The most callous/inappropriate words of condolences you’ve seen

[Eastie77Returns]

My friends husband recently died. They were a lively, party hard couple who hosted parties with epic drinking sessions and were known as users of recreational drugs. The husband died from an illness that could be linked to excessive drinking but at this stage none of us (friends of wife) know exactly what killed him.

One of our friends has written on his memorial page (I’m paraphrasing a bit): “RIP xxx. Gone too soon, you were a lovely soul. Your lifestyle caught up with you in the end but you lived life to the full and not everyone can say that”. She is not a native English speaker so I have no idea if she meant it to come across the way it did but all of us were WTF when we read it😮

I’m veering between finding it comically inappropriate and a bit callous and not sure which of the two it falls under!

I reposted a memory on Facebook showing my father's funeral flowers. A friend of my husband saw the post, didn't read it properly, and phoned my husband in a panic saying "so sorry to hear about your dad" to my husband. When my husband said it was not his dad, the friend said "well thank heavens for that!" And proceeded to roar with laughter at his error. I could hear the whole conversation because the phone was really loud and I was in the room.

My husband didn't really point out the fact that my dad HAD died a year preciously and kind of went along with the general hilarity. I went out for a run, crying my eyes out, feeling like my dad and I were nobodies. My husband said he would be mortified if I said anything to his friend Or had a go at him. I have never said anything about this to him but I keep finding myself making snide remarks because I feel this anger inside still.

I don't think that's crass. Insensitive, but aimed well, but only you know.

Oh behave.

I went for bereavement counselling and the counsellor told to eat my greens so that I didn't get constipated as it would make me depressed .....I didn't bother going back to her

@MrsAliceRichards

I am very sorry to read that, this forum, especially bereavement isn't normally like that. I hope they were reported.

Had this form my dad after my mum died. It was all about how he felt. He’d want3d to divorce her for ages..and he took up with new women within 2 months of mums funeral. Has since eradicated all memories of her form his life.
never once asked me how I was coping with it. Not then. Not now 20 something years later.

A lot of people actually believe in the "one out, one in" theory.
My son was born 3 weeks after my dad died suddenly, and even 30 years on, the thought of them passing each other on their journeys gives me a little comfort

Name change. A few weeks after my dad died, having given me zero support, my mother turned to me in disgust, berating me for pretending I didn’t see my father in town one day ‘It destroyed him’. I was also a teen. It crushed me as I could not talk to him about it. As if I wasn’t depressed enough. My dd is a teen. If I saw her in town and she was with a group of her friends I didn’t know, I’d walk the other way. Your parents are really embarrassing at this age.

Yes, in theory, said in a nice way, but you wouldn't say "one in, one out" surely

My DBIL died suddenly, a terrible shock for us all. My MIL told my DSIL that her grief was much greater because she'd lost a son and DSIL could always get a new husband. She still says it now.

When I was grieving the death of a much-loved relative, I had someone tell me that I should be glad to feel upset. You see, they'd experienced so much loss in their own life that they can't experience grief anymore - they feel nothing now when someone dies.

I was in the kind of mood where I was on a hair-trigger so I excused myself and walked off. I don't know what they expected - should I have started dancing out of gladness, or should I have given them a medal for winning the misery olympics?

Anyway, it wasn't even true; they were deeply upset when a friend of theirs died a couple of years later. I didn't remind them of what they'd said to me.

But surely he could simply have said “I admired the way he always put his family first” without adding in insulting comments?

There is no need to lie and pretend you liked someone who has died if you didn’t, but if you choose to offer condolences for such a person you can just keep it short and sweet with a truthful, positive comment.

One of our managers passed away and was not particularly liked. A colleague said “he was tough and pushed us but I think he wanted us to be the best version of ourselves” which I think was probably true. Nothing about liking him or he will be greatly missed because that was not the case.

When my mum died of cancer at a young age, so many people said to me "at least you knew she was going to die"

I was working for the IT division of a bank when my father died. I was only 30 and only child. Colleagues who'd lost parents had a week's leave. I took 3 days. Was told by my head of dept that I couldn't have all the time and it was a pity my df had died so early in the holiday year or I could've had more time.

Thanks Nigel!

Some of these are shocking

DM had dementia, but was coping well at home with DF.
She had a heart attack, & at her funeral a friend said to DF "It's a blessing in disguise". Dad did not agree.

My youngest sister died suddenly in quite traumatic circumstances only a couple of days ago. She was in her early thirties and I’m still in shock.
My ex MIL called me the same day to ask how I was feeling. I explained I was in shock, couldn’t really talk about it etc.

she proceeded to ask how it happened. (We didn’t know at that point as it had happened a couple of hours before. Plus we are Awaiting post mortem results)

She then told me it was hard to feel sympathetic as she clearly brought it on herself due to alcoholism issues which she had struggled with all her life. She literally said “it’s hard to feel sorry though really isn’t it, when she’s brought this on herself”.

my sister leaves behind her 13 year old son who is now orphaned.

Husband's father was diagnosed with cancer with 3 months to live (actually died 16 days later) MIL phoned his sister to ask if she would be be visiting, her response "No, I've already mourned him". He was still alive at that point.

Not always! When my Dad died, my husband's grandmother said, 'Well, at least it's not a member of my family!'

Yep, still trying to work out why she was the most important person in all of that!

Wonder how much comes from relatively fewer bereavements compared with times with larger families and worse health care and how much is from self-obsessed stupidity.

Having thought about it, on reflection all the vicars coming to discuss the services have all been spot on during stressful times. Partly practice and partly empathy, possibly.

I get that most people don’t know what to say, but going off this thread I think we can broadly agree that any sentence uttered by someone that starts with ‘At least…’ is going to be a bit ill-considered, at best.

A friend died in a car accident. She was a single mum with two young children at 12 and 10. It’s was on the news etc. obviously, news spread on Facebook and there was a comment in the news Facebook page saying I didn’t really like her but she didn’t deserve that. I mean, WTF.

Bumped into some old school “friends” shortly after beloved DH died of cancer aged 50 - one of the girls was studying me closely then suddenly said ‘Well, you’ve done well out of it, haven’t you” 😱

Saw a lad (used to be in my class at school ) around the same time as above story - he asked me out on a date ….
“cos you must have money now, and my ex wife just cleaned me out in the divorce!!” 😱

The Post Office staff member got up to look at me from behind the counter … I had given over my Widowed Mothers benefit book and she needed to peer at me “cos you don’t look like a widow - and we do get fraud, you know”
I was widowed at 35 with a 15 year old heartbroken son… how should I look?😱

These people….🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Really quite inconvenient of him, eh?

Outrageous.

Fucking hell.
I hate it when anyone says “I’ll pray for you” when they’ve not been asked to. It’s horrendously patronising and presumptive…I always say how can you prey for me when you don’t know what I need from god. Even worse are people who think they know what god is saying and then tell you messages form god- someone did that to me once when they knew nothing about me and caused me a lot of distress and anger. The sheer arrogance of it,

then to top that off with a comment like that. I’d not be able to keep my mouth shit..I’d have told her to tell her vicar or priest or whoever what she’d just said and see if they thought it was either appropriate or a remotely Christian thing to say.