Peter
Didn't get to celebrate his 17th birthday
Peter was my eldest of five children. He would have been 17. He was a very caring young man. He loved his siblings and would do anything for them, at any time of the day. He loved children and babysat everywhere, for all my friends. He just loved being with children. He was a proud Scout. He went and represented Wiltshire and Gloucestershire in the Scout Jamboree the Christmas before he died. He loved it.
He was a quiet boy, and was very proud of being a scout. He was also very proud of being a Christian and carried the cross every Sunday. He was always at the library - in fact, the librarian asked him to help, because he knew all the books.
I'll never forget when he was a very small child sitting in the back of the car and he would keep saying, ‘Mum, mum, mum…’ And it didn't matter what I said, he still kept sayin ‘Mum, mum, mum’. And in the end, I said,’What is it, I'm trying to drive?’ And he said, ‘I love you’. I'll never forget that, because that's the sort of child he was.
I hope this campaign will help families understand that it's not only people who have mental health issues. Peter's death came out of the blue. It came out of nowhere. He wasn't ill. He had no signs beforehand. The only thing was he was very badly bullied. And I hope this campaign shows that it will help others to understand and maybe help some other families to be able to talk to their child and schools to help.
Maybe, if Peter's school had known more about having a guidance counsellor where children felt safe, that would be, for me, the best thing. If this campaign and Peter's death, helps lower the number of young people lost to suicide then I would be happy. Because I know Peter wouldn't have done what he did, if he'd realised that so many people cared.
There were so many people he could have spoken to. There were 700 people at his funeral. That means he had touched, in 16 years, 700 people. If only he'd spoken to one of the 700 people, he would still be here today.
