The horror of finding Mac
On Tuesday 24 October 2023, Wayne Holdsworth underwent a trauma no parent should go through. He found his son Mac’s body, the morning after Mac took his own life.
Here is an account in Wayne’s own words of that day.
“My wife Maggie and I get up pretty early about 5.30am or six o’clock. That day, Maggie had to drive into the city for work and left about 6.30am.
I was sitting at the table just having a cup of tea. Mac’s younger sister Daisy got up to have a shower and get ready for school. About five minutes to seven. I thought, ‘That’s odd, Mac’s normally up by now’.
My initial thought was, maybe he’s just having a bit of a lie in because he knew he was driving the car, which is quicker than any other way to get to work.
When he still hadn’t appeared by 7am, I knocked on his door and there was no answer.
I opened the door and I looked to the left where he normally sleeps, and he wasn’t there. And my initial reaction was that he’d already got up and had gone to work some other way.
Then I looked to the right and he’d taken his life. He had hung himself.
I just screamed. I just felt hope helpless. And I felt shameful. I felt useless. I felt just so much sadness and shock – there were all those things running through my mind.
And when you think about it, your parents try to give you some good values when you’re growing up and teach you to do this and that, and you learn from other people. But no one tells you how to act after your son takes his own life.
Daisy heard me yell, and she was just outside the door. I told her not to come in, to just ring Triple Zero, which she did.
And then I cut him down and laid him on the floor. He was cold and he was rigid, and he was dead.
My tears were just dropping on his face. His face was grey. It was a really odd colour. After I laid him down, I instantly thought of Daisy. I quickly went out and she had Triple Zero on the line.
I grabbed the phone from her, and I just said, ‘Stay there for a second and took the phone to his bedroom. The operator asked if we had a defibrillator? And I said, ‘No, we don’t need one. He’s dead. He’s passed away’.
I asked her to please send the ambulance and police.
Then I had to walk out of the room and tell Daisy that her brother had passed away. It was really hard.
The paramedics came really quickly, in maybe three or four minutes – it was so amazing. They rushed in. But then they slowly walked out of the room because they knew what I’d already known.
They said, ‘He’s passed away’. The police arrived really quickly too.
Then I had to ring Maggie and tell her to that Mac had hung himself and that’s all I could get out.
She thought that he might have been still alive, so she did a U-turn in Seaford and drove the car back really quickly, far too quickly, I think.
Maggie got home and she rushed in the door. But then she saw all of us, just, you know, in a solemn mood. And she obviously felt that, you know, that he was dead.
Then I had to ring his brothers and it was really hard. They soon arrived home for us to comfort each other.
The coroner couldn’t get to Mornington to collect Mac’s body until about two or three hours after Mac had passed away. The police stayed for that whole time and were amazing. They were unbelievable.
The police stayed with me, and one of them, Stuart, I now consider a friend because of this. He sat there with me until they came.
And then they came and did what they had to do. And then they had to walk him through the house in a bag and that was so difficult.
It’s the hardest and worst thing I’ve ever been through, and I miss my beautiful Mac every single day. My purpose now is to create a legacy in his honour.”