to really resent my grandmother over this?

[quadro]

My father died two years ago but it is only now what she did at the time is making me angry-I haven't raised the issue with her as yet as I don't know how to. I'm going to get quite detailed here as the odds of my being 'found out' for posting it are virtually zero.

I am in my mid-20's. my dad died in his mid-40s and my grandmother is about 70. My parents divorced when I was young but we kept in contact.
Anyway he moved about 200 miles away and although never lived with another woman, found a partner that he enjoyed spending time with. He became terminally ill and we -his family- visited him. Though he had moved in with his partner and her son and they were caring for him.

I'd just returned from visiting him and was on the way up with my uncle, his wife and grandmother when we got the phone call that he had died.

I later found out that my grandmother had been warned by the nurse that his death was imminent (this was a monday night) but returned to her home 200 miles away anyway *without bothering to tell me about this 'warning'. So we ended up going up on the tuesday. If I had known this, I would have travelled up there and then.

As it is, she keeps blaming my uncle and aunt for them returning because they 'had to get back for their kids'. I don't believe this for one second, actually, my belief is that had she told them of his imminent death, they'd have found a way to stay.

And she keeps on repeating this 'we had to get back for the kids' line. I feel mad as hell and have to cut short my visit because I feel I might explode, besides which, there was no reason why she couldn't stay.

AIBU?

I held my mum's hand as she breathed her last and I am so glad I did. But my cousin who cared for his mother for years was not there when she died and was pleased and felt sure that his mother waited until he had left for work before letting go.

Everyone reacts differently. I think you need to let go of your anger OP.

I am going to be a bit blunt now because your last post is so angry that it makes me think you are not really dealing with the proper issue.

Blaming your GM has become your way of dealing with your grief and anger at your DF death; just like re-writing history has become hers.

It is not your GM's fault that your Dad died nor is her fault that your relationship with him might have been affected by your parent's divorce.

Nor is fair that your Dad died so young when there are so many things you still wanted to do with him and share with him. You can't live in the past and you can't change what happened; you can only be kind to yourself and find a way to live in peace with it.

I remember being angry with the world when my DM died (I was 16) it was so bloody unfair; why did it happen to me; I wasn't ready for her to go. This is all normal. I still sometimes grieve for the fact that I never had an adult conversation with her; she wasn't at my wedding; she never met my children etc. But it is what it is and its nobody's fault. As you go through life (I am in my 40's) you realise that most people have these very painful moments in their lives at some point.

Focussing your pain on your GM won't make it better but it could destroy your relationship with your family when you most need their support.

Quadro - I am so, so sorry that you are having to go through this. It is horrible to feel that seething anger... like having something corrosive inside of you that is eating you away.

There is a lot of great advice here, and I beg you to read it through. People are not trying to criticize you when they say you are being unreasonable. We all feel for you so much. Instead, they are trying to help you understand the rage and the upset that you feel, in many cases because they have been there too and know only too well how you feel.

Like others, I think you are displacing the completely natural anger you feel at your father's passing onto your grandmother. This is very normal, but it doesn't mean that your grandmother is to blame. People do the craziest things under ordinary stress and pain, and death is far, far beyond ordinary. To give you an example, my grandmother refused to tell my step-grandfather's son that he was terminally ill, or that he was dying because there was an estrangement between the pair of them. They had to hear that he had gone over the phone. Now I disagree with what she did completely- I think it was a very cruel thing to deprive them of the chance to say goodbye - BUT she was insisting on nursing him 24/7 in her 80s, and was exhausted and not coping very well with the whole prospect of his passing. I think she wanted to keep his death 'at home' and with people she felt comfortable with. My point is that she made a really bad judgment - as did your grandmother - but the mitigating circumstances are HUGE.

Thanks for all the messages. I agree that it's not worth falling out with her over this at all. What is done is done so there's no point and she is probably feeling guilty about it herself. No point 'having a go' at her at all as she is probably suffering enough from her decision to leave as it is. I think that deep down she knows that staying-painful as it would undoubtedly have been- would have been worse than coming back. Short-term pain always being better than long-term pain.

I admit that I think less of her, though; not just for the leaving him but the nonsense with the flowers and dragging his body back here for a funeral and laid to 'rest' with a father he did not get on with, the nonsense over the flowers, plus her insensitivity over the 'had to get back for the kids' line. I still am fond of her but she does now seem a bit flaky to me, I admit.

And I still can't get my head around how any mother could abandon her child like she did. I just can't. Sorry.

But you're right; no good can come of raising the issue and I'll just have to continue physically removing myself from the room when she undoubtedly starts blaming my aunt and uncle for the umpteenth time.

Sorry that should be 'staying -painful as it would undoubtedly have been- would have been the lesser of two evils than coming back'.

Gosh. I loved my ddad dearly. When I got a call that he was probably dying I went to the hospital and sat outside for a good hour in the hope I wouldn't have to watch him die. Go figure-there is no sense in many situations.

quadro I don't condone what your grandmother did, but can see why someone would want to bury their head in the sand and just flee the situation.

Is she actually blaming your aunt and uncle though? It seems she is re-writing history and rationalising her irrational actions and feelings ('we had to come back for the children') rather than 'Your evil uncle and aunt made me come back and they had to tear me from my son's bedside.'

quadro - having read your post and all the replies, I can't help thinking that your GM did not 'abandon' her son: she couldn't face watching/seeing him die and thought that the rest of the family would not want to go through that either? After all, he was not 'abandoned' to die alone as he had a partner and a stepchild.

Yes, maybe it would have been better to discuss what she had been told, to let you and your aunt and uncle know so you could each decide what you wanted to do, but she was a grieving mother - people don't necessarily behave rationally in such circumstances; they try to cope. You don't know, but maybe she thought that if she told you all the situation she would then feel pressurised to go and visit him on his deathbed when she really didn't want to.

Older generations often handle things differently than younger ones, and vice versa, so it does seem very harsh to have this one-sided view of your GM's actions.

I think you have to leave it.

My father was terminally ill and I kept getting that awful call from the hospital saying that tonight was the night. I was torn I had young children and lived 200 miles away. I went up as often as I could but on the night he died I wasn't there and I feel awful about that.

I was in a lot of denial too I knew that he was going to die but I hadn't processed what that really meant.

There is no reason to confront your Grandmother she can't take back what she did or didn't say and all you will do is make her feel sad and that won't make you feel any better.

Sorry for your loss.

Is she actually blaming your aunt and uncle though? It seems she is re-writing history and rationalising her irrational actions and feelings ('we had to come back for the children') rather than 'Your evil uncle and aunt made me come back and they had to tear me from my son's bedside.'

Agree completely. It's a litany, an attempt to convince herself that she did the right thing (even if she isn't fully aware that this is what she's doing).

You say that she often repeats this in your presence (and that of your aunt and uncle). How often do you as a group go over what happened? Is it part of every visit? Is it something she brings up continually? Or is she questioned about it over and over?

Based on her standard phrasing (use of "we"), she's not blaming your aunt and uncle. I think if you could accept that, you might be able to move on a little. Have you proposed this to your aunt - that your grandmother isn't actually blaming?

Also if your Aunt feels she is being blamed, all she has to do is say:

'Yes, Uncle & I needed to get back to the children, but you could have stayed if you'd wanted.'

My MiL and (my) dh sat by the bedside of their beloved mother/grandmother for 72 hours solid after they were told 'now is the time'.

Then, after they'd been persuaded to pop home for a couple of hours to shower/eat a hot meal, she slipped away. I've always thought she was waiting for them to go so she could go too. And believe me she was ready to go.

But if my aunt says that my grandmother could have stayed if she wanted, wouldn't that be like stripping away the defence mechanism and making her realise that she was ultimately to blame?

I'm still fond of her, though it is hard for me to get my head around that a mother could not be at her dying son's bedside? Did she behave normally in this? I don't think so.

Deep down I think she knows that she should have stayed (in her view) but can't go back now.

Anyway, this is my last post on this subject, I do think less of her and that will never change but she's probably torturing herself enough over it and I'm not sadistic to bring up the matter again. Though there's no doubt that she has exposed herself as being selfish and narcissistic. I'm talking her about dragging the body back for burial when, quite frankly, his partner cared for him the most and his body should have been laid to rest where he had lived so that his friends that he had built a new life with could grieve. The only people at his funeral were my grandmother's friends and a few of mine. And the refusal to put his partner's flowers at the graveside reveals quite how selfish she is.

I really hopedquadro that what we'd said might have slightly disavowed you of the notion that she was being 'selfish and narcissistic' and that her reaction, whilst wrong and hurtful, was likely to be motivation by panic, confusion and grief rather than anything malevolent. We all react differently to death and losing a child, must be hard because there is an expectation that you die first and you aren't prepared for it in any shape or form.

This isn't about point scoring or ascribing blame but to try and help you understand what happened and attempt put it behind you. I can understand that you don't want to keep posting here, but please do consider some bereavement counselling.

Please remember that your father died in the company of someone who loved him and he loved and cared for him most through his illness. I think that is the most any of us could ask for in our dying minutes.

I was with my father when he died. He had various secondary cancers.

He spent his last few days in a kind of coma, and I believe it is common for dying people to go through a slow shutting down. They start to withdraw from the world that they are about to leave.

My father was in a hospice, and it is likely that even when he could not speak he was aware of the kind way in which the staff there spoke to him and cared for him

I think my point is that people start to die gradually. It's as if a lot of them is no longer there even if their heart continues to beat.

On one level the last time I 'really' saw my father alive was several weeks before his physical death, when we had some kind of conversation. I did not feel he was the father I knew on the times I visited him in the hospice. He was confused and could hardly speak. It was as if death was in the ascendant, occupying more and more of him.

Perhaps you can - eventually - get to a point where you can celebrate his life and your relationship, as well as mourning a very painful loss....

No sorry but I do think she is selfish and narcisstic not purely because of what she did by not staying or telling my brother and myself but because of her absolute insistence on dragging his body back here away from his partner -who couldn't make the funeral as she had no transport, we, his 'blood' family. on the other hand, could very very easily had attended the funeral and she would have had support from all the family who would have gone up, too, and away from his friends with whom he had made a new life.

And the business with the flowers just tops it off. Her need to put flowers on the grave at Christmas took precedence over his partner's.

quadro
Did any of your family offer his partner a lift or accommodation?

Sometimes you don't think of others when you are grieving.

I actually there are basically 2 sorts of people. Those who are able to face the really difficult things we have to do in life even if they don't want to and those that can't and turn away (for whatever reason). I think in this situation your grandmother was the one who turned away and she didn't tell anyone else so that she wouldn't be forced to go back and face it herself. Hence all the deflection and fuss about funerals and flowers etc.
Personally I feel it is ok to think less of her because of this situation. I know I do of people who turned away and left me to deal with it. It would be nice to think that she was the sort of person who could've been there but she wasn't. Point is there is nothing you can do about it now and you can't change her. Ignore her or let her know how you feel.

Both my parents have died in the last 5 years but no one told me they were about to die, and I missed both of their deaths, but had been with them the day before.

Imv you can't tell when they are about to die, or someone would have said, they were both on morphine drips and not expected to last long but certainly you couldn't tell down to the last hour, maybe narrow it to a couple of days but how on earth can anyone know??

Unless the morphine or some other medication is being hugely increased but that wasn't what was done.

How conscious was DF? My parents weren't with it and I doubt would have know if I was there or not, though of course I is saddening not to be there at the end, but for me more than for them.

There's a level on which it is also pretty difficult when you do get the chance to be with someone. Not necessarily because you are seeing a person suffer physically. I did a stint of slightly over 24 hours with my father - leaving to have a shower and once to get food. I slept on a put-you-up bed in his room at the hospice. It was quite hard to deal with the suspension of all normal activity. I was quite scared that this would go on for days and then I would have to decide whether to go back to my home city. The reactions of my siblings and my mother frankly weren't great. None of them asked me how I had coped with this long stint and then being with him when he died. None of them thanked me for the efforts I had made. It did make it very clear - painfully so - that there were limitations in my relationships with family members. On the other hand my husband and my stepdaughter showed care and support. Not everyone can - or will - behave the way that we would like them to at a time of crisis. Maybe that, as much as bereavement itself, is one of the most difficult experiences we face as we get older.

Sorry for your loss.

She is the one who has to live with herself.

If she keeps bringing it up, OP, I don't think it's unreasonable to say 'Can we stop this conversation because we have done it all before and I find it very painful?' I get the argument that she is coping this way but she could also be asked to recognise the fact that it upsets you to keep hearing this.