Open Writing

Summer 2005

James is home. But there's something wrong. He's like a toy with dead batteries. Due to set off on a long holiday, I'm frantic. Backed into a corner, he finally tells me that he and his girlfriend have split up.

'But, why? What happened?' My head is spinning. The happily-ever-after scenario I'd imagined for James and the perfect Maggie lies smashed at my feet. I look at him. He's broken. He can't talk about it.

I board the plane, with Howard and a chest full of guilt and worry, certain I'm abandoning my child when he needs me most. My sleep over the next few weeks is peppered with nightmares. I'm a little shocked by my reaction. This has never happened before, when girls have come and gone from my sons' lives.

James met Maggie three years earlier. He'd been persuaded to take an extra year of study to work with a research team investigating a treatment for bladder cancer. Maggie was on an exchange course at his university. She was Polish by birth but grew up in Germany. Fluent in five languages, she was studying genetic molecular biology. Slim and blonde, she was also gentle, polite and loving. She fitted effortlessly into the family. James seemed more relaxed, more complete, when they were together. For Christmas, he wrote and illustrated a children's story for her and had it translated into Polish, the language of her childhood.

They'd been separated the following year. James was caught up in his medical studies and Maggie had to return to her university in Freiburg. They found it very difficult to be apart. James started taking German night classes and arranged to do another extra year studying medicine in Germany.

Howard and I visited them in October and met Maggie's parents. James and Maggie translated between us all and I was amazed at my son's mastery of a new language in such a short time. Despite the communication barrier, we parents all got on very well. At one point we learned that Maggie's dad laughs in his sleep, which nicely sums up the nature of the man. Her mother had brought a beautiful and elaborate cake for James' birthday and fussed over him, as if he were her own.

Ask any parent what they want for their child and the answer will probably be some version of 'happiness'. This relationship promised comfortable love, rewarding and challenging careers and few, if any, in-law problems. If arranged marriage was part of our culture, I would have chosen this young woman for my son. I thought he was safely sorted.

Back home it becomes clear to me that this is much more than a broken relationship. My normally hyperactive, gregarious son is listless, he can barely get out of bed and he's avoiding his friends. James' life has suffered a stress fracture.

We talk and argue. I can't let it go. I read books and trawl the internet for information on depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. Gradually, my brave son begins to rebuild himself. He goes to doctors and tries out a behaviour therapy programme he found on the internet.

Through sheer strength of character, he picks up his final year of medical studies and becomes a doctor. I piece together what I think has happened.
From personal experience, I know how hard it can be to live in a different country from the one you've grown up in. Even between countries with the same language there are cultural differences. I often feel just outside the circle of everyone else. I don't share common childhood experiences with my peers, struggled for decades to understand British humour and still approach social cheek kisses stiffly. My first year, when Howard was the only person I was close to in the whole country, had been enormously challenging. And I am more at ease with my own company than James, who has always needed friends around.

In Germany, James was trying to study a difficult subject in a language he was still learning. Cut off from his own friends and family, he was entirely reliant on his relationship with Maggie. The cracks created by this pressure, I believe, released suppressed post traumatic stress symptoms buried at the time of his cancer and amputation.

Looking back, I think people, myself included, made things harder for James by insisting that he was brave and inspirational. This must have made it impossible for him to admit or share the understandable fears and feelings he really felt, encouraging him to believe secretly that he was just a cowardly fraud. The truth is, the decisions he made and the things he did in the face of those fears were what made him brave and inspirational to the rest of us.

Months later, James confesses to having considered suicide. This is more frightening because there'd been no cry for help at the time. If he'd followed through with that impulse, he would have succeeded. I thank God he sought and found the assistance he needed to recover.