Mix 102.3 radio star Hayley Pearson opens up on the death of her brother Ryan
She’s best known as Mix 102.3’s bubbly early morning radio presenter but Hayley Pearson has opened up about inner demons and heartache.
Hayley Pearson’s brother, Ryan, longed to be a doting uncle. When she fell pregnant with her first baby, he excitedly bought a swag of children’s books and personalised them with poetic inscriptions – “always laugh, always play” – from their future “Uncle Ryan”.
“He always wanted me to have kids, that was the biggest thing for him,” says Pearson, a mum-of-two and co-host of Mix 102.3’s breakfast radio show.
“He would have been great at reading them stories and taking them to shows. He wasn’t ever going to have his own children so he really, really wanted to be an uncle to mine.”
But Ryan would never meet his little nephews. A text telling Pearson “I’m so proud and amazed that you are a mother” was the final message she ever heard from him.
The chronic alcoholic died suddenly just six days after Pearson’s firstborn, Austin, arrived 13 years ago. It was the shocking, heart-shattering end to an addiction that had devastated the 34-year-old’s life for seven long years.
“It’s just so sad. He saw a picture of Austin but they never actually met,” says Pearson, who was on maternity leave from her role as breakfast host for SAFM at the time.
“I was in my baby bubble and was navigating being a mum for the first six days. Then I was: ‘I’m ready, I need to call Ryan, let’s call Ryan.’
“I was ringing and he didn’t answer the phone. That night, we went to bed and (my husband) Jimmy had a missed call on his phone from my mum and dad and I thought ‘Oh my god, why are they calling him?’, I just had a feeling.
“He called them back and they told me that Ryan had passed away. If it had happened a week before, I would have been giving birth when my brother had just died.”
Ryan – who had been drinking a bottle of vodka every day – suddenly collapsed and died on the floor of his home. His oesophageal varices, the veins that run down the back of the throat, had become thin from so much drinking – a common affliction of alcoholism. That traumatic day, they burst and he bled out.
Pearson’s worried parents, Rosalie and Wayne, had raced to their son’s home when he wouldn’t answer the phone. Wayne broke into the property but it was too late to save their oldest child.
“I knew it was terrible news,” says Pearson, who turned 30 two days after her brother died.
“I had no idea he was going to pass away. We knew he was sick but we didn’t know it would happen then. The doctors had warned him that he would die if he didn’t stop drinking but he just couldn’t.”
Reflecting on Ryan’s difficult, distressing life, Pearson says his addiction can be traced to his primary school days.
A zany, bubbly kid, Ryan was always “different”. A “square peg in a round hole”, as their mum would say. And he became a target for bullies at Linden Park Primary School.
“With addiction there’s a reason why you’re drinking or taking drugs, it’s to mask something,” Pearson says. “I really believe it’s because of how he was treated in primary school by kids who knew he was different and pelted him with apples on the tennis court at school and called him a faggot, all this kind of stuff.
“He was always teased by boys.”
At home with Wayne, a hairdresser who owned a string of salons, and Rosalie, an office manager in the medical industry, the imaginative siblings loved creating their own worlds. They shared a passion for dance and drama and making up their own pantomimes.
“We were both very close to our parents,” says Pearson. “It just goes to show, it doesn’t matter – you can grow up in the most loving household, we had a very comfortable upbringing in Glenunga – and it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t discriminate.”
Ryan went to Marryatville High School, which specialises in the arts. It was a good fit for him, but he was still a target for taunting students.
At 16, he came out to his supportive parents.
“It wasn’t a surprise,” says Pearson, who had just started at Walford Anglican School for Girls at the time.
“More than anything, my parents were worried that his life was going to be harder. He did get bashed up in the city one night – they were worried for their child.
“He lost friends, it was so backwards. Kids can be really, really mean, so cruel.”
Pearson says after her big brother left school, he never really found his place in the world. He moved to Melbourne for a short time and lived at a fast pace, dabbling a little in drugs but nothing concerning.
Then, at 27, he fell into drinking. Before long, he was drinking a bottle of vodka every day, trying to hide it in water bottles and coffee cups.
Concerned doctors warned Ryan that he would die within months if he didn’t give up alcohol. A few months of sobriety came to a crushing end when the young romantic – who dreamt of “falling in love and getting married and to just have one guy forever” – had his heart broken, and returned to the bottle.
Over the years, there were stays in rehabilitation but Ryan would always check himself out. Once, he walked out of the centre – despite having a broken foot – and straight into a bottle-o.
“That’s how desperate he was,” says Pearson.
“When he died, he had the liver of a 66-year-old alcoholic – not just a 66-year-old but an alcoholic. Addiction is the cruellest disease. People think, from the outside, if you’re not touched by it, that people can just stop and fix themselves. It literally takes over, they put it before family, friends, everything.
“He knew he was going to be an uncle – that’s all he ever wanted to be – and I was like, ‘This is a reason to stop drinking’ but he just couldn’t.
“I would get frustrated and say, ‘If you don’t stop, you’re not going to hold him, you’re not going to see him. I’m not having our baby around somebody who’s drunk’, thinking that would be something to help him get sober. But he just couldn’t stop.”
After Ryan’s death, it was baby Austin who helped pull the family through. Pearson says her first born’s arrival was “the worst timing and best timing”.
“Austin saved us and Mum and Dad still say that – having a first grandson to love and distract them,” she says.
Even though they never met Ryan, Pearson’s boys, Austin, 13, and 10-year-old Alfie, have grown up feeling a connection. They are both great swimmers – just like their uncle – and Alfie shares his “out-there” humour. “He’ll dress up for a laugh, which is what Ryan would do,” Pearson says. On the boys’ shelf is a handmade book – written and created by Pearson when they were little – that has helped to keep Ryan real in their lives. Coloured in Ryan’s favourite green, Who Is Uncle Ryan? bursts with smiling photos and loving memories.
It paints the picture of a lime milkshake-loving, crazy face-pulling brother and son. It traces his life, with special family snaps on their favourite rock at Petrel Cove, near Encounter Bay, where Ryan’s ashes have been scattered.
In one photograph, the proud brother – dressed in a black suit and carrying a bouquet of white frangipanis and lilies – is one of four bridesmaids at his little sister’s 2007 wedding at Carrick Hill.
“This was his dream, he would have worn a dress if I’d have let him. I said, ‘I don’t want you to outshine me on my wedding day.’ But he loved it, he walked down that aisle with so much pride,” Pearson says.
“It was his favourite day, being with all the bridesmaids and he just loved my friends so much, he was just so proud to be part of it all and walk down the aisle.”
In the years since Ryan’s death, Pearson has forged a meteoric career path. She’s built a media empire with her best friend and former SAFM producer, Lauren De Cesare, that now includes Adelady, their bright, bubbly website and magazine, their weekly Channel 9 TV show Hello SA, and content production company Hay Lozzie Media.
The businesses employ 17 people and her husband, Jimmy Worthington, edits Adelady.
Late last year, the already-stretched mum-of-two was also lured back to breakfast radio on Mix 102.3 to fill the big shoes of Ali Clarke, who has stepped away following her breast cancer diagnosis. In six short months, Pearson’s helped to drive the show back up the ratings charts, jumping to third spot.
In between daily pre-dawn starts for radio, filming at location shoots for her TV show and creating content and checking glossy magazine proofs for Adelady, Pearson is also an in-demand artist. Her bright, vivid abstracts burst with happiness.
She says it’s helped her process her grief.
“I paint because it’s the only time my mind goes quiet,” she says.
In the light-filled living room of her south-eastern suburbs home, Pearson reflects on the moments that keep her connected to her brother.
On his anniversary and birthday – which, “magically”, is the same day as De Cesare’s – she stops her whirlwind to reflect on Ryan and the hole he has left in her family’s life. “They are the two days that I allow myself to think about it,” Pearson says.
“Every time it is his anniversary, I’ll rock up to Adelady and everyone’s wearing green. People just care and they remember every time – that means so much when people remember him. It’s been such a long time … but that day is still so hard, it hurts.
“Now his birthday is not so sad because I’m with Lauren and celebrating her birthday. He never met Lauren, it’s so sad because they would have loved each other so much.”
A birth date is not the only bond her best friend and her brother share. Madonna’s Like A Prayer – Ryan’s favourite song, which rang out at his Centennial Park funeral – was also played by a choir in memory of De Cesare’s composer ex-partner, Tim Marks, who died suddenly from a brain aneurysm in 2016 when he was just 44.
“It’s my anthem, it comes on at weird situations in my life,” says Pearson, who credits Adelady with “saving Lauren and me and making us happy again after we’d been going through a lot”.
“When I’d just signed at Channel 9 for our TV show, it came on when I sat in the car. It’s always on at pivotal moments, random times, anniversaries. It’s like, ‘Oh, my god, he’s here.’
“It’s mine and Lauren’s song together, and wherever we are when it comes on we’ll find each other and just dance.”
But grief still hangs its cloud over Pearson. It’s left her feeling anxious and jumpy at unexpected phone calls, and terrified of life-changing news or suddenly losing a cherished loved one. Being mum to two boys adds an even deeper level of worry.
But Ryan’s story has given her a purpose: to shine a light on addiction and the fallout it leaves on everyday families.
“He said to me once, when he was really sick, ‘If I die, can you talk about addiction’ so that’s why I talk about it. I said ‘of course I will’ but I didn’t think he would die,” she says.
“I don’t do it often … but I know that when I’ve spoken about it, I’ve had addicts message me and say, ‘Last time you spoke about it, I put my drink down and I haven’t drunk again.’ I get hundreds of people messaging me.
“That’s the power of it. For me to know it can help anyone, whether they’re an addict or related to someone who has an addiction, that’s why I talk about it. I do it for Ryan.”
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