Can't cope

It’s a platitude that after losing a partner women are more practical than men and usually cope quite well with being on their own, while many men can’t cope at all and are totally thrown.
 
Many men are so used to living with a woman who organises the house, does all the cooking and domestic tasks, and maintains friendships, that without her they are all at sea.
 
They fall into complete squalor, let the house fall into disrepair, don’t do enough washing and cleaning, and are generally unable to cope. Some men sink into such despair they end up committing suicide.
 
Apparently many older men who use dating sites aren’t looking for love but are really looking for a housekeeper, someone to organise their life for them.
 
I guess the underlying reason for this difference between men and women is the way boys and girls are brought up. Girls are encouraged to learn domestic and socialising skills while boys are taught that they needn’t bother.
 
I wonder how I would cope if Jenny died. Would I be one of those men who sink into squalor, or would I get along just fine? Hopefully the latter.

All too much

Suicide is a very strange business, isn't it? How come people feel so desperate, so helpless, so beleaguered that they resort to such an extreme solution? How come they just want to leave everything behind and end their life?

Sometimes it's understandable that someone has taken that drastic step. Their life is so terrible that more of the same for years to come is simply too much to contemplate. Other times it's a complete mystery. Someone seems to have a great life, with everything going their way, and out of the blue they're found dead.

Why do some people struggle on, however dismal their circumstances, while other just give up and decide it's all too much?

It was very understandable when one of Jenny's old school friends killed herself. She was a diagnosed schizophrenic and had had severe mental health problems for many years. Her quality of life was drastically limited and there was no sign of that ever changing.

But other people are found dead and there were no warning signs whatever. Why they did what they did leaves everyone baffled. Even people who were close to them and knew them really well (or thought they did) can't begin to explain it.

What's truly shocking though is when someone doesn't just take their own life but takes other people with them. This seems to be getting more common. Like the man who killed six people before turning the gun on himself at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia. And the man who killed his wife and three children in a domestic dispute in Phoenix, Arizona, before taking his own life.

They might have been able to explain their own suicide, but how do they justify ending other people's lives as well as their own?

Dire straits

I don't recall ever being sunk in despair. Despair meaning that sense of complete hopelessness, helplessness, inability to escape from an awful predicament. That sense that whatever you do, you're not going to solve the dreadful mess you're in.

I'm very lucky. Other people experience despair on a regular basis, even a daily basis if they're extremely poor, heavily in debt, coping with a serious disability or suffering domestic violence.

I've been in tough situations where it was hard to see any way out, but I never sank into black despair. I always believed there was light at the end of the tunnel, things would get better, the crisis would pass.

Even when I lived in a spartan and freezing bedsit and couldn't afford anywhere really comfortable, and the landlord refused to do any necessary repairs, and my upstairs neighbour was a raucous alcoholic, I never lost hope that things would eventually improve. And they did.

Even when we were selling our London flat and moving to Belfast, and the prospective buyer went on stalling and delaying for months, and we seemed to be going nowhere, I never sank into despair (though I got pretty near it). We just kept pushing and prodding until finally the sale was completed and we were off.

But this is all utterly trivial compared to what others go through. I can't imagine the wrenching despair felt by those unlucky people caught in the catastrophic floods in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire - their homes and businesses ruined and their lives turned upside down. Or the despair felt by longstanding migrants to Britain who're suddenly told by the government they aren't welcome here and should leave the country. That's real, overwhelming despair.

I've been lucky so far. But despair may be just lying in wait.

Short of chums

It's curious how some people have a natural talent for friendship, making friends effortlessly wherever they go, while others just never get the hang of it and potential friends come and go like ships in the night.

Being one of the latter, I'm always bemused by the friend-makers. I study them carefully, trying to work out what they're doing right and what I'm doing wrong, but I'm none the wiser. They just have an instinctive way of connecting with others that I seem to have been born without.

There's been no shortage of possible friends-to-be, people who on first encounter I seem to hit it off with. But after a few promising chats, the initial spark flickers out and it goes no further. If a friendship lasts six months, it's a miracle. Is it their fault? Is it my fault? Who can say?

It still bothers me that I'm so crap at making friends*. In a society where virtually everyone seems to have an impressive retinue of devoted buddies, my visible lack of them is embarrassing. I could of course fake a gang of bosom pals I'm gossiping away with every night of the week, but I don't think I could keep up the pretence for long. Why would I want to anyway?

I can tell myself a lack of friends has its advantages. Plenty of peace and quiet. Nobody ringing me in a state of hysterical despair at 2 am. Not having to sympathise with some course of action I secretly find idiotic. Not being expected to explain every domestic row to a dozen people.

But it's not very convincing. The fact is I'd quite like to soothe someone's hysterical despair or share my latest marital upset. I'd quite like to be that close to someone. It's not going to happen though.

"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate" - Linda Grayson.

*With the notable exception of my long-time partner, of course.

Baby blues

There’s still this big myth that new mothers are ecstatically happy and madly in love with their new baby, that it’s the best time of their life. Nobody wants to talk about the large number of new mums who get severe post natal depression and are at their wits’ end.

Up to 25 per cent of new mothers get PND, and almost 50 per cent of teenage mothers, and it can last several months or even a year. And yet this huge departure from the rose-tinted image of motherhood is constantly swept under the carpet.

A TV programme tonight featured several women who were badly affected by PND. Instead of being overjoyed by the new arrival, they felt no bond with the baby, they felt their body was ruined, they cried all the time, they felt paralysed, they felt inadequate, and when it was really bad they just wanted to die. Some mothers are so distressed they actually kill the child.

Often they’ve never heard of PND and they don’t know what’s going on. They just wonder why they can’t cope and wonder what’s wrong with them.

They feel scared or ashamed of admitting their feelings or asking for help. If they do admit their feelings, they may be shunned by their friends who see them as abnormal.

Whether help is available is very much a postcode lottery. In some areas mothers can get all sorts of help including psychotherapy, anti-depressants and mothers’ groups. In other areas there’s very little help and PND is still seen as nothing more than “baby blues”.

The causes of PND are still not properly understood. Many things have been suggested, from birth-related trauma to marital difficulties, low self-esteem and unwanted pregnancies. Whatever the cause, it can strike right out of the blue, even to women who were perfectly happy and well-adjusted before the baby was born.

So let’s stop pretending new mums are always over the moon. Quite often in private they’re thoroughly miserable and desperate for help.

Back from the brink

Don Ritchie lived close to the Gap, a notorious clifftop suicide spot in East Sydney. But while others would just shrug their shoulders and wonder why people top themselves, he would offer a kind word and a smile and try to convince them life was worth living after all.

Over the years Don Ritchie saved between 160 and 500 people from throwing themselves onto the rocks. But not any longer. The man who was named "The Angel of the Gap" has just died at the age of 85.

"He could read some people needed help" said his sister Sue. He would offer them a kind word and befriend them, and invite them back home for a cup of tea and a bite to eat. "That was often all that was needed to turn people around."

He received presents, Christmas cards and letters from those he saved, sometimes decades later. "It's really rewarding knowing that the action I took changed the course of their lives and got them back on track" he said.

What impresses me is that he was so sure the would-be suicides didn't really want to die, and so sure some temporary crisis meant they were looking at their life in a distorted way, that he was bold enough to intervene and try to change their mind.

He refused to say "It's got nothing to do with me." He refused to just pass by on the other side and say it was someone else's problem. He refused to accept that their lives were as black and hopeless as they made out.

I tend to assume that someone who is suicidal has been that way for so long, with the sense of despair and torment growing ever deeper and all-consuming, that second thoughts are unlikely. But Don Ritchie clearly had other ideas, and acted on them.

I wonder if another of the locals will step into his shoes and take on the same role, or if potential suicides will now simply jump off the cliff with nothing to stop them.

Pic: Don Ritchie at the Gap 

Gone missing

I was astonished to read that up to 200,000 children go missing in the UK every year. Can you imagine all the grief, guilt, anger and bewilderment parents and carers go through as they realise their child has gone and face the agonies of trying to find them and wondering if they might be seriously injured or even dead?

Some children just get lost accidentally for a few hours. But it's terrible how many children deliberately disappear, possibly for years, because of overwhelming personal problems or family tensions they simply can't sort out. They feel their parents don't understand their difficulties, or aren't giving them enough help, or are actively hostile to them.

They're being bullied, they're secretly gay, they're taking drugs, they're failing at school, they've been abused, they're depressed. Whatever the reason, they feel their home life is making things worse rather than better, and walking away from it actually seems the sensible choice.

How sad that parents who presumably love their children are unable to give them the support they need, because they're too busy to listen or they trivialise the problem (or they are the problem) or they simply don't know what to do.

And how distressing it must be when children go missing for years or even decades, with no clue as to where they might be and whether they're alive and well. There's not even a letter or phone call to reassure their parents they're just living their own life and haven't come to a grisly end.

The continuing despair of Kate and Gerry McCann over their long-lost daughter is only the most dramatic example of how a child's disappearance traumatises the parents and family. But there are plenty of other families in similar despair.

Even learning your child is dead must be easier to deal with than the endless uncertainty over their fate, simply not knowing anything, imagining one horrible scenario after another, day after day. It could very well drive you crazy.

Parents always fear their children's disappearance. But if it actually happens, it must be so much worse than anything they've imagined.

A shattered life

I know it's a cliché to say something symbolises what's wrong with Britain, but in this case I think it's true. It's the story of a 74 year old man called Vincent Adcock.

Vincent was a confident, independent soul who lived on his own in Manchester. He had several good friends and a devoted Alsatian, Prince.

Then his house was burgled. Not once but five times, relentlessly. After the fifth burglary, having lost cash, various valuables, an £800 watch, a coat and hundreds of CDs and DVDs, his confidence and well-being were shattered.

He had reported all the burglaries to the police but nothing came of it.

Vincent told his close friend Margaret Boswell, "I give up. I just can't take any more. I've not done any harm to anybody, so why are they doing that to me?"

He locked himself in his house, stopped eating and died a few days later from malnutrition and kidney failure. Prince was so distressed he had to be put down.

This story just says so much about the state of the country. Not just that he could be burgled five times, that he couldn't feel safe in his own home, that the police were no help to him.

Nobody else helped him either, or so it seems. Not the neighbours, not the social services, not victim support schemes, not the Samaritans, not pensioners' groups. This vulnerable man, battered and defeated by other people's cruelty and ruthlessness, could depend on nobody to come to his aid, punish those responsible and restore his well-being.

He was left to himself, as so many similar victims are, to pick up the pieces and carry on with the wreckage of his life.

But it was all too much for him and he decided he'd had enough. Our supposedly civilised, enlightened society had failed him miserably.

May you now rest in peace, Vincent Adcock.

Fraught parents

New mums and dads are still expected to be besotted with their little darlings, loving the experience of being parents, and getting a whole new lease of life from child-rearing.

Any parent who steps out of line and tells another parent they're disillusioned, depressed and disheartened is still seen as a bit peculiar and lacking normal human reactions.

But anonymous internet sites tell a different story. Parents let rip with their secret thoughts and feelings and some of them are at their wits' end. They fantasise about getting their children adopted, killing them, killing themselves. And they wonder why on earth they wanted children in the first place.

It may be just a small minority of parents who feel like that, but nevertheless it contradicts the stereotype that once your child is born the natural parental instinct kicks in and you turn into a loving, devoted mum or dad who takes to childcare like a duck to water.

Sites like Mumsnet, Netmums and Parentline Plus are full of despairing confessions from parents who feel totally inadequate and inept and are begging for advice on how to cope better with a hopeless situation.

What causes all this hidden misery is anyone's guess. The experts have plenty of ideas - post natal depression, too much anxiety and stress, perfectionism, rosy expectations of parenting, the urge to compete, you name it.

Certainly it can't help that having a child is so often idealised as the best experience you can have, giving your whole life a new meaning and totally reinvigorating you. If the reality falls in any way short of this utopian picture, then of course you're going to feel pissed-off and cheated and wonder where you're going wrong.

But the fact is that childrearing is full of trials and tribulations and pitfalls like anything else in life, and it doesn't necessarily come naturally to anyone.

Perhaps if we were more realistic about what it involves, there might be fewer distraught mums and dads wanting desperately to turn the clock back.

Home help

I was moved by the generosity of a 93 year old North Devon woman who has used the proceeds of her first published novel to buy a house where her friends can stay instead of ending up in lifeless nursing homes.

Lorna Page thinks most nursing homes are so awful (“You sit there all day staring out of the window”) she wants to provide something better that will be life-enhancing rather than stultifying.

“I started asking people if they wanted to move out of their care homes and live with me and I’ve had dozens of offers. They are queuing up” she said.

It’s equally impressive that she’s become a published author in her nineties. She didn’t even think the book (A Dangerous Weakness) was much good but her daughter-in-law persuaded her to send it to a publisher.

Personally I’d hate to end up in a nursing home. I’ve visited quite a few and they always seem desperately soul-destroying. The residents sit around like zombies looking bored to death and stupefied by a barrage of powerful drugs.

Last year Jenny and I visited an aunt who was in a Belfast nursing home temporarily while she recovered from an operation. The sight of the several dozen permanent residents slumped speechless in their armchairs doing absolutely nothing was so terrifying I couldn’t get out of the building fast enough.

I would rather be roasted slowly on hot coals than end up in a place like that. I hope to hell I just die quickly of a heart attack or a rapid cancer rather than spend years incarcerated in a nursing home not in full possession of my faculties but still dragging out my life.

Other people see it differently. They believe a lot of those apparently comatose nursing home residents are actually quite content, their minds meandering happily through old memories and experiences and conjuring up all manner of fabulous interior landscapes.

I wish I could believe that, but I think hopeless despair seems more likely. Count me out.
.................................................................................

I'm pleased to read that Dr Paul Miller, the psychiatrist who Northern Ireland MP Iris Robinson claimed could "cure" homosexuals has severed his connection with her. He has also been suspended from his psychiatric job at the Mater Hospital in Belfast. Unfortunately he is being made the scapegoat for the controversy, while Iris still refuses to resign over her description of homosexuality as an "abomination" and a practice "as bad as child sex abuse".