Goodbye Maxi, but how many more?

Dun­dalk said good­bye as it laid one of its finest to rest this week.

I knew Maxi. Who didn’t? Words, in verse and song, have paid right­ful trib­ute to our love­able rogue, a man who encap­su­lat­ed the soul of our town like few oth­ers. Maxi was as strong as he was vul­ner­a­ble, car­ing and kind, gen­er­ous to a fault and as mind­ful of oth­ers as any­one I have ever met. With me his pre­ferred means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion was the voice note. I have them on my phone. I find myself lis­ten­ing to them, smil­ing at his ban­ter and soul, yet then comes the jar­ring real­i­sa­tion that he’s gone and not com­ing back.

I can ratio­nalise sui­cide to some extent. I’ve spo­ken before of my own decades long strug­gles with my men­tal health and some of the tougher times have been very hard to nav­i­gate. At times I need­ed help. I need­ed Doc­tors, Coun­sel­lors, med­ica­tion and even hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion once. Had those sup­ports not been avail­able? So when I hear of a sui­cide I can part­ly under­stand the over­whelm­ing dark­ness that can descend and take one to the worst of places.

But it’s nowhere near as sim­ple as that in this or many oth­er cas­es. In 1992 I became employed at Dun­dalk Rail­way Sta­tion up the line from where Maxi grew up. By that hap­pen-chance, and noth­ing else, I was offered the VHI through an occu­pa­tion­al health­care scheme and I took it. Since then it has sus­tained me not only through some men­tal health chal­lenges but on my can­cer jour­ney too. I was many times blessed by that chance oppor­tu­ni­ty, pushed at me at the time, to join the VHI.

Maxi didn’t have such luck but wasn’t he enti­tled to the same ser­vices as me? Wasn’t he at least as val­ued a mem­ber of our com­mu­ni­ty, our soci­ety, as me or any­one else? You see, Maxi went for help just like me but for him it didn’t hap­pen. Four years ago anoth­er neigh­bour and pil­lar of our com­mu­ni­ty, Har­ry Taaffe, took the very same jour­ney also seek­ing help which he didn’t get. Har­ry too trag­i­cal­ly passed.

What sort of soci­ety is this? What peo­ple are we that we stand for wild­ly dif­fer­ing out­comes in avail­able health­care between those who are able to afford insur­ance and those who can’t? As a tax­pay­er I’m hap­py to pay for a uni­ver­sal health­care sys­tem free at the point of use and avail­able to all. Irish peo­ple have made it clear that they want this and every polit­i­cal par­ty I know is pledged to it. And yet it’s not deliv­ered. The result is unnec­es­sary death.

Two years ago I encoun­tered a friend in clear dis­tress. I knew the per­son was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and imme­di­ate­ly recog­nised the seri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion so I con­tact­ed their fam­i­ly and, with their per­mis­sion, brought my friend to hos­pi­tal. I knew where to go because some years pre­vi­ous­ly I had been there and had been looked after myself. But my friend didn’t have pri­vate health care and, hav­ing quick­ly been assessed as requir­ing admis­sion, was asked for thou­sands of Euro up front which wasn’t avail­able. I was told to bring the per­son to a major hos­pi­tal A&E instead but they refused to go. My friend is still with us only because late that night a vig­i­lant Gar­da seen them going into the sea and raised the alarm. Talk to any Gar­da, these hap­pen­ings are com­mon and the out­comes aren’t always good ones.

As I walked into Oriel last Fri­day, the night Maxi died, I was hand­ed a wrist­band by vol­un­teers which I have worn since. It reads ‘Join Ireland’s men­tal health social move­ment & end stig­ma’. It’s a wor­thy plea and I’m hap­py to sup­port it but right now it seems to me that most peo­ple are awake to the chal­lenges of men­tal health issues. We can now talk, and write, about it open­ly. Some peo­ple might still look down on those suf­fer­ing but in the main I think peo­ple have moved into a bet­ter space of under­stand­ing and care.

But what hasn’t moved is the dis­crim­i­na­tion — because that’s what it is — against those with­out pri­vate health insur­ance in the pro­vi­sion of oth­er­wise avail­able health care. That is wrong. I would call it immoral. Too many are being lost too soon for the want of some polit­i­cal action that the Irish peo­ple have already man­dat­ed and been promised — a sin­gle tier uni­ver­sal health­care sys­tem.

I know Maxi would want this writ­ten. I can almost hear him egging me on. If he could he’d leave a voice note. It’s awful that it’s come to this. My deep­est sym­pa­thies and con­do­lences to all of Maxi’s fam­i­ly, friends and every­one who loved him. They are many.

‘C’mon Da Town’