Carrie Callingham describes her daughter, Melodie Rose Pinckney, as an artistic, pretty and intense child with a dark sense of humour. Like most 14-year-olds, she enjoyed spending time with friends, could be moody and sometimes bickered with her siblings. She loved cosplaying and My Chemical Romance.
On the night of January 3, 2020, she had pizza with her family. The following morning she was found dead in her bedroom, having taken her own life. A coroner ruled Melodie had intended to die by suicide - a finding her mother still struggles to accept. “There were no indications – we never thought she would do something like that,” Carrie said.
Carrie says discovering her daughter had hanged herself was horribly traumatic. She has since wrestled with difficult questions, like why Melodie did what she did, and why, after her school discovered Melodie had been self-harming, were her parents not informed. Over the past six years, Carrie’s grief has evolved and changed her as a person.
Immediately following the tragedy was a period of shock and numbness. “I was in and out of sleep, that's all I wanted to do. I just didn't want to be awake to feel it,” she said. After that, Carrie tried to stay as busy as possible, doing arts and crafts, making teddy bears from Melodie’s clothes, building a shed and gardening. She was well supported by her mother and best friend Frank Chivers.
The funeral took place before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, with the hall packed with family and Melodie’s school friends dressed in cosplay. As lockdown began, bereavement support groups were cancelled. “It was almost like the world acknowledged that she passed because we had a lockdown, and the whole world paused,” Carrie said. She also spoke of her other children: Elliott, Francesca and Cherry, noting that Francesca “saved my life” with her support.
