Roberta Gray

nlgbbbblth

I just read in today's Irish Times about the death (on 1 Jan) of journalist Roberta Gray at the shockingly young age of 28.

She had penned a variety of entertaining columns in The Sunday Tribune for a couple of years. While the focus was on a dating search she could write eloquently on many other topics.

Rantorama

Thats very sad news indeed.

RIP

alleepally

Just read it on the Sunday Independent online. I'm in shock and very saddened by it. More needs to be done to address depression and suicides in Ireland.

RIP Roberta.

jrey1981

I read this too and was similarly aghast...I plan to see if I can find some of her articles online as I had not heard of her before this

blather

What happened to her? Was it illness?

OMcGovern

I read about her yesterday alright.... was shocked.
I used to read her dating column for an insight into the single female mind.

The Sunday Tribune had a half page article about her yesterday cos she worked there. They said she had been suffering from depression for a while.
While they never mentioned the "S" word, I don't think they need too.

A few years ago a girl who I worked with took her own life.
I suppose some people haven't got the psychological defenses to cope with this crazy world...

blather

Ah right. I did wonder. Thanks.

Eoin

Here's the obituary from the Irish Times (though from another site):

Obituary

Printed 7 Jan 2006
Irish Times

Young arts critic and insightful observer of dating life

Roberta Gray: Roberta Gray, who died last week aged 28, made her mark during her short career in journalism as a young arts critic and a wry observer of a woman's experience of working, living and loving in Dublin.

Her family and many of her wide circle of friends gathered in Dublin
yesterday to celebrate her life and remember a clever, thoughtful and immensely likeable young woman. Thousands more people will have felt they knew her well through her column for almost two years in the
Sunday Tribune, called This Dating Life.

Roberta Gray was born in Dublin in 1977. Educated at St Columba's College, she studied English and philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1999. She travelled to Australia with friends for a year. Chronicling her journey, she wrote how they had all set off "armed with the arts degrees that we thought would spread the world at
our feet. What couldn't we achieve, with our 2:1s and our dissertations on postmodernism?"

But unhappy to find herself in a job filing insurance claims she travelled to New Zealand for six months and wrote for a Wellington
newspaper. She returned home and studied journalism at Dublin City
University. In June 2001, she submitted a piece to The Irish Times on the birthplace in Wellington of the modernist writer Katherine Mansfield. Her family remembers her great pride at seeing it published. Later she would have a number of other articles published by the paper.

When she arrived in the Sunday Tribune on a student placement that
summer, she impressed everyone with her ndividuality and enthusiasm. She wrote news features and was full of good ideas. She moved into arts reviews, becoming an astute critic, and was a panellist with RTÉ
television's arts show The View.

In September 2003, she began her own column in the new Tribune magazine. It featured her search for a soul mate, internet and
speed-dating, her love of food and yoga, and the men who stopped phoning, along with a sideways look at life and culture. She continued
to work on arts interviews and reviews, crafting them into highly-readable pieces. She also began a regular environmental column.

Only those closest to her knew the extent of her struggle with depression, although she occasionally referred to the topic in her
column. Writing last year about the date designated the most depressing day of the year, she wrote: "There's a comforting sense of communality when someone announces an international day of depression. There's nothing worse than feeling unaccountably miserable and all alone in it."

In July 2004, she left the Sunday Tribune, telling friends she would now "seek fame and fortune in the precipitous world of the freelance". She died tragically on New Year's Day. She is survived by her parents, Patrick and Caroline, grandmother Margaret Thompson and brother Nicholas. She will be sadly missed.

Roberta Gray: born July 9th, 1977; died January 1st, 2006

Markham

Roberta interviewed me last year for a piece on giving up drinking - such a charming and bubbly person.

It just goes to show how deceptive depression is, that external appearances can hide what is going on emotionally. I'm sure this was a hammer blow to anyone who knew her, and my condolences to her family and friends.