"Notwithstanding the opportunity to reach for a better outcome, there was no need for Jonathan, or for us, his parents, to live in shame, and certainly no benefit in living with the weight of such a lie."
This is the exact opposite of how my father feels; and this is notwithstanding that I inherited his OCD/Anxiety, Depression, and ADD. I found out from one of his maternal cousins that his paternal grandfather committed suicide, not died of Black Lung. When I confronted Dad, he gave the excuse that I was too young to know the truth about Great-Granddad's death; and this is despite that the sons of my Granduncle Tony (z"l) was honest with his own children upfront about how their grandfather died, meaning that Dad could've been as honest with me as Granduncle Tony was with his children.
Too often, people who have other things that they want to hide, hide whatever they can with bubbe meises instead of telling the stranger-than-fiction truth; and it has only "certainly no benefit in living with the weight of such a lie." In fact, the bubbe meises make it worse, especially when the truth hits—and when you, for example, ended up in Sheppard Pratt for threatening suicide before you knew what partially explained it: i.e., that your father's paternal grandfather actually committed suicide and passed on his Depression to your grandfather (and you've figured out that your late grandfather had Depression, and that he passed it on to his oldest child), your father, and you.
