget is destined to cause huge heartache. People who have lost their jobs will struggle to make ends meet. In households across Ireland there will be less to eat. There will be fewer gifts. Many – especially young people who have been unable to find work or to earn a living – will feel doubly betrayed, used and abused by the system, at a time of year that usually brought them comfort and joy.
And so it is a moment when we all need to think of others. To reach out and help. To show solidarity with those who are under pressure in our community. From shopping local, to supporting Irish businesses and craftsmen and women, to giving generously to people in need, there are simple things we can do that really cost us very little but which will potentially make a difference – all the moreso if everyone pulls together.
We need to look after the old, the ill and the lonely in particular. But also to show one another, to the very best of our abilities, the love, the friendship, the care, the compassion and the warmth that in the end we all need, and we all crave, in our strange and sometimes mad little, different ways.
It shouldn’t take the death of someone like Gary Speed – of someone who on the face of it seemed to have so much but made the decision that none of it was enough to go on – to remind us of our responsibilities to one another. But when a life is lost in this way, it makes it impossible to believe anything other than that there is a surfeit of suffering in the world, with the potential to drag us all down. Let’s stick together.
Happy Christmas....