To feel very uncomfortable about this Guardian article?

[KingscoteStaff]

Front page of the 'Family' section. A grandfather talking about his 21 yo granddaughter who has just committed suicide.

It just doesn't feel real. Could it be some sort of exercise in writing the most unsympathetic narrator ever?

It's not well written and it seems grandiose, he comes across as very cold indeed and overly critical of her from a very young age. If the family around her were like this then this is why she had so many issues that led to her death. She was right, they could not stand her.

Bloody horrid article

I'm just not getting the anger at it, at the writing in particular. But there's only a few of us on that feel that way, obviously it's provoking a strong reaction.

Xpost - snap cory!

Compassion? There was no compassion in this piece.

The vast majority of angry, frustrated, bereaved people do not write articles in the Guardian, though. You don't have a choice about how you feel about your grief, but you do have a choice about whether to take money for publishing it. He could have written all that down in an article and locked it up in a drawer or burnt it. Instead he used it in his writing career.

Yet many posters here have reported that they welcomed him sharing the not-nice, inappropriate, 'incorrect' emotions and that he didn't try to pretend them away in order to present in the socially prescribed, 'correct' response to death. Grief and bereavement and the sheer messy rage of it really is a taboo in our society, which is exactly why writers should write and newspapers should publish articles like this.

If the family around her were like this then this is why she had so many issues that led to her death. Bloody hell! So I did kill my MIL?

Whilst it is obvious that we have all read the article quite differently I am not sure that accusing him of being the cause of her unhappiness and suicide is reasonable!

I wonder how he would have written the piece had she died from some other chemical imbalance, like diabetes?

I find the stigmatising of mental illness as if it something that the sufferer 'chooses' to be abhorrent.

And how many posters who have suffered from mental illness themselves have welcomed this piece?

On the you can't be that naive front, who knows maybe he's leaving out the second part which could be I agree, or I am so angry / upset at this.

Imagine if you'd had the life Emma had, and this was your legacy - an exasperated complaint about your unreasonable behaviour in a national newspaper. Very true

If a relative wrote this about a family member in similar circumstances I would be so hurt and appalled. I am wondering how this 'uncle' has treated his niece when she was alive. I wonder if he acted like a pompous ass then. Very questionable 'article', haunting for all the wrong reasons. Manipulative almost and definitely male ego self-absorbed. I actually shuddered reading it, not because the writing is so emotive and evocative but because I wonder what this author's intentions are.

Gloria with all the respect in the world, it is impossible to live any life continually trying to avoid upsetting someone.

That one section of society finds a thing upsetting does not negate the positive reaction of another section.

Right from the outset, the very first sentence, the piece aims to shoulder all responsibility onto his granddaughter and shift the pity into him. It's a complete wankfest.

So now we're going to invent sentences he didn't write to defend him?

Cory - quite. Why else would he put those things in?

It's not about upsetting people but about having some kind of grasp of mental illness if you are going to write a piece about it. Rather than simply focusing on your own self-pity.

will-fully refused to acknowledge her terminal illness

And there is is again. Willfully. She was seriously mentally ill and delusional fgs.

Where does it say she was delusional?

I don't care enough to defend him, I just don't feel as angry as others about it. I didn't mind it, I read it all rather stopping half way through, which anyone can do.

Anyway, not much else to say on it

Ok, it was the grandfather, even worse. horrible. If I think about how my dad loves my children in a most selfless and genuinely caring way. He would literally lay his own life down for them, without a doubt.

This poor young woman sadly did not have a grandparent who warmly loved her.

e.g.
"What also doesn’t work is regretting the years she might have had. They never were hers. Twenty-one of them were, and are hers still to occupy and expend as she did. Any more are in the possession of some other Emma, the one we encounter nightly who departs at dawn.

They were never hers? This is the type of pseudo artistic / intellectual naval gazing that only a patriarchal man can display. Just awful . And the writing is utter crap.

People who have anorexia are delusional about the status of their body, and the consequences of their actions. He says

Meanwhile, in her private journal she reiterated that her ideal body weight was 88lb (40kg). These aspirations were accompanied by illustrative sketches of herself, redolent of Auschwitz.

I'd rate the beautiful posts made on here a million times over his.

Having experience of this type of situation within family it's almost like the illness survives by causing behaviour that makes it feel almost impossible to love that person. The pain my sister in law caused the family even when her dad was seriously ill and dying made it impossible for my husband to deal with her. She was physically and verbally abusive and attempted suicide twice while her father was dying and said it was because her mum was not giving her enough attention and that he wasn't as sick as her. When you are faced with mental illness and don't know what else to do to help an anger can develope. My husband was in so much pain he said things he didn't really mean and that is how this reads. When she was eventually sectioned he calmed down but still felt a huge amount of anger toward her and what she had done. It all kicked off again when I fell pregnant . She came off her meds started making abusive phone calls and it got worse when our child was born to the extent that his mum couldn't leave her to see the baby. She then started making abusive phone calls to the ward. It seemed to me that he felt torn by his love and wish to protect his parents and his love for his sister. No matter how much time and help was given it just seemed to make her worse and so the love turned to anger. Even when her mother was dying she continued to steal money from her bank account, run up thousands of pounds of debt and expect her mum to pay it . At the end she refused to visit her mum in the hospice but still demanded money despite her mum begging her to. Her disease to my mind is akin to cancer and can be as life threatening , destructive and as debilitating in the long term. It's like any disease it does what it can to survive no matter the cost to the victim, those they love and love them.

So, it is not allowable to acknowledge the anger and frustration felt by family members?

It is not allowable to acknowledge that after a suicide family members do wallow in self pity and other 'unpleasant' behaviours?

I can't agree with that. Grief is what it is. Unsanitised, unapologetic and hard to work through without having to censor every word and thought!

I have mh problems, severe ones. If I died from mine, I'd come back and fucking haunt anyone who wrote this kind of bilge.