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 cousin died very young and I believed he was eighteen. He lived with my grandmother and we visited regularly. His name was Richard and I thought he was my uncle. He wasn't, he was my cousin.

He died when he was out on his bike going to a local beach. When my mum died and I was going through her jewellery box I found a photo of Richard he had sent to my dad, sending him all his love which he had kept and treasured for many years. In there was also the newspaper cuttings of his death and he was only fifteen. It named my aunt as his mother.

It made me so sad. It is nice to use his name here to acknowledge his life and existence.

My Grandmothers father (same Grandmother who lost her son) was around 20 years older than her Mum and he never spoke about his past. After he died she did some digging and discovered that his father was a policeman who was murdered when he caught some people poaching. His wife sat her 3 boys (one of them being my Grandmas father, I think they were 10, 7 and 4) at the side of the riverbank and made them daisy chains. Then she threw all 3 of them herself into a river in a suicide/murder attempt. Passersby got the boys out but not her. This was 1910ish - she was thrown in a paupers grave and the boys sent to workhouses.

Reading through this is very sad and whilst mine is mild by comparison I wanted to share it.
My mum lost both her parents (in separate events) when she was pregnant at 21. I was born shortly after my GF's death.
Selfishly I never really appreciated how hard this must have been for her until I had my own children. I can see now how it shaped her parenting to us, as although loving and caring, she kept us at arms length. She is much more 'there' as grandmother and my dc adore her.

My great-grandfather died in WW1. His body was never found and he was just registered MIA. My great-grandmother was left a widow with two tiny daughters. She always refused to believe he was dead and so never let anyone else close because she kept believing that her husband had lost his memory but would get better one day and come home.

That story always makes me cry, both for him (he was so young when he died), and for the poor broken family he left behind waiting, year after year.

My DH's Nan (still alive, aged nearly 91) had a little boy who was killed when he was 3 by a lorry driving erratically on the pavement. I was told the full story in harrowing detail and it still haunts me and makes me cry when I think about it, even though it happened over 60 years ago. She had five daughters, this one son who survived birth, and two other baby boys who died soon after birth (blue babies apparently). She also had a horrendous violent husband who did her the massive favour of ditching her when the girls were teenagers, thus enabling them to live free of his abuse. What a tough life.

My mum had a fragmented childhood, hedged around by family tragedies. She was brought up by her grandparents. They had seven children. Six boys and a girl - my Mum's mother. They lost their 3 youngest. Two of her uncles had died before Mum was born.

One of her uncles had learning difficulties, and took a wrong turn on a foggy night, on the way home after having a drink in the pub after work, and drowned in the canal. Mum's grandad was one of those searching for him and found the body. Another uncle was killed in action one month before the armistice in 1918, and my Mum's mum was a single mother who was committed to an asylum and died there of TB when Mum was about 4. By then the other uncles had emigrated to America. They did return periodically, but I can't imagine having to bear such long separations from family without the means of instant contact we have nowadays.

Mum's grandparents brought her up until her grandad committed suicide when she was 8, by drowning himself in the canal. I still remember the shock at finding his death certificate after rummaging through some papers when I was about 10. Just recently she told me she came home from school about a year after her grandad's death to find her gran with her head in the oven and the gas on. I think they both must have carried such intense grief at the loss of their children.

Her gran survived, but Mum went to a Barnardo's Home for a year, soon after, (having been told by an uncle she was going to boarding school) She said it was like being in prison, and was badly affected by that and her other traumatic experiences all her life. She's now nearly 93.

I still cry at the thought of how much heartache they all endured, as I've been crying at the stories on here.

My mum gave birth to twin boys 3 years before I was born. They died after a few hours. From all she said it sounds as if she had pre-eclampsia - she got very very big towards the end and the doctor told her she was too fat and put her on a strict diet in the hospital. She kept blacking out whenever she tried to stand. After the babies died she was sent home and no-one said a word of comfort to her - she was just supposed to put up and shut up - after all she had 'failed'. Her MIL arrived the next morning and told her off for 'wallowing' and that she had to stop it and get up and look after her husband and son.

When SIL lost her first baby at 15 weeks mum triggered quite badly - I think she was so hurt seeing SIL getting flowers and messages of commiseration and lots of sympathy and she couldn't help comparing.

I have a sister who died the year before I was born aged three and a half. My Mum never got over it. It was in the 1940's and she had a nervous breakdown which went untreated. Seven months after my sister died she fell for me. It was far too soon. Her death ruined my parents' marriage and although they stayed together they were very unhappy. She died of gastro enteritis and if it had happened now she would have survived. Our house was full of photos of her and now my parents are gone I have them up in my home. It wasn't until I had a child of my own that I could begin to understand the depths of my mother's grief.

Yanbu

My mum's uncle was murdered age 6 in an extermination camp in Poland. Visiting the camp was extremely emotional, especially seeing the collection of children's shoes. Not one survived.

Of course it's not ridiculous. I was the same last year when I was shown a photo of my great-grandmother.

Her youngest child was born with a cleft palate - nothing could be done to repair it in those days and she died. My great grandmother got caught in a storm after going to arrange the funeral, ended up with pneumonia and died. My nan was the eldest child at 9 years old. Her father wasn't able to look after the children so my nan went to live with her grandmother & uncles, and her younger brother & sisters went to the childrens home run by nuns where they were treated horrifically.

I don't know if it's knowing all that, or the fact she was my age when she died, or that she looks so much like my mum but I felt so sad looking at her photo.

Not ridiculous at all.
My uncle, my fathers brother died at 3 months of a fever that's his cause of death just a fever. It destroyed my grandmothers life. My father is not a nice man, and for years I was estranged from her. Later in her life contacted me to apologise and tried to explain. That She blamed herself for not saving him, she hated her husband for being overseas though he was in the army and she hated my father because she couldn't afford to love him. So very very sad. She would talk of my uncle over and over, I buried the only picture she had of him with her.

My mum was about 8 years playing chase in the street in the late 1940's outside the butchers with her friend whilst he mum bought stuff for dinner.
A horse and cart came round the corner, at the exact point her friend stepped into the road. Her Mum ran out of the butchers, picked up the little girls body, then collapsed and dropped her, crying 'my Rose, my Rose'.
I knew the Mum as she was my Grans neighbour until they both died in the late 90's.
My Mum tells the story with exact clarity, as if she is re living it. What an awful thing for an 8 year to witness. Even writing this I feel a tear coming on.

My grandparents lost two sons. They were very young, 8 and almost 3. I never really knew much about them, as a pp said, you never really understand that your gp's were once young and had lives of their own.
My GM died 5 years ago, my GF dotes on DS, he is so gentle with him and loving in a way Ive never seen before. Dont get me wrong, he has been loving with all is GG sons but with DS its gentler, no boisterous games/playfighting. I put it down to his age, that he didnt have the energy to be that way anymore (not being ageist - my GF has suffered quite a lot of health problems in recent years). It wasnt until a recent visit, my GF got a bit teary giving DS a cuddle, he said he reminded him (looks and cheeky personality) of his DS who died at almost 3, and he felt he'd been given a second chance to see him and love him now that he is old. It broke my heart, im tearing up writing it down).
Also, my fathers parents died before I was born, and I know it sounds odd, but even though I never met them, I feel like something is missing. There is a part of my family that I never got to meet, that I will never know and that also makes me sad.

This is one of the saddest threads I have ever read on mumsnet. It is OK to feel empathy with people we have never met.

I cry when I see sad events on the news. In particular the massacre at the peshawar army school recently really upset me. I feel sad when I see pictures of people dying from Ebola in West Africa. Feeling uncomfortable or even tearful when we know other people are suffering is a healthy trait.

My first son would of been 30 today, he died when he was less than a day old. My older DS has grown up knowing about him mostly as, as a child he was with is when we visited his grave. DS gave himself the job of fetching the water for his flowers.

For some reason we have never found the right time to tell DS2 about his older brother, I'm sure one day we will, he was born 21 years and five days after my firstborn.

So many sad stories :(

My mother's brother died at 18 in a car crash when I was a tiny baby. I never got to know him but I still treasure the one gift that I have that he gave me. All I know about him was that he used to change my nappies! He never gets talked about, and I've only seen one picture of him.

My father's mother miscarried before he was born. When she got pregnant with my dad she was made to spend the whole pregnancy on strict bed rest just in case. She never had another child and I know she still feels really sad about it now, but has only really spoken about it in the last few years.

Oldraver so sorry

Stars that is so sad but also beautiful. Your Grandad's manner shows that he really does get something very special from your son...and that's priceless.

When I was pregnant with my DC I got to know an elderly neighbour who had been taken ill, and I would pop round with shopping and stay for a chat. She had grown up in Ireland in the twenties, the only child of two doting parents. When she was 7 her mother went into hospital to give birth to her baby brother and both died in childbirth. Her father, unable to cope with his grief, didn't explain what had happened to her mother and sent her off to boarding school. She only discovered the truth from some school friends who had been asked to tell her about her mother and brother's death by the teachers. She spend the next eleven years in boarding school and was farmed out to distant relatives over the holidays. I ended up having a difficult birth myself and, had I been born 50 years earlier, neither my DC or I would have survived. Her story deeply affected my on so many levels. It's easy to forget that the elderly were also young once. In spite of everything that she had gone through in her desperately sad childhood, she ended up moving to London and becoming an air stewardess. She heroically saved the passengers of the plane she was on when it crashed and made the front of the papers. Just before she died, she told me that she'd been recruited by M15 in the 1960s and carried out some daring operations. Who knew that this little old lady was such a star! She was an amazing person and I feel privileged to have known her, albeit so late in her life. I still have her 1950s stewardess manual from the days when air travel was actually glamorous and I think of her whenever I look through it. Even with the advancements in medicine, life is still so precious and fragile and can be snatched from us in a split second. As the saying goes 'Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, and that's why we call it The Present'. We are all here thanks to tiny twists of fate over countless generations. We should remember those who have gone before us and try to treasure the moment.

I found out recently that my late Granny had an older brother who died in infancy before she was born. She used to talk a lot about her family, particularly her sister who died of TB in her teens, but she never mentioned her brother. I wonder if she even knew.

I was watching an old episode of Who Do You Think You are? the other day. It was the actor Nitin Ganatra, who is in Eastenders.

He went to Gujarat to visit his mother's sister, a very elderly lady who revealed to him that she and his mother had had EIGHT siblings who had died as children. Nitin's mother had never told him this. He went to the records office and he was asked to sign for a copy of the death certificate of one aunt who had died age 6.

He was very emotional at putting his own name on the record to connect it to hers. He was visibly moved by how much more privileged his life had been compared to his mother's and I got the impression that he had taken his own life very much for granted up to that point.

My mum had an older sister who was born full term but dead circa 1920. My mum talked of my grandma's grief worsened by the fact that the baby was whisked away and she wasn't allowed to see her. My mum died a few years ago and my brother went to a reading a contacting the spirit world kind of thing. Not my bag but I freaked when my bro sent me a recording. The man said "Your mother is with her sister. A baby". My brother said "she didn't have a sister". The man said "She says it's her lost sister Anna". Mum's middle name was Anne after her still born sister. Honestly it still sends shivers down my spine. Oh and op you aren't being unreasonable. This is one of the most interesting threads to date.

I always think about the way these long past tragedies reverberate down the years. My MIL's father was shot down in the Battle of Britain, 5 months before she was born. Her mother gave birth alone as a widow age 19. He was 24. The experience of a missing father - and later being a step daughter to a jealous man suffering PTSD from his experiences in Buchenwald - have had a huge impact on my MIL & played out in how she parented my DH.

My grandmother had a younger sister who choked to death on a bean age 2. The local doctor performed a tracheotomy on the kitchen table but it wasn't successful. You can imagine how my family react to small choke able objects.

My GM is 94. She had 4 sons, but lost the third at birth due to the midwife bungling the delivery. It was a home birth and labour had been very long. Eventually, they realised the baby was breech and my GM asked to go to hospital. The midwife kept insisting it wasn't necessary. But the delivery was very slow and by the time they got him out, he was dead. He was bundled up and taken away and my GM wasn't allowed to see him. My GF saw him briefly and named him. All my GM knows is that he had red hair. Her grief and anger are very much still with her all these years later. I've also grieved for my poor baby uncle.

My grandma had 5 children, her first baby, a son, died at about 3 days old. She and my grandad talked about him always. It always saddened me but once I had my son it really hit me what that must have been like. When I had an MMC at 14 weeks I sat with my grandma and sobbed my heart out, she did too. We both just cried about both babies. It was an awful but lovely moment. We lost my grandma in Sept just gone, she was amazing.

I don't think yabu in the slightest. I've cried about some things on the news or friends of friends tragic news. You're only human x