Mother’s grief after son’s suicide inspires rural support group ‘Muzza’s Happy Hour’

When the police turned up at Suzi and Mick Evans’ farm one night, they thought it was to check their guns were stored safely.

Instead, they were told Ms Evans’ son had taken his life.

Murray Chesser was 29 years old, a carpenter by trade, and had been living in Queensland.

In the days and weeks after his death, Mr Evans put aside his own emotions about the loss of his stepson to support his wife.

“I would make sure she got out of bed every morning, just to have a shower and then have a coffee with me,” Mr Evans said.

“I said she could go back to bed after that, but to her credit mostly she didn’t.”

Gentle giant ‘most likely to succeed’

Murray, or Muzza as he was known, was good-looking and popular, a big man who stood well over 180cm tall and had been a talented rugby player.

He had also excelled at school, winning the headmaster’s award for the student most likely to succeed when he graduated from Prince Alfred College in Adelaide.

He loved golf, animals, music and food.

But while working as a carpenter in Queensland he had started using drugs and, despite being clean and sober for two years before his death, struggled with depression.

“Because of his love of food he reminded me of our dog Wally — like a big labrador full of unconditional love.”

Stigma and isolation adds to grief

Ms Evans found her grief was compounded by the stigma around suicide.

“People asked if it was going to be a private funeral, because of the suicide,” she said.

Instead 300 people attended Murray’s funeral at Waikerie in South Australia’s Riverland region, where he had worked before moving to Queensland.

The grief and sense of isolation from losing a child was hard to explain to others.

But one Sunday afternoon Ms Evans was approached by another mother, who had also lost a child.

They sat and chatted at the Wunkar Tavern and Ms Evans realised there were other people in the community who understood her grief and that she was not alone.

Muzza’s Happy Hour the missing link

That conversation, and later the opportunity to speak at a national rural women’s conference about her experience of losing a child, encouraged Ms Evans to do something within her own community.

She developed Muzza’s Happy Hour, an informal Sunday catch-up to provide support and reduce stigma around grief and depression.

In her rural farming community of Mantung, it was also an opportunity to provide the missing link, to connect people to existing programs that needed local champions to promote their services.

“We don’t have mobile phone service down here so, yes there are safe spaces, but how do we know that they are there?” Ms Evans said.

Muzza’s Happy Hour honours the memory of Murray, who loved nothing more than to sit and talk with someone.

For blokes, bringing up difficult conversations can be especially hard but a casual catch-up in a local pub, community hall or even backyard barbecue can be a starting point.

“They’ll sit and talk and it may not be about sensible things, it’s usually something stupid and everybody’s laughing,” Mr Evans said.

The initiative is linking with existing services to share information within rural communities.

“People can take those brochures home from R U OK Day, headspace, Lifeline, all those, and then the farmers at home who don’t like to talk might just pick it up and read it,” Ms Evans said.

One of the parents who attended the launch of the first Muzza’s Happy Hour, at Mantung in late 2019, was Kerryn.

“It’s reassuring to find out that other people understand what you’re going through,” she said.

While COVID-19 restrictions have been challenging, there are plans to expand the Muzza’s Happy Hour initiative to other regional locations.

Ms Evans also wants to develop a website and attract funding to help facilitate the roll-out, but believes it needs to remain an organic, community-led program.

“We can make more lead-way from the grassroots up, we can ripple up and make a difference,” she said.