Grief Thief!

[UpUpUpU]

I never thought this was a thing until now!

My mum sadly died on Friday. She was very poorly so was half expected by me, but for other family members, it has come as a shock.

As the word has gotten out I have had lots of lovely messages from family and friends etc, which have been comforting.

However, there was a post on FB that my sister was tagged in. I have no idea who the author is but they’d attached 2 very old and very blurry photos (like zoomed in on my mum in the background of a an actual printed photo) with a gushing post about being heartbroken, will never be the same again without seeing my mum, can’t stop crying and shaking (must be a MN user!) etc. All very dramatic and not a mention of my sister, who was tagged, to ask if she was ok.

I asked my sister who it was and it was someone who worked with my mum, very briefly, around 18 years ago when mum lived abroad. She was back in the UK for 15 years before she died and apparently had no contact with this woman since she returned. My sister lived abroad with my mum so vaguely knew this woman too (hence FB friends) but never spoke to her.

Why do people do this? It is such an odd thing to do?!

Some people can't help.themselves I have a Facebook acquaintance who posts everything about themselves and their child with disabilities
She once posted about the very sudden death of a class mate of her disabled child
I know her because I have a disabled child and both our children attended the same special school.
She got a lot if sorry for your loss messages even though the other child's death had nothing to do with her .

I think the actual.daughters of the deceased mother have more of a claim ( if that's even a thing ) than some random colleague ..

Sorry for your loss.

Fortunately I’ve never experienced this. It is horrible that quite a few people have found out about deaths of loved ones from social media.

I'm sorry this happened.

A very distant relative heard about my brother's death (he was only 29) years ago and within 12 hours of his passing she posted the facebook update

"rip john"

Nothing else, not even capital letters. The shock of it there on my feed was like a punch in the gut.

That must have been AWFUL. So sorry about that, really really sorry.

Wouldn't that warrant some sort of sanction from her employers?

Oh my god I’ve just googled grief thief and your post came up. My mum died on Saturday suddenly and obviously we are all completely devastated but my mums friend, they have been friends a long time but she’s been crap, really flakey, and she once (albeit a long time ago) accused my mum of stealing from her (of course she didn’t and she has since apologised but it’s not something she’s ever forgotten), has put herself right in the centre of this grief storm. When my mum went to hospital her friend put something on Facebook about how much she’s going to miss her friend and my mum was still alive and most of my family didn’t even know. She’s since put posts on every day about how amazing my mum is (which she is) and how they’ve never had a crossed word (ehh!!!). She’s sharing images of the gifts that people have sent her saying how my mum would love it - my mum is nothing like the person she keeps referring to. Not that I want her to, but she hasn’t once asked how me and my sister are. What the f! i didn’t realise this was so common!!

So sorry about your mum I hope you are starting to feel more positive. We’re still in total shock and disbelief i’m just praying this horrendous feeling fades ❤️

I’m really sorry to hear about your mum 💐

I didn’t realise it was a thing until I lost someone very close too. It’s horrible and intrusive. Sending kind thoughts 💐

@UpUpUpU and @LucyRK1988 I’m sorry to hear about your mums. @LucyRK1988 my DSis died unexpectedly at a young age in January, the awful feeling of total shock and disbelief will fade in time but I feel for you. Life is still very difficult and complicated but I no longer cry every day which is a pleasant change. Still several times a week but not every day. We will all eventually learn to live with our loss but it won’t be easy.

With DSis we didn’t announce anything on Facebook. I was disappointed that a couple of her friends put broken hearts on her Facebook page the day she died. I understand why but think it is insensitive unless it has been publicly announced. For various reasons we couldn’t tell DS for a couple of days, thankfully he didn’t see it before we could tell him.

Since then I have had initial lovely emails from various people we hadn’t seen for years. Then they started to tell me how to deal with my grief, it was well meaning but really blinking patronising as she hadn’t seen my DSis for over 20 years.

bloody complicated and horrible this grief thing. ☹️

We were unfortunate enough to experience this when my MIL died two years ago. A ‘friend’, who she hadn’t seen for years and who I’ve never even met, told my DH that she felt like she’d lost her own mum and he couldn’t possibly understand how upset she was. She harassed us daily for updates on the funeral even though we’d clearly told her it was a sudden death referred to the coroner and we would update her as soon as we had got permission to make arrangements. Then when we set a date, told us it wasn’t convenient for her and suggested a different date. The day before the funeral, she contacted me again saying she’d decided to come but would need to travel in the family car behind the hearse. I said no, there won’t be room. She next suggested I could travel separately and she could have my seat in the family car ‘because you’re not proper family after all.’ When I clarified that as the DIL, I was very much proper family, she then suggested I could drive her there in my own car. I stopped replying to messages at that point, and when she failed to show up at the funeral, I have to say I didn’t even realise until the next day, as she was so not someone that any of us considered to be important to my MIL.

She’s since been in touch to offer her very important opinion on what we should do with MIL’s house, and most recently to tell me she’s horrified to have seen a photo of me holding a baby on Facebook because ‘you’re far too old to have a baby and what on earth would MIL have thought.’ The baby is my nephew and MIL would have thought he was wonderful …

😳😳

DM had an issue after losing her sister with a cousin posting constantly on social media about how much she missed her and the brilliant relationship the two of them had.

The biggest issue, DM said, was that it was upsetting her nieces (aunt's daughters), but I also think it upset her too. When you're dealing with grief you don't need constant reminders.

So strange. There's a girl I have on Facebook who recently posted a photo an ACTUAL PHOTO of her uncle dead in the coffin. Like why would you do that? Freaked me out staring at this poor dead man.
Then a selfie of her holding his discoloured hand.
Then one of him in the hospital bed unconscious, with her taking a selfie next to him. So weird.
I call every one girl or boy when describing a person, but she's 35. Not a teen who doesn't know better!

@cymraes12 sorry you had to deal with her she sounds unstable. And sorry to everyone else who had to deal with such people.

Facebook is awful for this.

@cymraes12 wtf! That doesn't make any sense and is absolutely awful. Sorry you went through that.

@LucyRK1988 sorry for your loss. I feel sometimes we are surprised how we are affected by the death of others.

There are a multitude of reasons why someone may post and although some of it is the attention drama llama type. It reminds me of when fb first appeared and people felt desperate to let us know the inaneness of their day - fb bought out something in a lot of people that we didn't know was there. Strange things became the norm.

It's similar to those who tag themselves at the local hospital with an obscure one liner or "that's me and the kids from now".

I think people also forget that there are people who know the situation and know that you're full of shit. (Eg family and friends of the dead person will know but there will be a lot of likes and comments/validation from those who don't know so it's worth it) older people appear still stuck in this.

My favourite at the minute is those families who always have arguments and are generally shit but post a picture of them hugging and say how proud they are, how much they love them etc etc but they've regularly told you how much they hate them. With Mother's Day coming up, you see a lot of it. It would make my mums day if I tagged her in a soppy post but I find it weird. Every year I feel guilty for that.