Secrets

Every family has its skeletons. Big or small; literal or metaphorical, each family has them. Take your average suburban family of four. Is everything really what it seems? Is his job satisfying, the money he makes worthwhile? Is she truly happy with her role as housewife, with her aging looks? And the children, can they ever feel enough? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose it differs.

But what happens in a family when these insecurities, these differences are concealed from each other. A family whose skeletons are also their secrets. Is it naive to suppose that your family has no such secrets? Again maybe, maybe not.

I thought that my family was fine. It turns out that I was naive. I know that his job isn't satisfying him, that she feels useless, that the children feel inferior and incapable. I know because this is us. The fact that we try to support each other's feelings of inadequacy is what makes us a family.

So it is only natural to feel betrayed when the family keeps a secret from you for two decades, right?

Because my family is not alright. In fact, it seems to be imploding around me at an incredibly sudden rate.

Two weeks ago my grandfather collapsed and was rushed into hospital. My father was inexplicably furious - why? Why would his father's illness cause such a petrifying reaction from the son? I found out the next day that my grandfather had drank himself unconscious.

Last night my mother revealed more to me - that my grandfather has been an alcoholic for about twenty years; that my grandmother had packed her bags on many an occasion; that my father was close to cutting off his father; that almost every time my uncles called they were calling to say that he had been drinking again; that Grandad refused to go to A&A.

But what worried me the most - my uncle attributes the drinking to a deep depression. Depression that has spanned twenty years. And now the issue of betrayal rears up again - depression is a hereditary disease (as is, coincidentally, alcoholism). Depression is something that I have struggled with and any sufferer will know that it is the most isolating of experiences. Why me? What's wrong with me? I was so young when I had depression and yet nobody stopped to tell me that I wasn't alone. There was nothing wrong with me.

Where do you go from here? Where do I go from here? My grandfather is an irritable, jagged, crotchety man. Hard to know, hard to love, but I always wanted so very much to know him. But now...I find it hard to love him when he's being so stubborn. He needs help and if he won't do it for himself then he needs to do it for my Gran. She's the most wonderfully kind-hearted individual and he's been treating her like dirt for years. Gran will never leave him - she might pack her bags but we all know she won't follow through. He knows that too.

I don't find it easy to keep my thoughts to myself. I have to, for her, but it will always be a struggle. Knowing that each time she leaves the house for a few hours she's going to return to a drunk? It isn't fair for her, for him, for us. But what can I do when the adults bury their head in the sand? My uncles are too indecisive to ever act, my father too hot-headed and judgemental to be reasonable. My grandfather is 75 and not in good health. So what happens when he dies and we're that family. The ones who are resentful at the funeral, who hold grudges and bad memories and are unable to remember the simple fact that we loved him?

Nobody deserves to die like that, much less a man with a disease such as depression. So how to stop it? I told my mother that I thought we should have some kind of an intervention. Issue an ultimatum that we will love and support him but no longer will we do so unconditionally. Her response? Don't say anything to your father. This is all a secret - we don't talk about secrets.

So where do the secrets end, and the healing begins? Can a family really survive the skeletons in the cupboard just by ignoring them? Or, as they say, will the truth always out?