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 also think it's ok to say she was selfish. It may have been understandable, there may have been massive mitigating circumstances, but it was still selfish not to tell the OP. Don't see why she isn't allowed to call it what it is. It's still best not to turn her own understandable anger on her grandmother, though.

I don't think it's ever a good idea to call people to account for things they do when a loved-one is dying.

If it was, then a fair number of my family would never have spoken to one another again after my mother died.

And for what it's worth, I was kept away from my mother's deathbed at age 12, not because people thought I couldn't cope, but because me being there unsettled her so much that the nurses felt that it was unfair to have me there. She was semi-conscious and in huge amounts of pain, and yet trying to sit up and hug me. When I wasn't there, she was calmer and less distressed.

It may not have helped your father to have your grandmother there, or to have his children there. There's no way of knowing.

This is exactly how my DM would be. Making it all about her.

You don't need to do anything now OP, and actually tackling it won't make anything any better. You just need to come to terms with what's happened and how you feel about it.

Distance yourself if that helps. You know the truth, and so does your Aunt/Uncle.

I think it's somehow not right to tell someone to dismiss their own feelings. Not every GM is lovely and fluffy. Some are thé very opposite.

OP is entitled to her feelings. What the GM did hurt a lot of people.

Other posters have suggested OP's GM was in denial. Could well have been

Another possibility is that (1) she couldn't cope with losing her son and being at his deathbed (2) if other family members had been there at his passing, then she would have felt even more guilty not being there herself (3) because she couldn't cope with that level of guilt, she created this fiction that they all had to go home to look after the grandchildren (4) she now tries to convince herself that was the case, rather than admitting that she couldn't force herself to be there at the end

I would think your GM may be racked with guilt that she couldn't support her son in his final hours. This may help you to feel more compassionate towards her

I supported my grandmother for the last week of her life. The rest of the family stayed away. Every day, the medics were astonished she was still alive. Every mealtime, they said she might slip away as soon as I left for the day (apparently this is common). I could ponder why my parents, aunts & uncles, cousins & siblings left me to deal with this on my own. I prefer to think they couldn't cope, rather than couldn't care. I comfort myself by thinking that at least one person was there for her. In your case, your DF's partner cared for him, so he wasn't alone