AIBU to tell someone they will be dead in 15 years so relax *MNHQ ADDING CONTENT WARNING FOR TOXIC PARENTING DISCUSSION*

Hmm. I can see that she must be very irritating but I don’t think it was a good choice of words on your part. "We'll all be dead in 75 years" or similar would have been less personal. However old she is, "15 years" might not sound very long to someone who’s too scared to think about their death.

(Anyway, in my experience cereal left unsealed goes soggy, not dry.)

There is no maybe about it, telling someone they will be dead in 15 years is obviously going to remind them of their mortality. You slapped her in the face with it.

People saying YABU seem to be glossing over the rest of your post. The bit about dropping the spoon stuck out to me. For you to have reacted like that as a child must mean that she was very very harsh and overreactive to you when you were young. I had a mother like that, would go crazy at tiny things to the point where I was a nervous wreck as a kid.

Hopefully you've done her a favour and made her realise that the things that she gives everyone a hard time about constantly really don't matter that much.

Thinking on it, I think the issue I perceive with the comment is how specific it was. "You'll be dead in 15 years" has a whole different ring to it than "life is too short for this sort of thing."

I wouldn't say that to my mother as I like my mum, but considering your own backstory with your mum I can see why.

My mum is a bit like this and it is frustrating. I’ve said things alone the lines of ‘you need to relax, you’re a long time dead’ which I don’t this is as bad (or maybe I’m wrong?) I prefer to take a relaxed approach to small issues but I can see her blood pressure sky rocket over the tiniest thing. I would probably apologise.

Has she always been like this? As people age, their world can shrink and they can focus on the really small stuff as they have little else to think about. I have seen both my parents go this way.

Everyone going ‘ooh I guess there’s a backstory, you must have childhood trauma’…… it’s quite literally there in the OP.

YANBU OP, sounds like she’s been a lifetime of hard work.

I think too, if posters said their partner was really controlling about how things are done round the house, there'd be a flurry of ltb. Maybe her dad is a pain in the arse and never pulls his weight, but based on the OP, the mum has form for blowing up at everyone. Maybe mum does feel unappreciated as some posters have suggested, but in that case she needs to talk to her family. Isn't that what she'd be told if she posted here? Obviously swiftly followed by ltb if he has form for not clipping the cereal packet and refuses to change 😎 But not going on and on and on, to the extent that her child eventually snaps and makes a not very awful comment to shut her up. I mean, if she'd said she wished her mother dead that would be different.

I'd lay money on @pallindromeemordnillap being terrified to apologise for fear of mother kicking off again, so there's probably a bit of a stand off going on now.

Perhaps it will do her good to be reminded of her own mortality and to ponder whether she wants her children’s memory of her to be behaving like this.
Maybe it’s my catholic upbringing, but OP’s mother would do very very well to examine her conscience.

I know everyone wants boomers dead but if you are 64 you might easily live another 20 years or more.

OP wasn't told off for dropping the spoon.
She was upset at herself and her mum told her not to sweat the small stuff.

No, you have read that incorrectly.

Nah, its a phrase. Like 'you're a long time dead'.

Hardly controversial unless u think you're immortal.

Sure, except (a) it was the friends mother who told her not to sweat the small stuff (b) OP cried because she expected a volcanic eruption in the style of her own mother and (c) being frustrated and irritable at other people’s shit is a two way street and OP has had it up to here with her mother turning life’s minor vicissitudes into her own Personal Crucifixion

I never bother clipping cereal bags - makes no odds.

OP wasn't told off for dropping the spoon
She was upset at herself and her mum told her not to sweat the small stuff
NO @MummyLongLegsss
Read the OP!
OP dropped the spoon at her friend's house and burst into tears anticipating being told off. The friend's mum gave her a hug and told her not to sweat the small stuff!
That was when the OP realised not every mum was like hers.

No, it was the mother of the other child who told her not to sweat the small stuff. Presumably her reaction came from years of her own mother treating a dropped spoon as a major crime and/or disaster.

she didn't say she was terrified of the outcome from her mum of dropping the spoon.

It suggests that she grew up always trying to do the 'right thing' because her mum was very particular about doing the right thing.

There is a difference.

My Mum brought me up to always 'mind what people would think' which has left me with a lack of confidence at times.

If I had her as a mother I think I would have said the same thing!

Goodness, if she'd just been listening to her mother banging on about it for 10 minutes or more, the very last thing OP needed to do was to chip in with yet more of the same.

So much so I remember bursting out crying at a friends house when I dropped a spoon.

OP wasn't told off for dropping the spoon.
She was upset at herself and her mum told her not to sweat the small stuff.

This is a case of keeping out of your parent's marriage. You don't know what's gone on over the years.

All the anger and irritability her mum has had comes from somewhere and most likely is a response to others' behaviour that she's simply had enough of.

It’s probably more about the tone in which you made the remark than the content of the remark.
I often tell my parents to stop stressing about the small things while they only have x amount of years left to enjoy their lives.
I will never understand the sensitivity around the certainty of death. We are not immortal beings and there is a degree of honesty required with oneself surrounding your limited time on earth.

Did you miss the way she did the same thing to OP - to the extent that she grew up terrified of dropping a spoon on the floor because of how her mum would react?

Don't worry - sounds like you've had a life time of her nonsense. Why shouldn't she hear your thoughts for a change?

You hardly wished her dead.