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?

Toomanypetals that is exactly my reading of it. I agree 100%.

To all who have experienced challenging family members due to mh . Anger is understandable but I d onto get the sense that this writer is angry but, as Toomanypetals has said poignantly, "t reads like a character assassination. There's a calculated rhythm to it. I'm also uncomfortable with the power dynamic between writer and deceased.

Male;female. Adult;child. There's a responsibility he should have in his position and he fails that spectacularly."
which is quite different to experiencing a problematic MIL, who is an adult, it is a different power dynamic. Also, iPost and ourblanche write very clearly about the complexity of emotions ranging from anger and desperation to love and guilt. but the grandfather just sounds cold and measured.

slender

At the risk of sounding weird, I think in some ways we were lucky that her illness was so often so very pronounced.

Her condition fluctuated, and I know from my own sensations, it was much harder in many respects, mostly emotionally, during her much less florid periods.

Because the more she had evident autonomy, the harder it was to pin the behaviours exclusively on the mental illness. At those times it looked like she, not the illness, was doing it. And sometimes ... it was decidedly all her. She was not a perfect person afflicted by an illness. She was just as human as the rest of us, a mix of lovely, and decidedly less lovely, character traits. Which meant sometimes it was personal. With extra rancour, cos... didn't need flowers thrown before me as I walked, but a little belated gratitude for bodily protecting her from all the (much bigger than me) people she pissed off would have been nice. Ditto the repeated wandering around in the shit end of town trying to find her at 4am, when the least friendly elements of society lurked with intent. Would have been nice if she could have laid off us when she was in her (ever increasingly rarer) stable periods. But she often didn't. Everybody walked on eggshells in case a perfectly justified "oi! that's uncalled for!" triggered the start of a new episode of instability. And it drove me up the fucking wall. It felt like they were the puppets, she the string puller, and me the hard bitten of lip. Months of that was ... hard. Years would have been unthinkable.

Whereas when she was very clearly very ill, and obviously had no control at all, I could get the "this is not her, this is not her fault, what is victimising me is victimising her far worse" thing to come into play. A lot of the time. Which got me through. A lot of the time. Although with a large dose of decidedly not good grace.

I am also lucky because she was "in law". I did not have the strains of a familial bond that was pre-loaded with unmet, positive expectations. I could love her, hate her, consider killing her, place myself in the potential clump zone to save her from a slap... without the complications of her being my flesh and blood.

This I did not realise until recently. I learned of my father's death in Februrary. My mother's cancer a few weeks ago. Fuck me. It all gets so much more complicated and messy and hard to untangle and manage and make sense of when you have that extra, and sorely strained, bond to contend with. The resentments, anger and love feel supercharged with extra significance. And hardest of all, the sense of loss, what could have been, should have been ... has been unbearable. It has given me a glimpse of what it must have felt like for DH. And it's not a pretty sight.

I know it must feel like it makes sense to box up experiences by "type of relationship", "degree of illness" and all the other degrees of difference and arrive at the conclusion that we are in vastly different boats, so little commonality exists.

But while I do recognise the differences (points to previous paragraphs), over the decades what has struck a chord with me most, is not our differences. Rather it's the striking similarities of feelings, that I can often hear in the voices, read in the words, of the people whose lives have a "mental health experience overlap" with my own.

I see myself in the words of the piece. Some observers of the article and my posts do not. But I do.

Some of that will be due to projection. Some of it will be down to my biases. But some of it will be because... it's true. As different as our individual experiences may have been, there is a commonality in our reaction to it, and feelings about it.

iPost - your post is so clear, so moving, so honest and so very helpful to read. Thank you.

Re the abandonment - I agree completely. It was my question - " Should you, can you, abandon this person in order to save yourself and other family members? - raised as one of the many questions that others ask of someone caring for someone with MHI and one which, in some cases, people ask themselves. You are completely right that in most cases there really is no choice.

In some cases, ex-partner, sibling, friend perhaps; there is more of a choice. But all that you have said applies.

You make so many good points.

I think you would have written a much better article ipost.

Yello and fancy thank you.

Part of my healing was moving away from my mother's (and to a much lesser extent, my other family's) expectations of me and allowing myself to feel and experience things. She was abusive, my upbringing was abusive and there was an overall sense of she would decide what was good for me whether I liked it or not including her and others doing some awful things which I was supposed to meekly subject to without complaint, and if I did, I was 'too sensitive'.

I can understand the posters raising questions about the family dynamics and whether there was abuse. To me, reading it, it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck. Maybe it isn't - maybe I've been too overexposed to ducks! It just gives me that horrible feeling.

Many columnists and other writers do. It is part of their psyche. Many bloggers do to! I don't see anything wrong with it.

There's nothing wrong with expressing yourself per se. But at the same time 'self expression' is not a get out of jail free card. Nasty people can express themselves too. It doesn't make them any less nasty or their views more palatable. After all, Mein Kampf was self expression and nobody seeks to defend that by saying that Hitler was just expressing himself. If you're a nasty person that will come across in your self expression because your self which is being expressed is not very nice.

The stages don't really hold up scientifically. And even when they were thought to they weren't linear, so anger may have been early or late, or both, recurring

Yes, looked that up. You're right, I stand corrected on that one.

Yes, but maybe not for some time. Some may never have those feelings at all!

On reflection I think that's understandable about some adults or even siblings. You meet them as fully formed people and they may well already have formed into unpleasant abusive people who don't leave good memories. But I don't think that applies in this case. She was a child for most of her life. I still think if you can't find anything nice to say about a child, that says more about you and the life you gave that child than it does about the child.

He is very damaged by it and doesn't seem to have any way of changing his emotional response, his understanding of her actions. He just blames, blames, blames.

DH and I have a great many happy memories of her, but we also have many memories of her that are not so happy...We can now understand it, warts and all. Who do you think is the happier, the healthier?

I think it's very interesting that you class blaming other people as damaging. Yet you seem to think this man blaming the dead girl is acceptable and healthy. I suspect that you're letting your experiences with your MIL colour your view. I think that is very much a mistake. It's not comparing like for like. MIL was the parent, what she was was no responsibility of her children and they were damaged by her. She was the abuser, Emma was the victim. She was the adult holding the power, Emma was a powerless child.

I think it's a mistake to assume that all suicide victims have normal loving families who are blameless too. Many (as evidenced by the high suicide rate of abuse victims) don't. Often they have a family who are very much responsible for where their road leads them.

And what I find interesting is the need of some posters to berate other alive people for experiencing normal emotions. Something that this grandfather has not done

The entire article is berating Emma and her emotions. Do you think just because she's dead that's okay? I think it's worse because she has no voice to defend herself and can no longer object to having her name dragged through the papers or give her side of the story. When you're prepared publicly to berate a dead young person, I think you give up the right not to have that stance criticised. Especially when it comes from the wrong and ignorant position that mental illness is a choice and the fault of the sufferer. I'm very glad people feel able to criticise that viewpoint.

And as I said earlier, had this been printed in the Daily Mail, many of the people defending it on here would be having paroxysms about misogyny, disablism, justifying of abuse etc, etc.

There is no evidence of abuse. Some posters have made an assumption based on his writing but I see nothing there - and nor do others. We cannot accuse a man of abusing his DGD, who lived in another country, based on an analysis of his own grief.

There is no doubt that abuse victims do sometimes kill themselves as a direct consequence of what they suffered but the reverse is not true; all suicides are not abuse victims.

*I think it's very interesting that you class blaming other people as damaging. Yet you seem to think this man blaming the dead girl is acceptable and healthy.

Mmm! I haven't said that quite , Bill Again that seems to be one of those 'misses' between intent and the written word!

I think 'blame' is very damaging. But I also think that it can be transient. A natural part of the grieving process. When I stopped hating and assigning blame to a person (MIL, SFIL) I managed to get a clearer understanding of MILs illnesses and actions.

BIL still blames SFIL... has never moved on from that. If the author of the piece hasn't moved on then I would imagine he too will remain less capable, less 'fixed' than he would be otherwise.

I have already explained my take on the 'she can't defend herself' issue! I don't see the dead as fragile, porcelain or in need of defense It is the living who need help - sanitising any behaviour is not helpful!

I suspect that you're letting your experiences with your MIL colour your view. Sorry, but No Shit Sherlock! That's the whole point of every post I have made in this thread!

As I said, it's the power dynamic I'm uncomfortable with.

An adult survivor of abuse, expressing negativity about their deceased abuser for example, is entirely different to a grown male relative denigrating a barely adult and vulnerable woman.

It feels to me like an abuse dynamic. He's emotionally abusing her post-mortem. It feels like an extension of the relationship they had while she was alive. Except he's an unreliable narrator and can we trust what he says about her?

What a horribly cold dissection of someone that was obviously very vulnerable. Her lurching between anorexia and bulimia was a red rag that she had some serious mental health issues.

He just makes her sound like an annoying inconvenience rather than a much loved family member. This piece has made me feel horribly sad for this poor girl. Her grandfather should be ashamed of himself for writing about her in such a manner. It's not as if she can even put her point of view across now is it?

It feels to me like an abuse dynamic. Given your experience that is wholly understandable. You will translate his words in a way that makes sense to you.

You aren't wrong.

We are all unreliable narrators!

Suggestions that she must have been abused because "it looks like a duck..." are part of the problem imho.

But you can't deny that anyone who has survived abuse and recognises some of the piece in their own lives the right to read that into the article.

Accusing him of abuse is a step to far. But saying that there is something about it that reflects their own experiences and makes them feel uneasy is no problem.

The narrative voice is strong. But it feels cold and premeditated.

The most telling part, to me, is when Emma states she doesn't like her grandfather. It actually feels like the only clear, true voice in the whole article. It feels like the only time we hear her voice; her version; her truth.

She didn't like him.

slender

My "oh my god, how masochistic was that choice making process !" upper limit was reached by becoming a dyslexic English teacher with ADHD.

So while I thank you for the compliment. No ta.

What I suspect he has done is written that piece either...

-on a day when the emotion pendulum swung in that direction.

or

-deliberately stripping out the "softness". To highlight the darker underbelly that tends not to see the light of day.

How I come across when I write about MIL can fluctuate wildly. It has depended on many factors. Sometimes changing over a period of days.

I have, many many times, felt the need to accentuate the softners, cut back on the dark and post a less honest version of how it felt, how I feel about it all, on that particular day. Because ... I'm afraid.

Not just of being called things like abusive, narcissist , "she who probably caused/made worse the mental illness", or partially responsible for MIL's death.

But also because, having not exactly covered myself in selfless glory during the years she was alive, there's a part of me that worries the above might all be true.

That perhaps the biggest problem was not MIL, nor her illness. But me. That when the chips were down I turned out to be pretty heartless, selfish, impatient, unkind and more of a hinderance than a help.

Until MIL I was a hero in my own imagination. I thought if push came to shove in life, I would rise to challenges, do the right thing, if not with style, then at least with a decent imitation of good grace. But reality based feet of clay revealed that I was lying to myself.

I did a spectacular fall in my own (vastly overinflated) estimation. So it is all too easy to believe any external criticism. Thus, I tend to take steps to actively avoid it. Cos, I like the relative peace of now (dead and dying parents excepted) and am in no hurry to chuck myself a new curve ball to play with.

Could my posts be written to sound much more like the article. Sure. No problem. Heck on the wrong day, with the right trigger, I could sound about 50 degrees colder.

Would I post them ?

Like fuck I would.

Sorry, she actually says 'it's as if he doesn't like me.'

I hear you Emma. I don't think he did

when Emma states she doesn't like her grandfather. It actually feels like the only clear, true voice in the whole article. It feels like the only time we hear her voice; her version; her truth. And he was the one who wrote it...

It isn't unlikely that he too feels / has felt that he abused her, let her down, abandoned her in many ways!

I hope that he is not stuck there, in that self nihilistic mode. I hope this piece is, as iPost said, written with hindsight and he has worked through all of those Cold Demons.

Really hateful article.
More than hateful. She was, in his eyes, an object that didn't perform, that was faulty and he actually blamed her for her illness, rained on her parade on the few times he saw her as a child and publically chose to have the last word on who she was in this ridiculous piece.
Like someone else said there is a lot more to this story and this family and much of it has died with her.

It reminded me a lot of Tiffany Sedaris' brothers article on her after her suicide. Where he calls her flat dirty and criticises her life and called her a prostitute. He was more honest though, and told of how the family actually treated her in childhood. It was not pretty. Her mother never liked her and singled her out.

This man's (Emma's grandfather) prose is not truth, his motivations seem to be to absolve himself and the family of any possible wrongdoing and push the blame of being so "difficult" straight onto her, such a common narrative.

Anger in the grief process is really anger at yourself and taking the death/ suicide as personal to you when it is not.
I dont feel anger in this article at all. I feel contempt, and an underlying nervousness " it wasn't me/ us / her family. She was damaged goods, she was odd, she didn't feel normal emotions like the rest of us normal people, I took her out even when I was scared of heights, - she was weird and sad".
It's a hateful thing to do to the memory of a person who can't respond back. I wonder what she would have to say.
RIP Emma

Backing I didn't say she must have been abused. I don't know how you can call me 'part of the problem' (what problem?) given you're not reading my posts properly.

Good post Amandahugandkisses

RIP Emma - I don't like your grandfather much either.

Sorry if this has already been established but I've had a google and it looks like the names were not changed in the article and that Emma is the correct name etc. I was really hoping the details had been changed as I don't see why it's necessary to identify anyone. I hope that the writer discussed this with Emma's parents and siblings. It was only a few years ago that Emma committed suicide so I imagine her 'younger' siblings are still teens or young adults.
I wonder why he thought it was ok to publish this with the identifying details and I wonder if he was paid.

Anger in the grief process is really anger at yourself

I think that sentence needs a can be rather than the "This is a universal truth/fact" coloured is it currently contains.

My anger at my father's death is most decidedly not at myself.

I am quite happily stuck in denial. A place I intend to remain (with the aid of any phycological superglue I deem necessary) until I die myself. But anger is one of the few identifiable emotions that sometimes pops through the cloak of

sanitising any behaviour is not helpful!

And yet half of this thread is an attempt to sanitise his behaviour. And their is a big difference between sanitising behaviour and acknowledging that it is a result of mental illness and not in their control.

Sorry, but No Shit Sherlock! That's the whole point of every post I have made in this thread!

Fair enough, but I still don't think it's fair to draw a comparison between an adult and a child in this situation.

Suggestions that she must have been abused because "it looks like a duck..." are part of the problem imho.

Accusing him of abuse is a step to far

But he all but admits she saw herself as a victim of abuse. He doesn't dignify it with a name, but he says she believed she was victimised and persecuted by her family and made allegations against her parents. And he dismissed these as fantasy. So if not an abuser he was at least complicit. Unless we're all going to buy into the typical abusers narrative that they are perfect and the child deserved everything they got because they were a 'bad seed'. It's very unusual for children to make false allegations of emotional abuse (or other kinds) without the sort of adult promoting sometimes found in divorces. But it's pretty much universal for abusers to deny abuse.

BillSykesDog your last paragraph of your last post is excellent.

I'm shocked that names weren't changed.

It's interesting that out of all the hundreds of articles in Family section, about such a wide range of issues, this one made the OP feel uneasy to the point she felt compelled to share it.

That's because there is something distinctly off about it. And it's most certainly not to do with grief and anger.

I am sort of reluctant to say this as it is possibly opening a whole can of worms, but here you are. My brother suffers from mental health issues. He was addicted to very hard drugs from mid-teens. Growing up with him was incredibly difficult as he was both physically and emotionally abusive to everyone in the family. I firmly place the root of my own mental health issues at his feet, caused by growing up in a house with an abuser.

Conversely he has in the past accused my father of physical abuse. I know that the incidents he cites did not happen. The history he has constructed for himself is simply not true. Yes, he had a hard childhood, we all did. Yes, my parents made mistakes and did not always deal with him in the perfect way, but bloody hell, they did their best in a hugely difficult and emotionally charged situation. They also had 3 other children to consider and protect.

I am hugely angry at my brother for what he did to me and furious about what he did to my mother. The guilt she felt about him up until the very point of her death 2 years ago breaks my heart. I am not sure I can ever forgive him for some of the things he has said and done. For the sake of my own mental health I doubt I will ever speak to him again. At the same time, just to tear me in half, I feel immensely guilty for not doing more. For not trying harder to reach out to him, saying the right thing, making it all better with some sort of magic.

I am not sure why I am saying this other than to say that I guess I see this, in some ways, from both sides. I feel the pain and anger of some posters who have lived with people with mental health problems. I also feel the pain of someone who lives with my own problems and knows that when I damn my brother I also, in many ways damn myself.

Dealing with mental health issues, in fact dealing with people and emotions in general, is messy and painful. Nobody gets it right. Nobody can honestly say they feel and say and do all the right things all the time. We try our inadequate best to get through life one step at a time. Sometimes we help and sometimes we fuck it up royally. Sometimes we just have to take care of ourselves the best way we are able.

As someone up thread pointed out we see in this article just a brief moment in the writer's life. We see what he felt and how he expressed it at that time. As I have said, I do not like the way he has written it. I do not like the way he turns small incidents into signifiers of Emma's supposed wilful self destruction. However, I think it is a mistake to damn him on the basis of this single piece of writing. I also think it is unhelpful to try and simplify complex and messy events and emotions into what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

Sorry, this has turned into something of an epic stream of consciousness!