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?

Have you anything to contribute to the thread vic1981 or are you just here to police my posts?

But Spunky what has his mum got to do with his granddaughters Jewish descent which should be through the maternal line, ie not him?

I just didn't get that bit at all.

In fact, those who have written so eloquently about anger and conflicted feelings about loved-one with mental health problems only serve to highlight (IMO) the deficiency in understanding that the author of the article shows

We know what happened after Rudyard Kiplings Garden. She produced an amazing scrapbook, was elated and joyous. . and said something like 'those retards who do crap stuff in your face' only to have that baloon of joy popped by a withering and judgemental shower of disapproval from good old GF. No wonder she 'knew what followed happiness' a crashing shower of negativity about not enjoying happiness in the 'right' way. Her expression and interpretation of this isn't 'i felt awful when I realised i'd upset her deeply' its 'oh this is just 'spin' to rewrite my sensible correction,.. ( er making her cry (as he admits in his odd 'daughters arent mine as such they are jewish through my fault ..marrying a jew) ) into her negative narrative.

I suspect she had constant high handed disapproval from him, and would have been better being as she says..free of them.. but it sounds like she was so minimised she found ot hard to like away fron the abuse.

Batteries I think he mentioned their being Jewish as a lead into him feeling "a very Jewish spasm of self-blame" (constantly feeling guilty is both a Jewish and a Catholic in-joke).

Firstly I have to say iPosts post was really insightful and i could really understand what she was saying.

I think the article was hard to read and that the writer comes across as cold and unsympathetic but what he has written are his inner thoughts and there is no indication (I don't think) that he was or was not sympathetic and supportive towards his granddaughter and family in real life. Just because he writes in a detached manner doesn't mean that's how he behaved.

I dealt with a FIL with an addiction which eventually killed him and I always said and did the right thing (or what I thought was the right thing). However, my private thoughts were more or anger, frustration and annoyance. I wasn't sympathetic in my head, not at all I just felt cross with him for making everyone around him suffer too. I don't think he was a nice person.

The other thing to remember is that it is really hard for people to understand depression and mental illness. That's no excuse for being unsympathetic but it might help explain the writers stance. I have never suffered from any depression and I find I have to be careful to check my thoughts IYSWIM hopefully threads like this help people understand a little better.

Its not unusual to feel some anger towards people who have committed suicide is it? Is it possible this article might comfort some people who are feeling guilty over their negative feelings towards someone who has committed suicide?

Lass, you're the one doing the conflating. Every one of your posts on this thread both attacks the author's prose and questions his worth as a human being. You've decided you don't like this person, though you know nothing about him beyond what he's told you in this piece - you find him "irritating" and "pleased with himself" based on nothing but an aversion to his prose style - and now you've decided he has nothing to say to you worth thinking about and he probably never loved his granddaughter anyway.

I have no idea what the reference to being Jewish is supposed to convey. The whole of the paragraph where that gets dragged in incomprehensible.

I shouldn’t have made her cry. I should have withheld my inhospitable corrective, deferred my display of liberal credentials, suppressed my pedagoguery, my self-aggrandisement, my vainglory

Setting aside inhospitable corrective as being completely meaningless he certainly is making no attempt to suppress his self-aggrandisement, and vainglory
I'll have to take his word on his having liberal credentials

Actually I think that all children are entitled to unconditional love from their parents, particularly when they are ill. It may be a strain, it may be difficult of course.

But as others have said nobody writes an article like this about a relative who died of cancer. He does seem to be full of the notion that she could have chosen a different path but didn't want to. I think there is slight scope to say that he was frustrated about her illness and how it blocked her ability to do so.

Reading it back, I can't quite decide whether he is frustrated that the hospital didn't try hard enough /couldn't treat her because she was determined to get out before they could diagnose her or find a course of treatment for her, or whether he actively blames her for not staying in the hospital.

The thing is that a lot of people who are ill completely lack insight into the extent of their illness.

Lass hasn't conflated anything. I found her posts perfectly clear.

She finds the writer unpleasant, and she also dislikes his prose style.

It's perfectly possible to dislike a person but like their writing style - TS Eliot and Flaubert would be good examples for me.

Am I reading it right, in that Emma lived in Canada and her grandfather lived in the UK? They wouldn't have seen each other that often and wouldn't have been close. I think the article expresses (badly) bewilderment as much as anything else. I don't think seeing her grandfather twice a year would have had much of a negative effect on her, to be honest. People are attributing the "retard" (sorry) incident with more importance than maybe it was. To me he sounded puzzled that such a deserved admonition could have so successfully ruined her day - I think he was using it as an example of her perceived inability to react "normally" and put things into perspective.

Every one of your posts on this thread both attacks the author's prose and questions his worth as a human being

And? Sorry but if he chooses to put this out in the public domain as a purchaser of The Guardian I'm perfectly entitled to be critical of his writing skills

A terrible thing happened- that does not render him a criticism free zone.

Is the piece misogynist?

I have a friend at the moment who is writing about family suicide. Firstly the losses of the some of people left behind are - frankly - so great, that a newspaper article probably doesn't make a lot of difference in the long run. If you lose a partner, a sibling or a child you are not likely to be breezing along thinking, 'Life is terrific and I have completely recovered' - there's a complicated internal coming and going of feelings.

I've lived in a house where somebody has committed suicide, so there's some experience of the aftershocks involved

Secondly my friend has notified people about the forthcoming publication of their memoir and had some advance discussions with other people who were close to the person.

Memoirs are complicated things. Obviously this piece has stirred a great deal up for some people. But as with a real life bereavement there aren't universal rules. A piece of writing that some people will find helpful, will offend others.

We cannot know what the writer's relatives feel, but it isn't our responsibility to second guess. And the young woman who is the subject of the piece, who a great many people tried to help in her lifetime, is beyond feeling any pain about anything. For reasons that are far too complex for any of us to understand.

I do not think if he had a better understanding of mental illness it would make much difference to how he feels

Just because you know doesn't necessarily make you feel differently

It is possible to feel anger at times hatred and bitterness towards people you love deeply especially going through the grieving process (which never really ends)

whatthe that post was in no way intended to be nasty, and reading back I don't believe it is. If you choose to read it that way, that's up to you

Bingo! Isn't that exactly what some people are saying about the article?

Ok I've read it again and get it. Would have been clearer to say my mother was Jewish and so was the mother of my children. Or more simply 'we are all of Jewish descent'.

But simplicity wouldn't have fitted in with the rest of it I guess.

"I wonder how long he worked on the alliterative but meaningless rose simile." It's more than just cheesy and pompous.

"joyous, incandescent and reckless as any rose"
To me this demonstrates an objectifying male gaze, which makes it even more yucky as it is a grandfather observing his granddaughter in a detached way and writing about her as an object (after her tragic suicide), a female object that is striking and beautiful to look at but dares to have feelings which I guess he would never understand The term incandescent is really strange here. The rose metaphor is sickly sweet.

You may have a point Clopysow!

Yes Blanche you are right. 100% right. Your opinion is right. Better than any one who disagrees with you I am guessing that you will not be able to acknowledge that that is signally ridiculous!

Personally I still can't understand why he would choose to make his granddaughter so identifiable? I would think that people will be able to find her social media stuff as a result of this. Why wouldn't he keep it anonymous? That also seems cruel.

"We cannot know what the writer's relatives feel, but it isn't our responsibility to second guess. And the young woman who is the subject of the piece, who a great many people tried to help in her lifetime, is beyond feeling any pain about anything. For reasons that are far too complex for any of us to understand."

I am not interested in second guessing but feel that the article is disrespectful and cold and that makes me feel incredibly sad for this young woman who must have had a torturous and unhappy life. It pisses me off that the grandfather sounds all fancy shmanzy in his use of flowery words yet no warmth comes across whatsoever.

RiP Emma.

She may well have had a tortuous and unhappy life, but it seems that some people are blaming external factors e.g her grandfather for it, when he actually lived on another continent.