My wife ended her life seven months after we got married

Shortly after Christmas, Joseph Dewey left the flat that he shared with his wife Cate to spend the day with friends.

He’d been tasked with finding fresh pasta for the three-course dinner that she was preparing for their New Year’s Eve party to ring in 2025 when he missed a phone call from her. As he tried to listen to the message, the reception was so bad he couldn’t make out what Cat was saying. 

As Joseph hung up, he had no clue it would be the last time his wife would ever call his phone.

Theirs was a relationship that had played out like a romantic film. Bored and out of work due to Covid, actor and director Joseph turned to Hinge for entertainment in 2020, where Cate was one of the first people he met. His first question was about her favourite film and, learning it was Legends of the Fall – which he had never seen – they watched it together but apart, chatting over WhatsApp about the music, the scenery and all of Cate’s favourite scenes, from their respective flats.

They didn’t realise at the time, but cinema would run like a thread through their romance, binding their first encounter and eventual wedding.

Their first date was the following day. Despite the fact that it was on Zoom, an excitable Joseph unnecessarily put on some scent and as soon as they logged on, they both realised they’d just been watching the same show: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

‘We were on the same wavelength from the start’, Joseph, 37, tells Metro from Cate’s flat in Ware, Hertfordshire, their wedding pictures framed on the wall behind him.

‘Cate was the most beautiful person in the world. She lit up every room. She was really fun, such a foodie, an amazing cook and just an absolutely loving person. She was the most extroverted introvert. She loved going out and being around people, but then she loved hiding in her room playing Sims,’ he says.

Five months after they first met, when the nation was still in the grips of Covid, Cate moved from Ware into Joseph’s flat in central London. With strict restrictions still in place, they spent their first Christmas cosy, alone and happy, with Joseph cooking the turkey and Cate playing on her new PlayStation game. They listened to jazz, ate too much, and the next day it started to snow.

‘I suggested we went for a walk and we found ourselves standing outside the London Eye in the middle of the day in the snow, with no one around. It was just magical,’ remembers Joseph, who says he knew then that Cate was the woman he wanted to marry.

However, as Covid fell away, the mental illness that had dogged Cate all her life, started to re-emerge.

‘She always said she had a brain funk, but didn’t really delve into it,’ Joseph explains. It wasn’t until he started to witness her having panic attacks, that he realised something more serious was going on.

‘The respite of the pandemic enabled her to almost feel as if she could breathe again through that time. And when the world started to open up again, you could just see that it was a struggle for her. She’d find everything very overwhelming,’ he explains.

In 2023, Joseph spoke to a friend who worked at Kensington Palace and asked him to close the King’s Gallery so he could get down on one knee and propose. Cate instantly said ‘yes’ and the couple celebrated with champagne and started planning their cinema-inspired wedding.

By the time they married in May last year, Cate had been on an NHS waiting list for therapy for nearly a year, but her panic was kept at bay as they tied the knot at Screen on the Green in Islington. The bride walked down the cinema aisle in a white gown and the newlyweds kissed in front of the movie screen showing their favourite cinematic embraces from Indiana Jones and Gone with the Wind.

‘She was the calmest I’ve ever seen her on that day. I was an absolute wreck. And she was like, “I’ve got you.” I will always thank her for the happiest day of my life. We had such a good day,’ Joseph remembers.

In the months afterwards, the couple attended three other weddings of close friends and colleagues, but after they returned from their honeymoon in Turkey, Cate’s struggles deepened. She would lament that her ‘brain was broken’ and that she wasn’t getting the right help.

‘She had tremendous anxiety and was having panic attacks. First of all, I would think: “Oh my god. What do you need, what can I do?” But that is completely the wrong thing to do. You learn it is about being with them, distraction techniques, breathing next to them heavily so they can hear your breath and get into a rhythm themselves and having no questions, no shame, no blame about what was happening.’

Joseph scoured the internet for ways to help Cate and became her rock, supporting through her panic. He also believes that Cate was experiencing the symptoms of undiagnosed ADHD, because she would swing wildly from excitability to a complete crash. 

When she went to see the doctor in 2024, she was given anti-depressants, and after endlessly waiting for NHS therapy, the family eventually paid for private help.

‘She was flying high in her career, working as an administrator at the Food and Drink Federation and they absolutely adored her. She was so good at the job, but sometimes she’d work from home, because going into the office would give her anxiety.

‘If we went out and if it was too busy, she would have panic attacks where she would literally be on the floor struggling to breathe, which would then trigger depression. Cate just looked so sad and tired and would spend a lot more time inside,’ Joseph remembers.

Despite her fragile mental state, Christmas 2024 was a fun time for Cate, he says. The newlyweds saw friends and family and made plans for the following year. ‘We were going to move back to Ware to get out of central London. We were thinking about buying in Tunbridge Wells. We wanted to own a little cabaret space and Cate wanted to get a bridal shop called Catherine’s. We were going to get a dog, and start a family,’ he says.

Joseph believed his wife would feel better when the therapy started to bed in and she got the answers she needed from a private ADHD assessment. Cate had spoken about feeling suicidal, which he was concerned could be a side effect of the antidepressants, so went back to their GP for support. 

When he talks about the last day of Cate’s life, Joseph’s voice remains thick with disbelief.

 After spending most of 30 December apart, he had assumed they would meet back at home later in the day. Then Cate’s mum called asking Joseph where her daughter was. 

The pair soon discovered that Cate had checked herself into a B&B and ended her life.

He remembers very little of the aftermath. People later told him that he struggled to understand what was going on. Cate’s mum called and said “Cate’s gone.” ‘And I went: “Where’s she gone?” And she was like, “No, honey, Cate’s gone.”’ 

She had left a letter each for her mum and sister at her flat and a voicemail on Joseph’s phone saying she was sorry and that she couldn’t do it anymore.

‘She’d just had enough’, Joseph says. ‘Cate never wanted suicide. No one does – they just want the pain to stop.’

Deep in shock and grief, the following months remain a blur. He has memories of having to design her order of service and video montage, because funerals are geared for older people, and of the shock each time he opened another official letter full of cold language about Cate’s death.

Joseph wasn’t spared the cruel coincidence that he had attended four weddings and a funeral in the space of a year. If their story were a film, there would be some sort of resolution; a happy ending that could bolster those left behind. But this is real life, and instead of the fairy-tale finish, Joseph has had to find hope and focus where he can. 

In the early weeks of his unthinkable grief, Joseph realised that he needed to do something with his anguish. So he mobilised, holding a cabaret concert in May, at which friends composed scores from voice notes Cate had sent to Joseph.

On 10 August, on what would have been Cate’s 32nd birthday, loved ones will take part in a 10km run, while a month later, Joseph will host a 70mile walk around London along some of Cate’s most-loved routes to coincide with Sucide Prevention Day. By the end of the year, he estimates that – along with donations from the funeral – Cate’s friends and family will have raised £25,000 for suicide prevention charity PAPYRUS.

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As well as raising cash to support this vital cause, Joseph wants to open up the conversation around suicide, believing that the stigma prevents stricken people from seeking help.

‘It’s so important to speak about suicide, and if I can shine Cate’s light through talking about it, then that’s exactly what I want to do. Suicide is such a big killer, especially for the under-35s. Men’s mental health is being spoken about, but I don’t know if enough people speak up about young women dying from suicide, and unfortunately, that rate is going up.’

Tragically, after years of decline, suicide rates are rising – especially among women. In 2023 in England and Wales, they reached levels not seen since 1999, according to PAPYRUS. And Joseph is worried that the stigma prevents people from seeking help.

‘Cate, my wife, dying – I want no one to experience that at such a young age. I miss her incredibly. Speaking about suicide doesn’t doesn’t make the suicide rate grow up. It actually does the opposite. So I want to use Cate’s voice to get people talking – and listening. People are suffering and if we don’t check in with each other, you don’t know what people are up to behind closed doors.

‘And if you are struggling, go and speak to your GP. Go and call the Hope Line. Tell your friends and family. You don’t have to go through this alone.’

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