Nana

I spoke about mental illness when delivering my grandmothers eulogy, which is not something you often hear after a natural death, especially when the departed was two years short of ninety and had lived a full life. But the justification -- in my mind -- is that by her passing, the cone of silence regarding the troubles she had faced and endured to which I was one of few souls that had any knowledge of, was able to be lifted.

At one point I reflected on the ashamed sense of relief I felt that it was the first funeral in a decade that had been convened for a reason other than suicide.

It could have been different.

Had Nana succumbed to the urge that all of us with depression feel to just end it all -- a significant portion of the congregation would not have been born and the world would probably not have noticed their absence.

But she didn’t.

She stuck it out.

And here we are.

Five Children who all decided to breed. A raft of grandchildren and even a few greats that arrived over the last few years.

While I didn’t specifically discuss the inference that a lot of mental illness is inherited with my grandmother, she confided in me when I had my breakdown that she had been on anti-depressants for most of her adult life.

This surprised me, not only because she’d always seemed so happy, but because anti-depressants give me the full range of side effects and as we’re related, she should’ve had something going on when she took the pills.

Maybe she got the amphetamine heavy ones. I can’t remember the name, but I was on those for a week or two when trying to salvage a toxic relationship. It was oddly liberating to have what was essentially speed provided for a nominal price and be consumed every day.

Problem with that is – Insomniacs don’t need uppers. We can avoid sleep for free.

Nana clearly didn’t have the same issues with medication that I do.

I never asked her if she sat up of a night staring at the knife on the kitchen bench and wondering if taking it to her wrist seemed like a good idea. But the evidence clearly demonstrates that if she had, she didn’t follow through with the desire.

Medication placed me in that situation when my doctor tried a different drug. Because, apparently drugs are the answer for everything. Which is not to say that they do not have their place and provide significant benefit to those who are fortunate enough to respond positively to the effects of the medication, but they ain’t for everyone.

The use of pills reduced significantly after her children had left the family home to form their own families and produce the likes of me. But the condition never left her.

It never leaves any of us.

When my grandfather was shuffling off this mortal plane, The Black Dog rocked back up at Nana’s heel and a few years later I copped the same diagnosis.

It has been suggested to me that my mental health issues were well progressed years before the medical community cottoned on to the fact.

While this is not special or unique in any way, it demonstrates the importance of removing the stigma around mental health issues.

I had to hit rock bottom before I started to, in dribs and drabs, discover the unspoken truth – I wasn’t the first.

As anyone who has been diagnosed with a mental illness will tell you -- the doctor asks if there is any history of mental illness in the family. If you have never been told that there is, you will do what I did.

I denied the diagnosis and insisted it was just headaches – because I knew about that particular family trait. Turns out I was wrong about that one. Sure, the headache thing is true but the lack of knowledge regarding the suicides, hospitalisations and criminality of a significant portion of the family tree wasn’t conducive to attaining acceptance.

It took a car crash, murder and the end of a good relationship for me to acknowledge my condition before I took the question to my parents.

My enquiries were met with flat denials to begin with. The first crack in the dam wall came from my grandmothers unprovoked acknowledgement of her own issues. And a year or so later when I was visiting New Zealand, an uncle admitted he’d had his own troubles after his marriage ended, but it took one of my mother’s cousins to bust it completely open.

We were sitting around getting acquainted when my mental state came up for some reason or another. It was probably around the point in conversation where I am inevitably asked what I do for work and replied that I write so am therefore, technically, Unemployed.  My mother piped up in an attempt to salvage some dignity for herself by pointing out how successful I had been while working in finance.

That sort of action is an amateurs’ error as it only encourages the enquirer to ask why I would no longer be working in the industry. On becoming aware of the facts regarding my breakdown and subsequent questioning that led me to point out the aforementioned uncle and my mother’s denial of mental illness in the family.

Mum again denied any knowledge of such an issue, which I could accept – after all Nana hadn’t told anyone and I kept that secret safe – there is still the stigma and I can understand why my uncle hadn’t shared his burden, but when my mother’s cousin asked, ‘what about David?’ I was forced to ask who David was.

Thinking, perhaps that he was the cousin I had never heard of until we had been driving past a prison and my mother had suggested that she should have arranged a visit while we were in the country.

I was wrong.

Having written about David Malcolm Gray in my article Aramoana and The American Disease I don’t feel the need to once again detail New Zealand’s worst Mass Murder since colonisation, but you can read it if you want. Or search for Out of the Blue if you’re chasing some wholesome family viewing.

All I’m saying regarding this is that it would’ve been beneficial to be aware of a proper nutjob in the general makeup of the family tree when querying the prevalence of lunacy amongst the relatives. But with my interest piqued I started asking questions about my genetic history.

Turns out, my great-great grandfather blew up the ship he was the engineer of because he had a spat with the captain and then thought it was a good idea to have a punch on with the New South Wales constabulary. Having served his sentence, he went to New Zealand in order to breed.

He was not alone in the Kiwi branches of my family in having served in Australian prisons, many of my ancestors from that side of the ditch had been sent from Britain and Ireland as convicts before making their way to The Shaky Isles.

I’m not saying that all of their crimes were a result of their mental illness, I’m merely pointing out that the holier than thou attitude of New Zealanders that all Australians are the product of convicts is fundamentally flawed when that branch of my family is crowded with criminals whereas the Australian line is recorded as predominately Danish free settlers. But the point is, The Black Dog has been somewhat of a family pet for a long time.

I had always been under the impression that both of my grandmother’s brothers who had fought in World War Two had died in Europe. Once again, I was wrong. One was killed in Tunisia but the other made it through only to come home and kill himself a year after my mother was born. These days we know a lot more about Post Traumatic Stress and he was not alone, just as to this day, some returned service personnel cannot see any other way out.

That was around the time Nana got on the pills. Whether this is coincidence is not important, it simply demonstrates that some people are more likely to have those thoughts and it tends to run in families.

But that was why I spoke about it at the Funeral. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room with so many of mother’s relatives before, so it seemed fitting. My Aunty said to me later that she thought it was good for me to have raised the issue as one of my cousins spends a lot of time going to funerals for friends who have killed themselves. Others, relatives I couldn’t tell you the names of, commended me on my honesty and said it was refreshing for a funeral to have a touch of that.

If I have given any one of them the courage to reach out to someone who is having a rough time of it, I will have accomplished something, and Nana would be proud.