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?

[ComputerUserNotTrained]

The irony of accusing this bereaved grandfather of lacking compassion is really quite something.

[corythatwas]

If his concern was about the effect on his daughter and the rest of the family, how come so much of the article is about her unreasonableness and its impact on him? We hear very, very little about the daughter.

I still can't get that thing about "we have the right to say everything we feel". Do you remember the woman who wrote about her feelings on having an SN child a few years ago and got totally slated by MN. If we really have the right to say everything we like, what on earth was wrong with that then? She felt that way, she said so.

If I had hated dd, not loved her, do you really think it would have been right of me to contact a national newspaper and offer to write an article saying so? My grief, my feelings- nothing to do with anybody else? And if I didn't feel that way, any of my relatives who happened to do that would also have been fine to say so in the papers. Their feelings, their grief? And if her best friend or her boyfriend or anybody else had felt it, they could have written this in the papers and that wouldn't have mattered?

[CancellyMcChequeface]

Would you mind explaining what you object to in his description of the gumdrop-on-floor episode?

It's a matter of interpretation, I think. There's nothing wrong with the anecdote in isolation, but in context it reads to me like criticism of her character - especially when placed between the suggestion that perhaps she thought she could fly, and the statement that she'd spent her rent money. I think the piece has been written very deliberately (whether we like its style or not!) and so that's the impression I got.

My objection, I suppose, is precisely that - it's a sweet, harmless story about a child doing something very normal, but it seemed as if it was being used to make a particular statement. It's interesting that others read it very differently.

[BipBippadotta]

I found this a really upsetting article, full of not just anger (which is understandable as a normal part of traumatic bereavement and grief in general) but incredible contempt. Considering someone who was so unhappy as to kill herself to have been 'refusing to allow joy into her life' profoundly misunderstands what is going on for a person who is very unwell, and, in my opinion, plays into a dangerous idea perpetuated, largely by the 'wellbeing' movement, that anxiety and depression and other forms of mental distress are deliberate choices people make due to weakness of character or lack of imagination or insufficient loving kindness.

Of course, it can be incredibly hard when someone you love is very depressed, or anorexic, or borderline, or all of the above. I've lived through this with a parent and another close relative and I know the toll it takes. But to write with such contempt about someone who has taken her own life is, at best, disrespectful. It doesn't seem to consider her as a person so much as a conundrum and a nuisance. I wondered if the wider family had had a chance to see this before it went to press, and what they thought.

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.

[lottieandmia]

Computer - he sounds as though he blames her for the way that she was - as if she chose to be mentally ill!! As if she deliberately didn't enjoy outings he took her on and purposely turned them into something horrid. People who kill themselves do so because they are trying to escape the hell inside their own head. Your reality is completely defined by your own perception of things.

I agree with others that he has made it all about him. I also agree that while people who are severely unwell mentally can be difficult to live with and care for and while you may think some of these things, publishing them in a national newspaper is quite something else.

[CockacidalManiac]

And why are posters critiquing his writing style ffs? Can't anybody just read past it - or not - to get to the points of the article. Not just on mumsnet then. You sound dickish and judgemental.

He's made a deliberate choice to write in that ridiculous florid style; it's part of the way that it's all about him, not his granddaughter. The article plus his style screams 'me,me,me'.
As someone with serious MH issues, I find the article offensive.

[timelytess]

What a hateful man.
Poor girl.

[CockacidalManiac]

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.

Exactly, all that matters is him. His granddaughter's illness is all about him.

[BillSykesDog]

*If he was a cold, unfeeling father...then maybe that child was not a great parent to his granddaughter...That could lead to all sorts of illnesses down through the generations.'

That's exactly what I thought. A spiral of abuse. I thought this passage was very interesting:

all she really wanted to do was to “come home” - the home where the seeds of persecution and victimisation were allegedly sown

That's the typical narrative of an abusive family. She obviously felt that she was minimum emotionally abused at home. Yet her family, typically of abusers, claim that they didn't do it and she is imagining the problems. And that any resulting problems are her own fault for being inherently bad rather than a result of an abusive childhood. He clearly disbelieved her (see use of allegedly, he cites the fact she wanted to come home as some sort of proof of this. But it's well known that the abused often have affection or love for the abusers and remain attached to the 'home' where it all happened. Even Fred and Rose West's children loved them and stayed home despite horrendous abuse. This poor girl was obviously begging for help and still desperate to be part of her family and loved by them even if they were awful to her.

The way he talks about her is horrific, suggests inherent badness, blames her not just for the suicide (which might be understandable) but for her whole illness; suggests people would always be glad to see the back of her; stresses all her bad qualities whilst not even mentioning one good one. If these are the messages she was given about herself growing up then no wonder she ended up such a mess. Poor, poor child.

[rememberthetime]

Mental health issues and especially anorexia and bulimia rarely occur in a vacuum. He mentions incidences where she was clearly trying to exert control in a world where she seems t o feel none at all. She described him as saying things to her that make her sad. And he seems to have continued to do so even after her death.

I am appalled by this article and I could feel the narcissism oozing from his words. The writing style is designed to obfuscate to make us question and feel confused. This is the way these people operate. This tiny girl was confused by his actions too and sought to make sense by being wilful and controlling what she could.

This is how i see it - through the lense of someone who grew up with a similar father.

[BillSykesDog]

You sound dickish and judgemental.

And he doesn't?

[Kidnapped]

Yes, I struggled with the gumdrop incident.

She picked it up off the floor and ate it anyway after he told her to throw it away. The language is interesting. "She rammed the gumdrop home" conveying a violent act of defiance rather than "She ate the gumdrop".

He is saying that her eating the gumdrop is indicative of her impulsive, defiant, dangerous behaviour. At age 6.

[EenyMeenyMo]

i thought the same as most of the posters at first- that he sounded nasty and selfish -but at the end of it I was left feeling sorry for him. I think he is just trying to cope with it- by becoming angry with her - maybe after going through feeling angry with other/sympathetic etc- what comes across is his sense of helplessness , sadness at the impact on all the rest of the family - and it does seem like he is revisiting his memories of her to see if they died light on why.
I'm not sure if he is blaming her - but he doesn't seem to distinguish between her and the illness - but anger is his way to cope.

[MammaTJ]

I understand the anger that comes after suicide. What I cannot get is that he has chosen to publicly express that anger. How must the parents of the person who was so ill she did this feel about their father/FIL writing this?

Also wondering if there is a coincidence between her struggling so much with mental illness and the way a person who is supposed to love her wrote about her!

[corythatwas]

And why does he have to cope in the national press, where her friends will see it and other family members will see it, and other young people with MH disorders will see it and think "that's how I'll be judged"?

What is wrong with a therapist or a confidential friend?

[lottieandmia]

I agree, BillSykes. I did think that too about what kind of parent he may have been. And how MH problems do tend to occur more in abusive families.

It's his self-congratulatory attitude about how wonderful he was and if his granddaughter turned out this way it must have been her own fault. I've seen it in my own (toxic) family. Parents who really are loving and supportive don't feel the need to spell out examples of how wonderful they Are/were.

[FlemCandango]

I found the article fascinating, not offensive. It is not a eulogy it is written very subjectively from the perspective of one man in a family bereaved by suicide. It isn't meant to represent everyone. He is allowed to feel how he feels, express his feelings and publish, he is a writer.

I didn't agree with everything he wrote but I recognised the desire to distance himself and the anger. As a teenager I witnessed my mothers depression, the effect it had on her and the family. I blamed myself for one of her suicide attempts as we had had an argument only days before. If she had been successful ever then I could have written an article, twice as harsh and distant. I think sanitizing the impact suicide has on the family is wrong, of course Emma is not to blame for her illness. Neither is my mum, but neither am I yet I was suffering with her or trying to make sense of her behaviour, judging her moods, scared of saying the wrong thing in case she was angry or suicidal. That depression was a toxin that polluted our relationship, even now I have to temper my attitude, when we talk/ meet, as there is residual anger and pain that I feel and I know I cannot and should not direct towards her.

This is not an article that will resonant with everyone, but I understand where it is coming from, but I can also understand that for some it will seem awful. Which is why I am usually not so frank about my feelings.

[lottieandmia]

But Flem - I think that when it's your mother then it's more understandable to feel resentment because you need a supportive environment as a child and its natural that you would resent not having that because it's a basic need. He's talking about his granddaughter who he didn't live with.

Everyone is entitled to their feelings but not necessarily to express them the way he has there are some aspects of that article that really give away the kind of person he is. Not to mention his lack of awareness about what he's doing and he's clearly expecting the reader to feel sorry for HIM.

[toomuchtooold]

It reads like a classic arse covering exercise from an abusive parent. (I know he's the granddads). Already in the first couple of paras he makes her out to be sneaky and able to turn her hurt on and off. All the way through, his anger and sadness are not that his grandkid was depressed, but that she didn't appreciate his efforts to make her happy... and then there's that whole "inevitably we are such good people that we ask ourselves if we might have been to blame... but of course we weren't" sorry-not-sorry section in the middle. Horrible.

[AlchemySchmidtsSmile]

I am in the minority but thought the article was well written. The man is a writer, he's not stupid and knows full well that writing "he doesn't seem to like me much" will condemn him as well as his judgements on her eighteen months away, when she sounds like a typical student. He is clearly of a different generation, her illness defied his logic, her suicide has left him an angry and impotent. Writers write: this is him trying to exhorcise her. Whether he should have had it published is another question together.

[Tutak]

What I find puzzling is that her suicide is not recent as the article seems to indicate. It was 2013. The writer's had several years to reflect - here's the funeral notice v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/Deaths.20130628.93323294/BDAStory/BDA/deaths

[TheNameIsBarbara]

My thoughts on the article were that he was shining an uncomfortable light on how mental illness not only affects the suffers, but the whole family.

Of course I have every sympathy for people with mental health issues as it is so all consuming, however, at times it does have an effect on those watching their loved ones suffer.

This gentleman loved his granddaughter and is still grieving, but I think its clear that he didn't understand her mental illness, and he was probably upset that he saw her behaviour as selfish, because they all tried to help her and yet she didn't accept the help (in his eyes).

It doesn't make her suffering any less, and she paid the ultimate price. He probably is racked with a range of emotions, from grief, guilt, anger and sadness.

Nobody wins in this article, and I can see why it has upset so many people. Nobody wins with mental health issues either, its just about getting through each minute/hour/day.

[SpunkyMummy]

It doesn't make her suffering any less, and she paid the ultimate price

Really? I would have said her parents and siblings are paying for her actions.

[Greythornes]

His writing style is horrible, as pointed out by nearly everyone. It is like a teeenager's first short story where they have tried to put long words in at every turn.