I don’t really want to delve into the specifics of how my marriage to Julie Burchill, a journalist, ended.
Let me just say that after 10 years of dating, Julie had become disinterested in me and had found love with someone else. It occurs. Jack, our ten-year-old son, didn’t take our divorce well, but divorce is seldom simple.
We delivered the traditional speech that divorcing parents typically give saying that “we both love you” and “nothing is going to change.”
They must feel better after reading this, but I doubt it comforts kids too much. I convinced myself that I needed to grow a pair for Jack’s sake in the days that followed. No time for melancholy or self-pity.
My essential responsibility was to maintain consistency so that Jack could get used to this significant, terrifying shift. Cooking, cleaning, and packing his lunch for school were all things I did for him that his mother used to do.
Trying to keep my grief from Jack was the hardest task I had to face in those early days.
The hardest thing Jack had to do was keep his unhappiness from me.
Our lives suddenly became more noisy. It was her absence’s quiet. Her concern for him. I was sent to the store by her to get her goods.
Her speaking in that squeaky Minnie Mouse voice while on the phone with one of her pals for hours, chatting about nothing in particular.
Or maybe she would just smack her lips softly on a tissue while wiping her newly painted lips. Neither of us spoke during the long pause.
Jack always took great effort to avoid favouritism toward either Julie or me. He started to twist his head and exhibit a number of tense facial tics, which made him seem to be under stress.
I would put my hand on his shoulder and ask, “Are you OK, Jack?” while I saw him flinch away. Yes, indeed. It’s all okay, he would admonish.
His little twitching face, though, revealed an entirely different tale. Jack spent one or two evenings a week with his mother and spent the weekends with her.
When I went to take him up, he was smiling broadly and talking animatedly about a new toy or something he and Julie had seen on TV.
I often had the impression that I was taking him back to the dreary Dickensian workhouse where we lived after a wonderful kids’ party.
At least, that’s what I told myself when I felt a jealousy attack coming on. It was fantastic that they were having fun.
In addition, I reasoned that he was having a good time while he was with me. Jack’s brief life—he was 29 when he passed away—was not a happy one, which makes his passing all the more tragic.
But contrary to what Jack stated, it wasn’t a life without any happiness.
I wasn’t able to enjoy the things that most people do, he once wrote. Every happy thing in my life has been consistently undercut by my thoughts.
Jack made up this tale to explain his life to himself. However, this story was not founded in reason or backed by facts, like the majority of the tales we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives.
His life wasn’t really “s***,” but to Jack, it seemed that way. Jack believed this to be true despite it being a work of fiction written by a troubled and tormented mind.
Don’t believe the stories you tell yourself is life lesson number four. That voice in your brain is the most untrustworthy narrator of all. It is lying. a fraudster. a fraud. And sometimes a murderer.
(In yesterday’s Daily Mail, I listed my first three life lessons, which are as follows: Be Kind. Give your kids a hug. Be open-minded.)
2005: Julie sends me a mail. “Jack broke down!” He is now residing at the Priory. Nora, that restaurant is incredibly expensive! Cheers!’
Jack, then 18, When it occurred, he was living in Brighton with his mother. His collapse surprised me. Of course I was aware of Jack’s issues.
He had anxiety and the odd episode of despair when he first reached adolescence. Additionally, he had had periods of terrible acne and weight gain. I wasn’t really concerned about him, however.
Eight years had passed since our divorce, and Julie and I were getting along well. And Jack earned a spot at Queen Mary University of London to study English literature since he performed well enough on his A-level exams.
I convinced myself that he was simply a serious youngster with serious concerns, not major mental health issues. It would be over.
However, Jack was leading a secret life and keeping his true nature hidden from his mother and me.
I had no clue that he started using magic mushrooms at the age of 14 and that by the time he was 18 he was frequently smoking skunk.
Additionally, I was unaware that Jack sliced his arms with razor blades in an effort to injure himself.
Then, one day, I was astonished to see the hieroglyphics of self-hatred on his arms, including all of the cuts, scars, and slash marks.
Fifth Life Lesson: Don’t Assume You Know Your Children. We contemporary dads want to assume that, unlike past generations of distant fathers, we have an emotional literacy that enables us to see the telltale indications of misery.
Some children, however, are quite skilled at masking their issues and their suffering, so you may not notice anything truly wrong until it is too late. Newspaper articles regarding these youngsters may be found.
The “happy” young man with a “bright future” and the “bubbly girl,” who was well-liked and a lot of fun, are there.
They have devoted parents, and they seem to be worry-free to the outside world, but one day they are discovered dead in their bedroom.
Jack departed the Priory a short while afterwards. He went to treatment once a week as an outpatient, and I accompanied him.
Julie and I both felt glad that he was being properly monitored by a doctor. And Jack informed me that his medicine helped him feel much better and that he found his therapy to be of great assistance.
Jack had a positive outlook on life. I went ahead and messed it up after that. Jack requested if he might come and stay with me for a while while we were leaving the Priory. You may, of course, I said. I followed up by asking, “What do you mean by a bit?” “I’m not sure. around six months?
“Six months? ” Jack… Looks like there may be an issue.
‘What? I’m no longer able to reside in my own house.
He seemed perplexed. Hurt. ‘No!’ Of course you may remain, I said. Just see how things develop.
I wanted to assist my unhappy kid in every way a good father could. I yearned to share in his life.
I wanted to be at his side. I wanted to provide him with the security and affection he needed. The one thing he needed and desired, which was to live with me, I just didn’t want.
But at that point, I had a new life, a new wife, and a newborn kid. I had received the new start that every middle-aged guy hopes for. And Jack, a long-standing issue, rears his head.
He wanted to be a part of my new life. He wanted to return to the house where he was raised.
He yearned for the return of his former room, the one with the Sonic the Hedgehog comforter and Aladdin wallpaper. However, a new youngster was sound asleep in his room. I was aware that Jack posed no threat to the infant or anybody else, but for myself.
He posed a very real threat to my newly discovered bliss. I was concerned that the quiet environment in the apartment would quickly become chaotic. And so it was.
We got into some very bad arguments over things like his unwillingness to assist around the apartment. We quarrelled over his disarray.
We argued over his irritability. About what he was doing with his life, we quarrelled. About what he wasn’t doing with his life, we got into a fight. I once hurled a tiny garbage he hadn’t emptied at him, much to my complete humiliation.
Yet at the time, I believed that I was the one being treated unfairly. I justified it by saying, “I offer you so much help, and I ask for so little in return.” Take out the trash just once a week. And you always find a weak justification for not doing it.
You won’t even be able to do it in that short of time! How unworthy a son you are! Of course, this was more about accepting responsibility than it was about removing the trash. I was acting like my dad.
I wanted Jack to have the ability to take care of tasks that needed to be completed for himself or for others.
But since he couldn’t be bothered, he didn’t want to take out the trash. Jack reasoned that it might be done at a different time that suited him instead of the night before trash pickup the following morning.
I’m aware of how ironic the circumstances are. I wanted Jack to mature and take responsibility upon himself, but when he didn’t, I punished by throwing a childish temper tantrum.
When the fighting finally became unbearable, I advised Jack to leave and move in with my parents in their spacious Islington home. It seemed to be the best option.
My parents, Jay and Fran, were elderly bohemians who lived in a neighbouring dilapidated home and thought that any kind of housework was a bourgeois obsession. When you entered their home, you felt like you had travelled back to the late 1960s; it was weird and dirty, and Jack would fit in there.
If you were with your grandparents, you wouldn’t have to put up with my constant groaning, I remarked. It would improve our relationship. Jack kept quiet. Observe, I said. Try it, why not? You’re welcome to return here if you’re unsatisfied.
Jack reluctantly decided to try it out. However, I was aware—as was he—that once he left, he would never return.
I didn’t find out through Jack’s friends Poria and Jake that he had been “devastated” when, in Poria’s words to me, “you threw him out of his house” until after he had passed away.
Jake made the same statement.
He was in shock.
Sixth life lesson for 2022: Don’t compare your children to other children. I made an effort to avoid comparing Jack to other children. But I did, of course. All of us do.
I used to convince myself when Jack was in his mid-teens that he had his own Jack thing and that was plenty.
But after hearing a friend discuss a recent accomplishment made by their child, I would wonder, “Why can’t Jack achieve that?” I persuaded myself that being a nice person was more important than winning glitzy awards, fully knowing that this is what we parents of underachievers usually tell ourselves.
One day, my acquaintance wanted to tell me some happy news: his kid had been accepted to Oxford. With paternal pride, he shone.
I was ready to start my standard “Well done, that’s excellent news!” routine when I felt something within me suddenly shatter.
Years of praising him and other parents for their children’s accomplishments had an adverse effect on them. I pleaded with myself not to do it because I knew what was going to happen. Avoid going there. Keep quiet. Simply smile. felicitate him on his son’s acceptance to Oxford.
Oxford?’ then burst out of it. F*****g big deal! Jack has entered treatment! The Priory, of course! My pal chuckled. Nervously. I also did it. How come I said that?
The fact was that I also wanted to extol my kid. I wanted to feel happy for him once, just once.
It wasn’t necessary for him to get into Oxford or obtain a prominent, well-paying position at a law firm or the City.
just for the purpose of saying: Guess what? A record label has signed Jack’s band! Or maybe Jack wrote this fantastic book!
Has Jack ever wished to please his parents? In my opinion. I still recall his saddest comment to me. He had started a brief career as a drug dealer in 2015, the year of his death.
He promised me he would earn a “sh*tload of money” and repay his parents. I’m going to make you and Julie so proud of me, he continued. That was a statement he had never made before.
Of course, I considered replying, “But Jack, we are proud of you.”
But because I knew that would be lying and we both did, I kept quiet. I should’ve been lying.
Sometimes boys like Jack need to hear falsehoods because they can make life a little less painful and offer them a little hope.
But what did Jack anticipate would occur when his drug dealing enterprise became successful?
That his mother and I, giddy with parental pride, would brag to friends: “Yes, our Jack is doing very well in the drug business.” He has advanced from managing tiny bags of cannabis in Camden Town to overseeing the distribution of crack over the whole region of North London!
I had no reason to doubt my liberal conviction that doing drugs recreationally was a legal and healthy way to enjoy myself until Jack’s death.
People like me perceived drug use as an innocent rite of passage when we were youths growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Back then, we brushed off any discussion of the harm that drugs may cause as “tabloid hysteria.” Had we not been there when something was smoked, snorted, or snorted?
And see what pleasant, responsible bourgeois grownups we become.
So there was no reason to be concerned when it came time for our kids to try drugs. They’d be all right.
We were merely naïve, conceited, and uninformed about drugs, even though we believed we were so knowledgeable and cool about them. I don’t think I could have prevented Jack from using drugs.
But I had the opportunity to inform him of the risky adverse effects that drug use may have on individuals like him.
There is now a tonne of medical proof that regularly using substances like ecstasy and marijuana, particularly skunk, may cause the same type of emotional and social withdrawal as Jack did.
He may have always been miffed that I wouldn’t do narcotics with him. He was aware that I had used coke heavily in my 30s and had used acid, marijuana, and both in my teens.
He was also aware of my late 1960s drug use with my bohemian parents. Why not then? With him, why not?
A typical invitation from Jack went like this: Jack: Get moving, dude. While we watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, let’s smoke some marijuana.
Even though it’s tempting, I’m going to pass on that one, Jack.
Jack: Dad, come on. You should never go out and do drugs.
He was accurate. I was, nevertheless, sometimes tempted. There were moments when I said to myself, “Oh f*** it, let’s just get high and have some fun together!”
I would remind myself that you constantly take on the position of Jack’s therapist, confessor, or parole board—you always behave like a worried parent. Why not be a friend for a change?
But since I wanted to be a good mom, I never did.
My Just Say No To Jack stance had no useful purpose other than to improve my self-esteem.
Every suicide is an unsolved murder mystery in the making. But with a suicide, you discover both the body and the murderer at the same moment, unlike the traditional murder mystery in crime fiction or reality.
I don’t feel responsible for my son’s death, but I do regret it much. Jack should have lived with me at home so I could watch after him.
He desperately wanted a tranquil, secure setting to escape the mental storms raging inside of him. I could have done that, but I was embarrassed of myself for not wanting the hassle of having Jack return to live with me. I tried my best to be kind, patient, and nice to Jack, but maybe not enough or consistently enough.
I can’t tell for sure if I could have rescued him if I had shown him more compassion and affection. But there aren’t many certainties in life, and there are even fewer when someone commits suicide.
If I were to identify one main aspect that mostly explains Jack’s troubled mental condition, I would answer that it was primarily his drug usage.
The kindling for future turmoil may have been the divorce, but the fires were started by drugs.
On October 5, Eyewear Publishing will release Cosmo Landesman’s Jack And Me: How Not To Live After Loss for £20. Before October 8, place a £18 order at mailshop.co.uk/books or by calling 020 3176 2937. Orders over £20 qualify for free UK P&P.