A Life like Other People’s (2005 first published, 2009 edition) is the prolific
British dramatist, author, and actor’s autobiographical novel, written at the
age of 62. Bennett (1943-) writes an amazingly honest account of his
grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles – of their depression and dementia.
He
begins with his mother, Lilian, and her depression in 1966 and the way his
father, brother, and himself cope. He is living in London, but travels to Leeds
to visit whenever it gets worse. She has fears – she has delusions – she has
moments of unreason. “And yet, as the doctor and everybody else kept saying,
depresson was not madness.” But no doctor was prepared to say how long her
depression would last. After six weeks of what his father called “this flaming
carry-on” she voluntary admitted herself into the ‘mental hospital’ in
Lancaster for the first time.
Bennett’s
description of the ‘mental hospital’ is harrowing and sad, but there was always
some hope. In the eight years between the onset of his mother’s first
depression and his father’s death in 1974, she was admitted to hospital half a
dozen times, three of those times she had electro-convulsive therapy. There were
long periods of remission, months, and years even.
Through
his mother’s depression, he learns of the death of Grandad Bennett – he did not
die in the manner he was told. His two
aunts – Kathleen and Myra – were not without troubles of their own either. For
Myra, the war was a godsend; she enlisted in 1945 and travelled the globe. Myra
married Stan, 10 years her junior, but in 1964 he was flown home from Malaya (now
Malaysia) suffering inoperable cancer and died soon after. Kathleen and Myra
were constant companions until the eve of Kathleen’s retirement from work when
she is “courted and briskly married by an elderly widower from Australia. It’s
a turn of events which takes Kathleen as much by surprise as it does everyone
else.” Kathleen sells the house and travels the globe with her new husband Bill
while the former globetrotting sister “lives in a succession of briefly rented
rooms” which exude hopelessness. Myra’s death takes everyone by surprise,
diagnosed as asthma. After a lengthy Pacific cruise “something begins to happen
to Aunty Kathleen’s head.” Doctors diagnose Alzheimers and she is admitted to
hospital. One day she wanders off, and the author finds her dead in the woods.
She’d been lying on the path for six days.
The
person Bennett was most worried about – his mother – outlives everyone. She
died in 1995, 19 years after her husband.
Incidences
of lives ended by suicide, dementia, and sudden illnesses are told in a way
that makes the reader understand the hardships of depression – not only on the
person, but on the family. Sometimes there was compassion, but mostly there was
not. Not because they were cruel or heartless, but because it was so unknown –
and not discussed. The secrets family kept from the public and each other are
revealed – secrets borne by shame and unfamiliarity, and yet so familiar in the
Bennett family.
Bennett’s
autobiography was written at a time when he was diagnosed with cancer – with
the expectation that he would soon be dead, and it would be posthumously
published – which explains the openness of feelings and thoughts. And if
readers recognize their own families, as many will, the book will serve to add
to their understanding of having a loved one ‘not right in the mind’ in a
poignant, but also often comical way.
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