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?

Maybe that is why I can't sleep in the dark...

Agree OurBlanche

Blanche, it's absolutely fine to acknowledge all those things. No one has said it isn't! It's the way he's done it. Jeez.

Overly complicated writing style but those who see this as a callous, cold and unfeeling article seem to me to have just misunderstood what he is saying.

He is allowed to be angry but his writing completely dehumanises her.

But some of us, me included, don't object to how he has phrased it.

It is a very emotional, subjective piece.

As I have said a few times before, no one's reaction to it is wrong... no one has to 'win' this argument!

As strangers, if we believe the author, Emma was an awful person who damaged her family badly.

What if that isn't actually true?

What about her other family and friends? What about their grief and their story?

Are they supposed to just accept that his own bleak version of Emma is the one that stands in the public eye?

I've read other very insightful and moving articles about the toll mental illness and anorexia in particular can take on a family. They too expressed anger, frustration, terror, grief, and at times resentment. However they also conveyed love and respect for the patient, and an understanding of mental illness all of which is entirely absent here.

Good point,kidnapped.

As I stated earlier, this is the exact same kind of trope that is regularly trotted out by toxic family members in denial.

We have his side of the story , we don't have Emma's.

This article is a perfect illustration of how mh problems are still demonised. It's all the victim's own fault, according to the writer.

It really reminds me of a similarly cringingly self-absorbed piece that Martin Amis wrote about his cousin who disappeared as a young girl, who it later transpired was a victim of Fred West.

Her mother and sisters wrote piece in response that it nauseated them that he had made the her tragic death and the family's pain all about him, when he had shown no interest in her whatsoever when she was alive and was if anything had been dismissive.

As strangers, if we believe the author, Emma was an awful person who damaged her family badly.

It is all personal interpretation, as ourBlanche has stated, because that is not how I read the piece. For me, the jist was that Emma was a deeply troubled individual who resisted help and ultimately couldn't be saved and the pain, rage and frustration associated with that which damaged the family badly.

We all take our own backgrounds and experiences to any piece of writing so there will never be any correct interpretation just as there is never any correct way to feel and express pain and loss.

I read the whole thing and I completely understand it. The difficulties of living with someone who re-writes every moment of joy as a moment of sadness. The hopelessness of living with someone who is so self-destructive that you almost know what is going to happen a long time because it does.

I don't think he dislikes her at all. I think he sounds sad, very sad at the whole thing.

It's not demonising someone with MH issues. Not at all. People who live with others who have severe mental illness suffer too. They have to live with the stress and anguish at seeing the people they love harm themselves over and over again and feel the hopelessness that comes with being able to do nothing about it. They're allowed to feel what they feel, just as much as people with poor mental health are allowed to feel how they do too.

As strangers, if we believe the author, Emma was an awful person who damaged her family.

I am a stranger and that is not what I thought about Emma when I read this.

whatthe

I didn't think Emma was a bad person after reading the article...

I do think she ultimately did damage to her family. And this article really showed this in very honest way.

I certainly didn't think she was a bad person. I understood that she was intelligent, determined and ill. And that illness did immeasurable damage to her life and those who shared in it.

whatthe, I see what you say about the importance of allowing feelings of anger and frustration to be talked about, not least for the benefit of others. As someone who has struggled in with a child with MH issues myself, I do understand that.

But this is a grown man who is writing about a child/young woman as if her mental illness was her own choice and as if his frustration was the sum total of her life. He is not the prime carer, but he is the one who gets to write her epitaph. And all we learn about this young woman is that she was wilful and frustrating. Was there really nothing else to be said? Is this really how her entire family want to remember her?

If he was eager to benefit the rest of society, why could he not have written "I feel so angry", "however irrational I feel as if" ? It would have been just as helpful to other people- and a lot more respectful of the young woman who is dead.

As for "In a life as short as Emma’s, every action is notable, every event historic"- right? so because she died at 21, some perfectly normal silly behaviour at 6 or 10 is somehow historic: she can be judged on that though the rest of us, who manage to live until we are old, won't be?

Spunky, what about the wilful damage that he is doing to Emma's family and friends right now? Why is that 'damage' okay and Emma's 'damage' not okay?

He has identified her in a national newspaper. She cannot defend herself. This will bring hurt and scrutiny to her family and friends. Given the very different reactions on here, it would be surprising if they all reacted favourably to the article.

I don't think Emma was a bad person. He sounds self-centred , self-important and has delusions that he can write.

Ah! I read that as: in a long life a day is a very small % of a life.

But in a life that spans c25% of that long life, every little thing becomes more, as it is all he had to remember her by. So yes, her family don't have any mature adult memories of her, that Silly Six Year Old becomes more defining of her, more treasured.

Just another way of looking at 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.

I bloody love him for publishing it.

If I were a writer, if I had the Rhino-Hide needed to take the blow back for giving my entire, non-sanitised perspective, I don't doubt I would be judged just as harshly. But I'm not and I haven't. So I'm grateful he's used his platform and taken the heat in order to reflect back "it's not just you" at those of us who can relate.

If he is narcissistic, abusive bastard who practically hammered the nails into his relative's coffin, then ... so am I. But that doesn't change the reality that when MIL was dying it was my hand she held, and when I went to the loo I was the one she called out "Mamma, come back" to.

I suspect that all of us are projecting our own feelings on to this article. Me included of course.

I do feel he's a shitty writer though.

The man isn't capable of empathy.

I suspect that all of us are projecting our own feelings on to this article. Me included of course.

Copy and pasted in 100% agreement