My sister asked me this

I just wanted to send love from a fellow grieving Mother.

To lose a child to suicide is utterly devastating.

You never 'get over it' and you're never the same.

Nobody understands the impact it has, even close family.

It is a very lonely place.

Of course losing your child is very hard and what your sister said was quite shocking.

However, I agree with PPs that your comment does sound really quite dismissive of what she was saying.

Best put it down to alcohol and move on.

I don’t think that what you said was out of order at all. A reminder that happy relationships don’t always mean that everything is rosy. She should know that!
I don’t know how you haven’t lost it with her!

Your sister was talking about partner/marital
Relationships and it may have seemed like a dig at her when you mentioned the loss of your daughter which is an unrelated subject.

That may have prompted her to make such a horrible comment.

I feel sorry for your husband who dealing with his own loss has to go bear a nasty conversation between his wife and her sister.

It's 50/50 in my opinion and probably alcohol fuelled.

I agree.

Very sorry for your loss. There’s a mum on another thread atm who has been has this loss recently…

Just try and forget about it. You'd all been drinking.

Alcohol isn't great at helping people to make good judgements unfortunately! I'd just draw a line under it. Her question was definitely wrong, but unless there is a wider pattern of behaviour where she dismisses your loss, I'd move on from it.

She then said ' but you'd rather have what you have with your DH than have your daughter. Wouldn't you?'

There is no excuse for this comment. None whatsoever. I genuinely cannot believe, drunk and sad or not, that she said such an awful thing.

I also don't think the op was wrong to bring up her late daughter. I can see how some have interpreted it as 'I've been through worse than you' but to not mention her daughter would have been to ignore her existence and her loss.

You have done nothing wrong, op. I am angry on your behalf and would struggle to forgive your sister for such a comment.

I'd blame it on alcohol and leave it alone.

It was insensitive to bring it up during a conversation in which she was upset about being single and trying to express her feelings, you were basically invalidating her feelings and telling her she has no right to be upset about being single because she hasn’t lost a child. It’s not that black and white, of course somebody can be upset about being single if a relationship is what they desire regardless of what other good things they have in their life. It does sound like you were playing ‘poor me’ top trumps.

That’s not to say that her comment wasn’t insensitive, but you were insensitive and invalidating her feelings and situation first and I think the fact she probably felt defensive and invalidated coupled with the fact there was alcohol involved is an explanation, even if not an excuse, for her comment.

Your sister was very tactless but you led the conversation down that path so I also do agree with your DH. I’d just brush it off - too much alcohol and deep conversations not a great mix

It's a really wierd thing to say, as an adult should really understand that you don't get to decide who dies. It's even worse she said it in front of your husband. Drink can make people talk absolute shite.

Sister and DH are both out of order and as for pp saying she used her DD as a trump card, I am almost speechless. I imagine ops lost DD is never very far from her thoughts so any conversation especially one about how lucky someone is will automatically make op think hang on I don't feel lucky and she'd be right. I'm so sorry for your loss.

Your husband is right. You should not have said what you did as you opened up the conversation into a race to the bottom.

Your correct response would have been to nod and agree how lucky you were and leave it at that.

It was your reply that turned it into a competition which triggered her wholly inappropriate comment.

Having lost an immediate family member to suicide I am sadly used to people’s morbid interest and assumptions around suicide.

She was incredibly wrong and I would find that comment very hard to forgive.

I watched it break my parents and they carried it with them until their deaths. It was like they lived under a cloud from that day forward.

How your sister could be so cruel I do not know.

I’m so sorry x

Why shouldn’t OP talk about her dd?
Any mother would put their dd’s life above a relationship.
The sister is insensitive and tactless and frankly doesn’t know what she’s talking about!

This is an innocuous comment - "sister 1 was talking about how lucky we were to have loving partners and so are her daughters"

It was the OP that turned the conversation to her daughter, almost playing it as a trump card.

The OP's DH is just as much a grieving parent as the OP is, and he obviously wasn't happy to hear his daughter being brought into the conversation in that way.