When I was a teenager, my mother told me that my grandfather, a prominent French economist and writer who had struggled with manic depression, had died. “He was hit by a car,” she said. I suspected she was lying, and I was right. I learned the truth soon enough: My grandfather, Jean Denizet, had jumped out of the window of a mental hospital. My grandmother—concerned with appearances, and unwilling to have French high society think whatever they might about a suicide—had apparently concocted the alternate story and asked her children to pass it on.
It wasn’t the first time a Denizet had leaped out the window of a building. My mother’s younger brother, the only male among her eight siblings, had committed suicide that way in his early 30s (on the day before Christmas). Then, three years ago, one of my mother’s sisters intentionally overdosed on medications.
For another sister’s death, I traveled to Paris for the funeral. My grandmother and my mother’s six remaining sisters—most of whom have battled lifelong depression—attended. It was hard not to look around and wonder: Who would be next? And could it be me?
As the only one of my many cousins to be raised outside of France, I have in many ways been insulated against the difficulties of my aristocratic French family (more on that a bit further down). But I am connected by genetics, and, as I’ve grown older and struggled with addiction and depression, I’ve sometimes worried that the legacy of my mother’s family might enslave me, too.
After the ceremony, we traveled to the small French village of Crepy to bury my mother’s sister next to her brother and her father. My dozens of cousins and I—we range in age from 18 to 35, with most in our 20s—spent much of the trip huddled in conversation. What had really happened to our parents? How had they become so ill? And what would become of us? What had become of us? Were we genetically programmed to suffer as they had?
I was reminded of all of this recently when I listened to the latest CD from my talented, charming, and endlessly kind French cousin, Martin Mey. The best song is “Live,” which he sings in English and which is his plea to his mother, who has battled severe lifelong depression, to “get out of and live.” It’s a beautiful and haunting song, and I love him for writing it.
