To be upset about an aunt who died years before I was born.

[lovelydoggies]

She was my dads only sister and she died aged 11 after a very short illness. She was my grandparents only daughter and all I really knew about her is that she died just before one Christmas years ago.
I never realised the reason my grandparents always hated Christmas, but they always did their best for us and celebrated with us all when we were children.
I never really had given her much thought but the other day I received my grandparents little box of odds and ends, and in it was a newspaper cutting about their daughter dying and it said a few little things about her and the school she had attended etc.
I just feel so so sad for my grandparents, and it's too late now for me to tell them, and upset about the aunt I never knew. The little cutting from the paper has somehow completely thrown me.
Am I being ridiculous for crying for someone I never knew. Would any of you be like this?

My grandfather lost two young siblings both of whom he talked about. A few years ago we found in his possessions a small memory card given out at one of the children's funerals. It made me really upset. I also felt ashamed because with spectacular stupidity I think I had always dismissed their deaths as a common occurrence in that day and age. That tiny little card brought home the grief of my great grandparents and made them become real members of the family.

My nan lost twins when they were 1 day old. It was the 40s, so they were whipped away and she was more or less told to forget about it and get on with it. She never knew what happened to them until we looked it up on an on-line burial record. They were buried with 2 adults over 75, and 2 other babies.
My great grandma had a baby who died at 4 months. She had pre-eclampsia and he had kisney problems. The story goes he was sitting on her mums lap, by the fire because he was cold. Her mum was deperately trying to keep his hands and feet warm. Then she said "oh love, he's gone". Very sad. They all would of survived today.

You almost forget that your grandparents where young themselves and lived a life before you.

My granny had a stillbirth and twins which died 2 days after birth, also miscarriages between my Uncle and my mum. When I think about it I just feel so sad, she must of went through a hell of a lot and also the emotions she must of felt when my mum was born heathly. She is a wonder woman and I love her and my granda so much and now I'm crying.

My mum occasionally after a few drinks thinks about her sisters and gets sad when she thinks what if. It's heartbreaking.

Me and my DP have been TTC for 4 1/2 years and it's looking very unlikely we will conceive but it's my biggest wish for them to be here for their great grandchild. If I have a girl she will have the twins names as her middle names.

My grandmother had 7 children, 3 girls, 4 boys. Her husband died aged 40, they lived is a really isolated rural area without a car in the 1930's. Two of the girls were still born.

Which has always made my mother sad because she had no sisters to grow up with. Her second oldest brother had a head injury as a baby and struggled with school and his behaviour. As he got older he became more difficult to cope with, he had epilepsy and anger problems. He was taken away to the mental asylum (as it was then) and mum was told that she could not visit because it upset him too much and he wanted to come home to her, they were very close to each other. He died aged 13 in the asylum. Mum says that the staff said that he had had a fit in the bathroom. The undertaker from her village went the many miles to collect him and told my grandmother that she should ask for his death to be investigated as his injuries were so bad that he didn't feel his death was an accident. I cry for him, a child taken from his loving family and possibly abused in a scary institution. I visited there when I was 6 as my sister was admitted there years later as she has bi polar. My mum had to cope with that aswell.

I have always disliked my name...until my Dad told me I was named after his 2 sisters who died as babies...My DM had a stillborn twin...(my older DBs twin) I always knew but my DB says he didn't but always felt like something was 'missing'.....yes you can be sad for children who you never met...

My Grandfather died 23rd April 1951 at the battle of Imjin river in Korea. He was 22 when he died his body has never been recovered, the only real grave he has is his name on the wall at the UN.
Whenever I think about it's like a physical pain, he must have been so scared, miles away from home. But what really gives me the rage is the way his family treated my grandmother and my dad afterwards. They had the marriage annulled and basically left her destitute.

YANBU.

My Grandma married my Grandad and had my Dad aged 16. 11 months later she had another boy. He died at 6 months old from pneumonia. 52 years later it still cripples her. They went on to have another son a few years later. They only have 2 photos of him. They also were expected to just forget about him.

Before DH was my DH he lost a son at 4 weeks old to SIDS.

Its awful, it upsets me greatly for all of them, I cannot even begin to imagine.

my mum had a still born baby in the 50's ,5 years before I was born
I knew about this but it was not until recently when my cousin did a family tree then I found out it was a baby boy and he had been given a name
it made him real to me then , just to think I had a big brother
very sad when you think what some people have had to bear

My DF didn't know that he had ever had an older sister until my DM was pregnant with me. His DM told my DM not to expect me to live. When DM, obviously shocked by such a seeming insensitive statement to an expectant mum, asked why she had said such a thing, DGM told her that her first baby had been born disabled and had died at 6 weeks. She was told to have another baby, which turned out to be my DF, but he was never wanted for himself. He was not the child she lost and she and DGF never treated him well.

All these stories are so sad. No YANBU to feel upset.

I still wonder how my grandparents felt when my mum was born - her twin brother was stillborn. I didn't know about him until well after they died, when I was pregnant with my twins. My mum knows barely anything about him and doesn't talk about him often.

My dad's elder brother died as a baby because his mother wasn't producing enough milk/he didn't feed properly and a sister died of appendicitis/peritonitis at 11 (he is 1 of 6, with two sisters surviving, the other sister died as an adult in her 70s).

My mum's eldest brother was in the RAF and killed in the war (she is youngest of 5, the other siblings are all still alive, aged between 75 and 88).

If you watch Who do You Think You Are on the BBC the celebs cry about people who died or had hard lives all the time even though they didn't know them.

My grandads brother died aged 18 months. My grandad walked around the house holding him that night until he died in his arms in the early morning. They were poor and didnt have the 2p needed for the antibiotics or even could afford to call the doctor, that would have saved him. Today he would have just been given antibiotics at the gp. I dont think the lack of food helped either. This was the good old days pre nhs. My grandad and his brothers and sisters never forgot and neither did my great granny. That baby was loved and is still missed. My mum is still upset she never meet her uncle. Yanbu.

empathy for other's pain.

My grandad's little sister died when her nightdress caught fire (in the 1910s). An ancestor in the 1860s lost two young children, one of which drowned in the canal next to their house. My great grandmother lost two siblings - one fell out of the pram, and the other choked on a sweet given to him by his slightly older brother (late 1890s). They are all upsetting.

Anyone who dies in sad circumstances makes me feel a twinge of sadness.

I don't think it's unreasonable or ridiculous.

My mum's been doing her family tree and while it's really interesting, it's also incredibly sad.

My Mum's grandmother (her mother's mother) gave birth to 9 children, only 2 survived beyond 3 years of age. I can't imagine losing all those children

I should have a big sister, but she died at 2 days old 3 years before I was born.

my nana lost her first child at 3 months old, to gastroenteritis in an air raid shelter. She went on to have another ten children but she often talked about little Pat, right up till the end. Theyre together now.

My great aunt lost her 9month old daughter in the 1940s, she rolled onto her front in her cot and tried to suck her thumb through some material and suffocated. My grandmother was staying and was the one to find her.

All the babies in our family have had stripped down cots, simple sleeping bags, no blankets, bumpers or soft toys. The first thing my grandmother did when visiting family with babies was to remove anything from the cot. When she visited to see my baby DD (60 years after the little girl, Grace, died) she checked the cot before she saw the baby. My mum does it too now.

My great aunt never had another baby, she couldn't bear the thought of having another loss. She was a lovely woman and a very involved aunt and great aunt.

These stories are so sad. OP, my story is very similar to yours. My dad's sister died of pneumonia when she was 11, on Boxing Day. Dad was 14 and was sent out to find the doctor. The doctor was not at home, and Dad returned to find his sister had died.

It basically wrecked his relationship with his parents for years afterwards - he still hasn't spoken a great deal about it, but I can only guess at their grief, and how they just didn't know how to deal with an adolescent boy who'd lost his sister.

My nan (her mum) died 18 months ago. There was one photo of my aunt that she always had out, that was taken the summer before she died. That's the only picture I had ever seen of her. In nan's things, Dad found a gorgeous photograph of all four of them when his sister was about three, and he put it on the back of the Order of Service. They look sooooo happy. It made me cry and cry and cry to think how all of them would be affected by what happened.

And again, I think it unlikely she would have died in this day and age. Reading between the lines (and the family genes), I think she was very likely asthmatic, and caught a winter bug that went to her chest.

Crying again now, so no, OP, yanbu.

You're human...it's sad. Don't worry about feeling sad for her...and your grandparents. It's terrible....a child dying.

My Nan born in 1910 always spoke of her little cousin who died aged 3 when a pot of boiling soup fell on her. How terrible is that?

But it's proper, right and good that even now...100 years later she has a relative who thinks of her (me) and you...you're honoring your Aunt's memory by thinking of her and being sad.x

I cried for my sister (born 4 years before me, lived three days) despite knowing that had she lived I wouldn't have been born - my Dad had the snip once they had their two kids.

After my mum died two years ago I inherited a great pile of old photos and papers, so decided to investigate the family tree. It was a hugely cathartic way of dealing with the grief, but brought grief of its own to see how many tragic lives were lived. Both sides of my family were utterly poverty-stricken as far back as I researched. Some of what I discovered upset me deeply and I really empathised with people I hadn't even known existed. Far from being unreasonable to be upset, I think it's more worrying if you're someone who can go through truly troubling info on their ancestors and not feel even the slightest twang of something.

The most difficult event was discovering that my paternal grandfather - who had died before I was born - had gone into a workhouse when he was 10 with his siblings (all of whom were younger than him) in 1900. A few weeks beforehand his mother (my great-grandmother) had been found drowned in a water butt in their back yard (found by the 8yo daughter) while the family were in the house. The dad basically buggered off and let the kids to fend for themselves, and so within a month of their mum dying they got sent to a workhouse which even by the standards of the day was brutal and primitive. My grandfather stayed there until he was 14 and then went to work as a trammer (pushing trams in a mine underground).

More recently we've been looking into my maternal grandfather's experiences as Japanese POW. Although he survived, what we've found out has been horrific.

YANBU at all its very sad. I recently found out the truth about my grandfather's childhood and how and why his parents both died when he was a baby. it was shocking and upsetting to discover the truth but important too. He was a complex man and I'm glad I know why he was the way he was now but it makes me sad he felt he couldn't tell us the truth himself if only to offload that burden.

Yanbu. It is sad.

My grandmother lost a daughter at 2 from meningitis. Nobody talked about her, I had no idea until I found a photo of a toddler playing in the sea and asked my grandmother if it was my mum. I will never forget how sad she looked holding that photo, 40 years later.

DH's grandfather was raised by family friends after his mother died young. DH and family didn't know much about her until we looked into the family history, and it turned out she died from TB in her early 30s, and gave her children away to family/friends when she got too ill to look after them. There was DH's grandpa but also an older sister, who died in an accident aged 3 - right outside the house where her ill mother was being cared for by her own mother. Awful.

We weren't even thinking about family names when we named DD, but it turns out by chance that her first name is the same as DH's great-grandmother who died of TB, and her middle name is the name of that great-grandmother's little girl who died at 3. I like knowing that they're being remembered through her somehow.

Oh these stories are so sad, I'm crying sat here reading them. Life can be so cruel to some. I know nobody goes through life completely unscathed but some have more than their fair share of grief to cope with. i like to think how others have said. One day we"ll see them again.