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?

Anorexia is one of the most difficult illnesses for relatives. I worked with someone whose daughter suffered from it - started quite late at 18 and she was 28 when I last saw him. The anger and frustration was palpable and yet he was a very gentle and kind man (I knew him for 30 years.) It's an illness that means that person is the only one who can be considered - other siblings and parents give up their lives, their happiness and goals to this disorder. I think to watch your daughter live with an anorexic child must be truly awful.

Yes, he wrote in an overblown style. I imagine he found it difficult to write about such a terrible situation and wrote in a more formal style to distance himself a little.

I agree with cory and wonder very much what the woman's parents think of this rambling, public, and somewhat self-obsessed stuff. Maybe if he'd say he'd ran it past them first, that would make it feel less uncomfortable for me.

My DH is depressed and always has been, so I've lived on the terrifying side of this stuff for so long now. I don't know how I'd react if his grandparents published something like this in a national newspaper. They just don't know him day in day out, deeply personally, like I do. They've never seen his struggles and I'd feel like they were attention-seeking, but then maybe these two were closer?

I also agree with the "feel" of it being someone quite abusive and toxic writing, but I can't even put my finger on why. Possibly because I grew up in a toxic house so I'm projecting, but those opening lines felt a bit chilling - my GPs would have thought I was just "blaming" my family too.

A ten year old who says "that was rubbish" about something they appeared to enjoy, or a six year old who eats a forbidden sweet, sounds normal to me. In that respect it comes over like he was deeply angry at her not playing her part of ideal granddaughter when he saw her, more than her not really experiencing deep happiness or knowing inner-peace, and he's remembered these times as "proof" of her failing. He takes her suicide as an ongoing form of defiance in this respect, rather than desperation, even suggesting it was her being silly and dismissing her chosen ending as child's play gone wrong. It just feels strange.

Who knows though ... Like many others I'm possibly projecting, as I said.

Maybe they were an incredibly warm loving family and this just tore them all apart. Depression is a fucking nightmare.

Huge to all struggling.

Suicide has been described as someone throwing a grenade bomb at the family dinner table.

I do have some sympathy for the family, and for the writer.

It's uncomfortable reading on several levels but what comes through clearly for me is this man's uttter exhaustion with the emotional destruction wrought by his granddaughter. There's also an acceptance that whatever the family did it was never going to be enough; accepting that may go some way to assuaging the guilt that you feel in these circumstances - and it needs to, otherwise they'd all just be drowning in misery. It's quite brave to acknowledge your own fallibility and have the strength to move on.

iPost - Thank you for your post. I understand completely.

I have experienced similar.

That is how I read that article too.
I was surprised by all the judgemental comments about how "toxic" this man was when it looks as if everything that could have been done was done - and they still couldn't help. He has been defeated. He has seen his daughters crushed. He is terribly sad - and there was never anything he could do.

Although I understand some of the objections people have to this article, accusing this man of being abusive is so hysterical, short-sighted and embarrassingly unintelligent it borders on parody.

Writers write: this is him trying to exhorcise her.

Writers will write, won't they. My father's a writer. The day after my daughter died, he wrote me a long and florid email in which the only reference to my loss was a longwinded philosophical musing on the meaning of death. This was followed by several pages about what a good father he'd always tried to be to me and how hurt and confused he felt that I wasn't in touch with him much these days, interspersed with some sneering digs about my mother. Some people can make any loss, any death, any tragedy about themselves and their own grievances.

This article reminded me incredibly of that.

My father, incidentally, is immensely troubled. As was his mother before him. I have been very affected by his mental illness (which has included several suicide attempts), and so I don't underestimate at all how this affects a family, and how exasperating it is to keep trying everything you can to help someone who will not or cannot accept that help, and lashes out at you and denigrates you when you try.

I can also see that no matter how hurtful my father's behaviour is to me, the ultimate tragedy is his. He cannot experience the world as anything other than persecutory; he cannot recognise or accept the love and care that are offered to him. That is sad for me, of course, but he is the one who is trapped in a world that feels loveless and vengeful and bitterly disappointing and never enough. It's not that he's refusing to allow joy into his life - it's that somehow his joy receptors are broken.

I wonder if the man who wrote this article is not so unafflicted by what troubled his granddaughter as he likes to think - only his defences are grandiose and denigrating of others rather than self-attacking. He needs to publicly depict her as wilful and manipulative and delusional to demonstrate how sane and straightfoward and good and self-reflective he is. To exorcise her and split off that part of himself that might also be fallible.

I too saw great grief here, not lack of compassion.

He is trying to make sense of a life deliberately cut short. Of mental illness in a young girl who resisted help and learnt to manipulate those offering it. Leaving a family who will never recover from the scars

That's how I read it too didofido

Oh, iPost and others, I am glad you were here first. I may have been at a loss to describe how that makes me feel!

I found that article one of the most soul searing pieces of writing I have ever read. His love for his granddaughter is palpable, all those little things, the sweetness of a smile, a touch, a fluffy sweety.

His sense of fault, bewilderment, blame and even hate, are equally palpable. Of her as an individual, her behaviours, her illness, the way the wider world facilitated her behaviour by not blaming, in order to avoid, avoid, avoid, or did not understand the levels of self loathing, the lengths she would go to to obfuscate, hide her intentions.

The very starkness of his words reflect his inner obliteration. How, why would he find beautiful words for her? There are no beautiful words that will negate her actions, her bleak world view, her blackness of soul, the destruction she wreaked upon herself and those around her, the sickening inevitability, the debilitating knowledge that there was nothing he could do to scoop her up and make her world all right. That his love was simply not enough!

His pain shows through every clinical dissection, every disconnected word, his fight for distance, his loss.

I can't read it. His writing is so disjointed. I'm sure that's deliberate, but nah, first paragraph is utterly hateful.

I also think his attitude to mh problems is dreadful.

Odd, isn't it? I think his attitude to MH problems is that of many people who love someone who committed suicide. His bewilderment and anger certainly reflect my own feelings - I hate MH problems. I detest them.

I hate the way they destroyed a person I loved. I detest the way they can hide, be overlooked, fight against all the love, support and aid that is offered.

It's just another reaction to MH issues rather than a negation of them!

My mum's friends and relatives have and probably still do churn out a lot of shite like this about me. Because if you're a woman with mental illness - especially eating disorders and self harm - all you ever get to hear are judgements like this.

I remember going to the funeral of a loved, infuriating friend. She was somebody I had lived with. She got secondary cancer and died in her early forties

The format of the service included a time when people could stand up and share memories.

Many of those who had not lived with the woman stood up and talked about her in the most glowing terms. She was wonderful. She was special. Her loss was tragic. There was nobody like her.

I became aware of glances being exchanged among those of us who had lived with her.

And then one of us - not me - stood up. The woman who stood up said she didn't want to remember our friend as some kind of saint. That there times when she'd found her awkward and difficult to live with.

Everyone who'd lived her shot the woman a glance of relief and gratitude.

We grieve for people because they are flawed and infuriating and they can make us very cross indeed. Because the relationships are real and complicated. They are sour and salt and bitter. The moments of sweetness may be few and far betweeen.

He's using the article to exorcise his demons and make sense of the incredible suffering and hardship that has come from his granddaughter's illness and suicide. His tone is very self indulgent.

He appears to blame her for her illness and dark moods, but that is the nature of the beast. If you substitute her depression and eating disorders for a more physical disease and read an article like that then it becomes clear he's out of order. Imagine saying 'we went to Kipling's garden and she could walk then and had a lovely day, then next day she was back to limping about and a wheelchair all usual, how awful for the family'.

Mental illness is cruel on all. I have a family member who attempted suicide in the summer. The pain his illness has caused to those close to him over the last 30 odd years has been incredible, but it isn't his fault, it's just tragic.

OurBlanche, you've made your point beautifully, in only a few words. I have now read it all, and he doesn't convey the compassion you do.

Yes, petty. Self indulgent is exactly right.

brambly ... what do you think abuse is? (If it's "whipping with belts" then no, there's no evidence of that. You get that it's more nuanced than that though, right, and passes through generations, and can be from people who are completely unconscious of it themselves?)

OurBlanche, I'm astonished that anyone could see any of that. There isn't a hint of kindness, affection, or even anything personal about her in this article, or that he or the family miss her. Nothing. She sounds like a total pain in the arse and that's all she ever was. It's entirely self-aggrandising and accusatory and pissed off.

As for "the debilitating knowledge that there was nothing he could do to scoop her up and make her world all right" ... That's a lovely sentiment and as someone living with a depressed partner, I identify with it - but it doesn't read like he tried, even once, or that he spoke to her about whatever medical issues he vaguely knew about were going on? It reads more like he barely knew her at all, apart from a few overseas trips. (That could be confusion caused by his vague writing style of course.)

(I actually went back to re-read it to see where I'd missed the flowing love, but still found none - if anything it's worse on re-reading!)

I also think it's worth remembering that he wrote and published this when Emma had no right of reply. He named her, and he supplied a photograph. Why the need to do this?

There is no doubt a lot he wants to express, much of it no doubt a fascinating insight into the effects on a family of suicide (and widespread lack of understanding of mental illness). But he's a writer - could he not have fictionalised this? Written it anonymously? Did he really need to have the last word, quite so publicly, about the character of a person who is no longer here to speak for herself? She wasn't a celebrity or a public figure who might have expected to see herself exposed in this way in a newspaper. There's something very self-serving and ethically dodgy about his need to identify himself in this.

He can come sit on my bench. He won't lack company. There's thousands of us

iPost

There is a unique position of dealing with sustained self-destruction from the viewpoint of not the main carer or dependant (I know this experience will be different) but close enough to experience the profound effect it has. Grandparent. MIL. In my case adult brother.

He's apparently been living in England since 1978, so I suspect he wouldn't have spent much time with her - just visits. I read recently that a large proportion of people with anorexia actually have ASD. In girls it tends to manifest itself much less obviously than in boys, so the numbers with ASD are probably underestimated, as well. Some of the things he describes - like the contrast between her anxiety during the visit to the rose garden, and the normality of her scrapbook - could fit with her having ASD.

I read this article and I understood it to be full of eloquence: a grandparent writing about the inexplicable loss of a family member.

A child whom he loved but didn't understand, a person who made choices about their life that he couldn't relate to.

I don't read any of the cruelty or abuse that other posters seem to have read.

As parents, grandparents - the adults, we care for, teach and guide our youngsters in the best way that we can. As those youngsters grow up, develop and assert their personality we don't always agree with their choices - this is a daily feature in parenting.

I don't think he should be lambasted for not agreeing with her self-destructive choices.

I wonder if he wrote the piece deliberately not excusing his grand daughters behaviour and not saying that the illness had a hand that guided her. I think whenever he felt the need to write something apologetic or attempting to rationalise, that he deleted it.

The description of the explanations given by the professionals is interesting in that these professionals couldn't help or cure her and left unsaid is that therefore their opinions are irrelevant.

Interestingly that he thinks his daughter would think she wasn't trying to die, she was trying to fly. It is incomprehensible that she actually wanted to die so our rational life loving side needs to find another explanation.

Mental illness is terrible and it does have a huge impact on others in the family and through the generations.

Rarely is it OK to be angry, to say that this has an impact on me, my siblings and my children, to think that so much is done to support the ill person for no reward, that nothing is good enough and that the ill person needs to take responsibility for the impact they have on other people. The illness is the ultimate excuse for terrible behaviour, lack of compassion for others and the ultimate slap in the face is to throw all those years of sacrifice back in the supporters face and kill yourself anyway.

I think he wanted to say all of that without attempting to rationalise, excuse or explain. The gaps in the narrative are those urges to excuse his feelings, say he really doesn't mean in and despite it all, loves her anyway and through the darkness could seen her inner light shining though her suffering. I think he wanted the article to be as bleak as he sees it.