Opinion: Remembering Rich – loved by everyone but himself

Richard Sparey is an arable farmer and contractor in Herefordshire. Here he reflects on the loss of a friend and the importance of mental health awareness in agriculture.

Rich Layton (pictured above) was a hugely kind, loving man. Not many people in their third decade of marriage could boast such a humorous, loving and intimate friendship as Rich and his wife Louise.

As a father he loved his children dearly and, importantly, was able to show it. And he could spot a single person feeling sad and find the time to bring some sunshine into their life.

See also: How farmers can deal with mental health at times of pressure

This may not be the most conventional way to discuss something that leaves so many questions, but when you are dealing with an illness as savage as the one that Rich fought, convention can sometimes be part of the problem.

I certainly don’t have any answers, and when someone takes their own life, the questions left behind are endless and unanswerable.

The word “depression” when said slowly does nothing to explain the turmoil and constant anxiety this illness brings. It conjures up visions of a grey December day, with a thick, cold fog.

The reality is more like a severe weather event, with destructive gales, storms within the storm, and an occasional calm or even sunny spell mixed in.

Everyone loved Rich – well, almost everyone. I did however know one person who didn’t, and that was Rich himself.

In fact, there were parts of his character he hated with a passion. Nothing he did was good enough. He mentally harassed himself constantly, never letting his brain be at peace.

Lowest point

At his lowest point, he stopped shaving, cleaning his teeth, and washing. This wasn’t because he felt a bit tired or couldn’t be bothered.

It was because he was too scared to look in the mirror and stare at the frightened stranger looking back.

Just imagine living for decades in near constant fear; fear of never being good enough, fear of failure, fear of losing this very fight. It is truly exhausting.

Rich knew how much he was loved, but his own self-loathing caused this desperate loneliness. I have been there too. Your mind is screaming for help, but when the phone rings you are too scared to answer it.

Or when someone comes up the drive, you run off because you don’t want them to see what you think you have become.

This illness is progressive and slowly eats away at your sense of reality. It destroys your confidence, erodes your thought process, rots away your ability to use logic.

It leaves your head full to the point you feel it will physically burst. You question your own sanity.

“You have got a beautiful wife and children, what’s wrong with you? Just concentrate on that” is a phrase we both heard.

But not being the person you think you should be for your immediate loved ones is nearly more of a burden.

The thought that other people’s lives might be better if you weren’t here to drag them down is far from a selfish one.

Rich didn’t have a selfish bone in him. He was a brave, brave man. He fought this illness so hard for decades, a lot of the time in silence. All he wanted was for the pain to stop.

When you are standing on the cliff-edge of your sanity, what is real or not is all so blurred. You are no longer scared of dying, your head keeps telling you it’s fine, go on, the screaming will stop, peace will be there.

Rich faced down this noise not just now and again, but sometimes daily, hourly, or even by the minute.

Thousands of times he won that battle, just once he lost it. I’m praying now that the torture has stopped for him. I’ve never met a braver man who fought so hard for this not to happen.