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?

"Where does it say she was delusional?"
That's what mental illness is. It's a distortion of reality caused by a physical/chemical malfunction of the brain.
That's why people who refuse to believe they're ill, or who talk themselves out of treatment, or blame others for their behaviour, aren't being 'willful' or 'manipulative' or 'stubborn', they're displaying a symptom of their illness.

"I do think she ultimately did damage to her family."
Nope.
I can't even imagine the outrage here if somebody who had died of a "physical disease" was being blamed for the (undeniable) damage it would do to their family.
It's probably completely normal to feel angry, irrational as it may be, at a loved one who died of cancer. But then we're rightly told not to blame them - it's not their fault, blame the disease. Although there's a parallel narrative which suggests that people can will themselves not to die of cancer.
But a moment of equally irrational anger at a loved one who died of a mental illness is reinforced - yes, how dare that person selfishly succumb to the symptoms of their illness. This can't in any way be healthy for those who then can't move past this stage of grief to acceptance.

I cannot BELIEVE the posters on here who are blaming him for contributing to her death

Are there?

What I take issue with is the fact that he doesn't express any awareness that his angry sense that her behaviour was deliberate might perhaps be unfair, given her condition.

Agreed Kestrel.

I agree, Kesstrel but then I am not negating anyone elses opinion, just offering (and sadly having to defend) mine!

his more rational self is aware that she was ill is probably true, eventually if not immediately! It took DH and I a few years before we could wholly accept that MILs own MH issues payed a huge part in her decision.

gloria

Critical when she was 6??! No. she was fearless when she was 6. She loved food when she was 6.

It wasn't the same when she got older. That's what this shows.

And Lass, yes there was one poster pages back who said that it wasn't surprising she killed herself with a family like that - only in more words!

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

That is not what I took from this article. This thread has been really difficult for me - as someone who has struggled with mental ill-health for most of her life. I thought the article was clear-eyed, honest and moving. Emma comes across as a complex, struggling but vital and loveable person to me, as she does to a lot of other people here, and I have to hold on to that. I don't really understand the argument that her grandfather shouldn't be allowed to write about her suicide, as he wasn't more closely related. I remember, for example, when David Bowie died - the media was inundated with personal reflections about what his death meant to people who had never met him. I don't get why a grandfather shouldn't write about what his granddaughter's illness and death means to him.

I don't know quite why I'm struggling so much with your the more negative interpretations on this thread. Suffice it to say, Emma and her family have been much on my mind all day.

Agreed kesstrel I said previously that I have read pieces that did precisely that, which I felt were much more successful.

They also did justice to the relative as a human being while at the same time conveying the difficult emotions their mental illness aroused.

NONE OF WHICH ARE WRONG!

Actually I think any one who thinks it was a well written piece , in the sense of applying critical standards of English literature, is wrong.

I said nothing about applying hierarchies of grief. The anger and later unjustified but real guilt you felt re your mother in law, who seemed to be troubled and difficult adult, is entirely understandable.

This "writer" appears to be judgemental and angry with his grand daughter from at least age 6.

I think it is very honest of him it is not a nice article

family relationships are not all full of love and compassion and understanding, they are not always unconditional and the feelings family members are left with after sucide are very complex anger is a feeling that needs to be addressed not ignored

I don't think I can explain it adequately, Lass. But I think you are wrong (OK, not wholly about his prose)

His grief, my grief, that of my DH all stem from the same feelings of helplessness and misdirected anger.

But you are failing to acknowledge that your own interpretation of the piece is not the only one, nor the superior one and that a piece like that one will many and varied interpretations and responses... NONE OF WHICH ARE WRONG!

I've never said my interpretation was the only, the superior, or the correct one, I've really no idea where you got that idea from. Nor indeed why you feel compelled to state the bleedin' obvious.

I really don't understand your argument, Lass. The writer didn't love his granddaughter because you don't like his writing? There seems to be a conflation of people's issues with a person's prose style, and their perception of the intent behind the prose. I don't get it. I can understand why someone might want to take apart a piece of writing on a critical level, but to then find them somehow deficient both inherently as a person and in their relationship to their loved ones - that seems, at best, a bit of a stretch.

I've written a couple of pieces for the Guardian. One for the Family Section - another an online piece that was more work-related.

I think what people are leaving out in their discussion is the nature of commissioning and copy editing.

It's unlikely a piece dealing in a more predictable way with a grandfather's grief - and his feelings of guilt and helplessness - over the death of a beloved grandchild who suffered from mental ill health would have been commissioned. There's a lot of that stuff around.

This piece is edgier, and more interesting and controversial.

It's also entirely possible that stuff which was in the original - which may have talked about love and about longing - would have been cut by a copy editor. Partly for reasons of space. And partly to tell a clearer kind of story.

So you can't just decide this piece of writing shows us who the writer 'really' is and the extent to which he is - or is not - a 'good' person.. It's more about the state of the market for confessional pieces of writing about mental ill health, and the pressure on commissioning editors to give us stuff that's different and edgy. And the way copy editors have to cut pieces so that the fit round advertisements and other features.

That's what mental illness is. It's a distortion of reality caused by a physical/chemical malfunction of the brain. That's why people who refuse to believe they're ill, or who talk themselves out of treatment, or blame others for their behaviour, aren't being 'willful' or 'manipulative' or 'stubborn', they're displaying a symptom of their illness.

Yes, Ninja, that's what I was trying to say.

Which is why I would agree with the statement "her illness did damage to her family" - because that, sadly, is very often the truth. But why I feel uncomfortable with someone saying ""I do think she ultimately did damage to her family."

Lass, DeathStare's comment on p2 said he was "clearly an emotionally abusive asshole to her all her life", the clear implication being that he drove her to suicide. He may have been. But we can't know that from this article, and I say that as the daughter of a toxic, emotionally abusive mother.

Gloria- "Sorry" as opposed to "If you choose to read it that way, that's up to you". If you say something offensive, intentional or not, it is polite to apologise for giving offense, rather than blame the other person for being offended!

Yes Blanche you are right. 100% right. Your opinion is right. Better than any one who disagrees with you.

After all I can't possibly have had any experience of dealing with any one with a mental health illness, loss or suffering.

Marianne Actually, I did wonder about whether it might not be something to do with the Grauniad itself. It would be interesting to know.

Also I don't understand the bits about being Jewish. His mother was Jewish so he was Jewish. His daughter and granddaughter were Jewish so presumably the mother of his daughter was Jewish. So a Jewish couple had Jewish children. Why write it in such a convoluted way?

Unless he's implying his Jewish descent also makes his daughter Jewish and that he stands as maternal and paternal line. Which is...odd.

batter

Because his daughter being Jewish automatically makes Emma Jewish as well (according to Jews).

So, he sees her as Jewish.

SpunkyMummy

I think you may have misattributed a quote to me - I said nothing about the girl being critical when she was 6. Another poster said the gf was critical of her when she was 6, with which I agree.

I really don't understand your argument, Lass. The writer didn't love his granddaughter because you don't like his writing?

You are conflating 2 points.

Point 1- on a purely stylistic sense it is overblown, pompous and pretentious. He is laboriously "crafting" a laboured and portentous style. I wonder how long he worked on the alliterative but meaningless rose simile.

1. I don't get any sense of love from his leaden prose.

Marianne I'm not convinced by that argument. Presumably if a writer submits a piece about an incredibly sensitive subject effecting their close family, they retain some sort of rights over how the final version is edited, even if just refusal of publishing an unsuitably cut version. And if the writer submitted the piece with no control, well that would suggest a level of insensitivity to the effects on his grandaughter's memory, family and friends.

Yes, Istruggled to read it, he has a very dense style, and he came across as a cold-hearted arse.

Lass

Me too