My great grandmother died in the early twentieth century (I’m not exactly sure of the date) but when Grandad was young, maybe eleven or twelve. His step mum preferred girls, so Grandad and his younger brother were sent away to naval boarding school while their sister remained at home. I remember a creased studio photo somewhere of the two boys in naval uniforms, standing shoulder to shoulder and looking, when you know the story, somewhat forlorn. A few years later, perhaps still in his teens, Grandad joined the army and moved to India.
Nana was the daughter of a jute plantation overseer and an illiterate plantation worker in Northern India. Her father paid for her to be raised in a Catholic orphanage/boarding school and he returned to Kent where he married and raised a second family. She became a nurse.
In their wedding photo, Nana and Grandad made a happy and glamorous couple albeit with a common history as abandoned children.
My mum and my uncle were both born in India and following partition, the family returned to England by ship in late 1947. I don’t know if my great grandparents were still around then to welcome back their son and his wife. After a few relocations Nana and Grandad finally settled in North London.
Self-medicating with alcohol
Grandad was never openly called an alcoholic, at least not in front of the grandchildren, but the words, “I’m going to see a man about a dog” were his catchphrase as he left the house in the early evenings. As a rule we didn’t keep drink in our house, but whenever he and Nana came to stay, cans of beer coincidentally appeared in the fridge. Later he was given stern warnings before a family wedding to stay off the drink or else. We knew him of old and he wasn’t to be trusted.
Tales of strangers knocking at their door unexpectedly, pursuing a debt, makes me wonder if he also had that bipolar trait, when high, of ambitious pet projects and fanciful ideas. That he had convinced others (as I have) that it’s a dead cert, when in fact, it’s a delusion. It may have been construed that he was a liar, a chancer or maybe just a character, the teller of tall tales down the pub.
I do wonder what life was like in the fifties and sixties for my nana, as a woman of colour, and her family, given the overt and publicly endorsed racism of the time. I speculate if this was behind the unusual role reversal of a Friday night chore, when Grandad did the weekly shopping, a task that surely was a woman’s domain at the time? I once asked how it was for Nana in those days, “She had a sense of humour” speaks volumes.
What was it like living in a home where your dad has unpredictable and unbridled mood swings? Untreated bipolar can mean weeks of mania and the topsy turvy world that it includes. Bipolar anger, particularly when hypomanic or manic, is now a recognised feature of the condition for some people and the pandemic demonstrated just how many and their families struggle with this, not knowing what to do.
Untreated bipolar
Another possible clue to bipolar (or just bad) behaviour in Grandad was that when Nana died and Mum sent money to pay for a rose bush at the crematorium, Grandad spent it on drink.
But he was always a gentleman and abided by the pre-war, maybe Edwardian, code of walking on the outside of the pavement when we strolled down the street, to protect me “from the mud of passing carriages”.
Bipolar can be managed, it may take time, but it can. Today we might describe my grandad as self-medicating and living with bipolar. Today he could seek information and advice from mental health charities including Bipolar UK, Mind and Rethink, join online forums or attend a support group. In the 1950s he may not have seen a doctor about it, because he didn’t recognise it in himself – and neither, I suspect, would the doctor. Even today, I have had two GPs tell me that I know more about the condition, because I live with it, than they do.
In the early 2000s my sister, on a stay from abroad, and I arranged to visit Grandad in Bristol, where he had retired. In the days before mobile phones we made arrangements in advance. On the day, we missed our intended train. We phoned from a payphone at Paddington Station and as he didn’t pick up, left a message to explain our delay and caught the train an hour later. Arriving at Grandad’s flat there was no answer, he had gone out. We waited as long as we could before catching the last train back. We didn’t see him. Another disappointment that confirmed the consensus of the problem adult. Or another abandonment?
Managing bipolar
I was diagnosed with manic depression some years after Grandad died, and in that pre-internet period I did a lot of reading about likely causes and treatment. I attended an MDF (Bipolar UK’s previous name) conference and met other people affected by bipolar. I signed up to the MDF newsletter, Pendulum. I realised that Grandad’s life experiences and subsequent behaviours and alcohol dependency were his way of coping with difficult emotions and that today he might be recognised as bipolar too.
Since writing this piece, I shared it with my mum and uncle. My mum revealed something I never knew – Grandad had undergone ECT – electric shock therapy in Shenley Hospital, just a few miles from Watford General Shrodells Unit, where I got my diagnosis.