KEY POINTS:
If losing a child is an awful cross to bear, imagine losing two in the space of just a few years.
That's been the awful reality for Kawakawa Bay parents Dave and Cherie Phillips, who got a call from Australia earlier this month to say their 27-year-old son Christopher Lyndon had taken his own life.
"The last time I spoke to him was on Mother's Day," Cherie says.
Christopher told her that he missed and loved her, and enquired about her health. "How you feeling, Mum?"
On Tuesday, June 5, the Sydney customs broker and father of two set out during his lunch hour to a bush-clad park in Manly, where he took his life. His body was transported to Auckland a few days later.
The sadness of death fills the room. As extended whanau arrive at the family home, they ask why? How can a family be hit with two similar deaths in as many years?
The Phillips' 18-year-old son David took his own life in 2004.
Despite the lack of a professional diagnosis, both parents believe that depression, "the black dog", was the trigger that killed their boys - "it's the only thing we can point to". Not asking for help, they say, also contributed.
Today, they want to send a message to others about how important it is to speak up when you find yourself in a rough space or when you know someone else who is struggling with the stresses of life.
Dave, who is vice-president of maritime union Auckland Waterfront Branch Local 13, remembers Christopher as being "prone to stress". "He didn't handle it well," he says. "But he always managed to get above it. We would talk to him about getting upset about things to the point that they bugged him, but it fell on deaf ears because he never thought there was a problem.
"He didn't like failure. He had a hunger in him to go out there and prove himself and prove himself over and over again, but he didn't see what this was doing to him."
It was an argument with girlfriend Kyra, Dave understands, that pushed Christopher, the father of Jerome, 8, and Jaylen, 3, over the edge.
Jerome told grandmother Cherie that he wanted to speak at his Daddy's funeral and show all the photos of himself with his idol. "I told him he can say and do whatever he wants," Cherie says.
Dave says getting the news of death, in both cases, was initially "a feeling of disbelief". "Then it's a feeling of immediate emptiness, like something has been ripped out of you, and then you become absolutely distraught. Your emotions just let go - you are hit with anger, sorrow, you want them right there and then to hold. You think it's all a bad dream."
The Phillips say that when the news arrived, questions about whether they had failed their children in some way came flowing. "But no we didn't, the choice they made was made by them, but even when a room full of people tell you that you don't believe it."
Dave told the Herald on Sunday that repairing their lives will be the hardest challenge he and his wife have ever faced. "We don't bury our children, they bury us."
