Competitive grief

[Linetree]

A woman from my sports club has died suddenly.

She was a lovely lady and gone much too soon. I was shocked at the news and sad for her family, but I didn't know her well, so whilst I have some lovely things I can say about our small interactions, and can geniuinely say she'll be a big loss to the club, I am not grief stricken myself, as she was a tiny part of my life.

There are two or three people at the club who were really close to her, but they have had lovely things to say about her, rather than the affect her death has had on them iyswim.

Then there are another group of people, who knew her in a similar way to I did, who seem to be being competitive in the level of their own devastation, making her death all about them.

Am I imagining it and being unfair, or do people do that?

Yes it's a thing. Just step away from it.

People absolutely do this. Not just with death but with all kinds of situations that involve a bit of drama. Some people have a real need to centre themselves and their emotions in every instance. They’re best ignored.

grief vampires

My Dsis is like this. She's had tattoos for our cousin, who she didn't really like, 1 for another member of our family who has been gone longer than she knew him and another , which connects to the others for my partner, who died ,who she barely knew.. She makes a big drama out of death. Another family member died recently who we didn't have anything to do with at all and I joked another tattoo is incoming 🤣
She has got ADHD so I put it down to her brain not understanding death like other people's does.

Yes it does happen. I do think as well
though that people can be hit hard by cumulative grief and that can come out in unexpected ways. You know the thing that there is no right or wrong in ways to feel grief? I do think people should be cut as much slack as possible in these circumstances- best to step away for a bit.

Sorry to read this.

Yes people do this all the time - and not just in this situation.

It says a lot about the person they are. It's probably a good idea to avoid them - at least in the short-term.

It is a Thing.

We used to call it "competitive sadding" on here when all was fields.

It seems to be very common now. The worst grief vampires are those who want to be the first to
break the news on social media, which is never appropriate unless the deceased’s next of kin has asked them to do so.

Last year, a teen who attended a local secondary school took his own life during the school holidays. Breaking the news to his peers needed to be done sensitively, as there would have been some risk of copycat behaviour, so the school delayed posting a tribute to him,

A school mum filled the information gap by posting her own account of events on social media. This was not what the family or the school wanted but it seems that some people cannot help themselves.

The nicola bully threads on here were disgusting.

It's a disgrace they weren't pulled.

Grief vultures life among us, and they are vile.
Amateur detectives and performance sadness