Two incidents with family WIBU?

[mallorykane]

Incident number one

My dsis cannot have children. She rarely sees mine because it hurts her too much and I am very understanding about this. I am a lone parent, one of my children is disabled. She does not really like me talking about them and she does not have any kind of relationship with them. Until this weekend she had not seen them in a year. We were out on Sat night. I was tired and started to flag around 11.00 pm. She asked me what was wrong and I said I was a bit tired. This the convo that followed:

Dsis: (sharply) Why are you tired fgs?! its only early!"

Me: "I always flag about now, the kids really wear me out"

Dsis: Well they are not even here! They are taken care of fgs! How can they be tiring you out when they are not even here???!

Me: "You don't understand, its just the long term relentlessness of it all......." I was not allowed to finish

Dsis: "No I don't understand and I NEVER BLOODY WELL WILL BECAUSE I CANT HAVE KIDS CAN I? CAN I?

I just looked at her and did not reply and then changed the subject. While I understand how difficult is for her, I am not sure that I should have apologised for what I said or if I said anything wrong at all. I think I was expected to though as she has been slightly frosty with me ever since.

Incident Number Two.

Parents: Mallory give your dog your pudding bowl to lick out (had some of a honey based dessert left in it).

Me: No I dont like him having sweet things as he only has a few teeth left now (very old dog) and the vet told me not to.

Parents: (To dog) Do you want the pudding bowl

Me: Please do not give dog the pudding bowl its bad for his teeth

Parents: Its only honey, honey doesnt have sugar in it! (shouting)

Me: How does honey not have sugar in it?

Parents: FGS keep your hair on!!!!

Me: I am fine, I just do not want my dog to have a sweet item to eat

Massive sulks for rest of evening from parents and still not talking to me now, three days later.

I am laughing reading this back to myself, the one about the honey I mean. But this is my family. Very quick to take offence and I usually apologise. On these two occasions for some reason I felt quite strong and I decided not to. I really did not feel I did anything wrong. But I will leave it with you MN to decide. Was I being unreasonable here?

Sorry its so long, I kept it as brief as I could.

i dont see it as clear cut as the person in the situation is the one not coping, well not IME. sometimes its the people around that person dont handle the unavoidable grief/practical changes that happen as a consequence.

e.g. DPs mum died when he was in his early 20s. his friends were too young to know how what to do so they completely avoided him for months then pretended nothing had happened. not one word. they are all friends now but i think it was pretty shit at the time. when my own DF was seriously ill & behaving oddly due to a brain condition, one of my friends helpful advice was to 'tell him to fuck off'. thanks for that one matey! SIL said of DF to DM, 'well if he is still like this (i.e. not dead) in a year, will i have to delay the wedding again?'

obviously everyone is different but sometimes the ones at the centre of the problem deal with it because there is nothing else to do.

(not say thats what happened here, just saying its not always as simple as person dealing with the issue is always the one with the problem)