August 1998, 3.45 pm. I came home from work and had my usual cup of coffee. It was now 20 past four and I was peeling the last carrot for our evening meal. Darrel finished work at 5pm and would be home at five past six.

Someone was knocking on the front door; I put the carrot down and rinsed my hands at the kitchen sink. I opened the door to a police officer. ‘Is this the home of Stephen Maczkowiack?’

‘Yes,’ I looked blankly at him, not daring to wonder why he was here. The few seconds of silence between us felt endless. Nathan, our neighbour’s son who had been playing with Lego on the kitchen floor, nuzzled in beside me.

‘Please go home,’ I whispered to him.

Turning back to the officer, I said,’ I’m Stephen’s mother. Do you want to come in?’ I held the screen door open as he brushed past me into the front porch, and ushered him into the kitchen. My mind was spinning, apprehension and uneasiness sweeping over me.

Why is he here? I had trained myself, over the years, not to get excited, but to stay calm and deal with whatever situation Stephen was in. The officer’s exact words from that point on now escape me, but the essence of them will remain with me all my days: ‘Your son was found in his unit in Barmera at four o’clock this afternoon. He hanged himself.’

I remember the word ‘hanged’ clearly. It echoed through my head and ricocheted through my whole body. Time stood still.

‘No! No way! That’s not true!’ I screamed back at him. My brain felt like it was exploding from overload of what had just been said, at the same time trying to reject it. It was a message from hell.

I grasped at a thought that was completely irrational. He didn’t actually say he was dead. Maybe … But I knew it was true. The look on the officer’s face said it.

I recall my head was dull and empty, my body in shock. I kept shaking my arms; I guess I didn’t know what else to do with them. At the same time I willed my legs not to collapse on me. I felt as though a clamp was compressing my stomach and chest, trying to squeeze the last breath out of me. I couldn’t even cry ‘No!’ any more. All I could do was make a pitiful cry like some injured animal, and the noise kept coming over and over again. I was marching around the room, still shaking my arms like a demented wind-up toy.

I have no idea how long I kept this up, but eventually I was aware of the police officer holding me, trying to calm me down. And I remember his saying this was the hardest part of his job. ‘I am the same age as your son.’

He rang the station to advise I was so distraught that he would stay with me until my husband came home. I have no recollection of whether I gave him Darrel’s work number or if I dialled it for him. Why did this happen? What went wrong? We had been with him five days ago in Barmera and he had looked happier than I’d seen him for a long time. He was in good spirits. In fact Darrel had said, as we drove away that night, ‘I think he’s going to be fine.’

There were two reasons we had gone to visit Stephen; he wanted us to see where he lived and worked, and we were also concerned for his general wellbeing. He was working five days a week installing irrigation systems and fruit picking on weekends. He only had every third weekend off, when he would return to his home in Gawler to see his friends and work on his garden. He didn’t seem to be able to stop working. He had been through five very difficult years.

The break-up of his marriage, a work injury that prevented him from getting a job and having to cope with constant pain were only some of the difficulties that had caused his loss of confidence in himself and his ability to succeed in life. And then things seemed to be looking up – he was no longer heavily in debt and he had a job. However, we were concerned about him living alone because he suffered from depression and we still had a lingering uneasiness, although this was laid to rest, to some degree, after our visit.

While waiting for Darrel to have a shower before we headed home to Craigmore, Stephen and I squatted together in front of his unit, on that last evening we had together. ‘I shouldn’t smoke,’ said Stephen, reaching into the top pocket of his shirt for his cigarettes.’ Dad wouldn’t like it.’

Given all that Stephen had been through, and his fragile state, smoking seemed a minor transgression. I told him if he wanted to smoke to go ahead, it was all right with me. He leaned back against the wall and gave a contented sigh.