I think my friend is lashing out a bit due to grief because I genuinely don't think we have done anything terrible, but my friend had a proper shout at me earlier because I let my husband drive her daughter back to our house. The whole story:
This couple have been our friends for many years, more specifically the husbands have been friends for nearly 30 years. They have an 18 month old daughter, we have a 4 year old and a 6 month old. We are named to be guardians of their daughter should anything bad happen to the parents. We are close, but not so close that their daughter would be totally comfortable with us - mum is a SAHM and spends (obviously) an awful lot of time with daughter and daughter is a little clingy. Not unusual for her age.
My friend got a call yesterday morning to say her mum had been taken into hospital with a serious condition and may not survive. She was in a hospital about 3 hours from where we live. Friend called me in a panic, asked me to have her daughter so they could drive straight up there. Obviously I said yes, I came to their house, they left distraught and in a big hurry.
The afternoon looking after the daughter was OK, she was quite upset at being left with me and my kids but distractible and had her own toys etc. Got a call from friend's DH about 6pm saying they weren't coming back that night as the mum was very poorly and they were going to stop treatment, mum likely to die overnight. Obviously, utterly utterly awful. I said no problem, will take daughter to ours for sleepover, whatever they needed us to do really. There was no objection to us taking her to ours at all.
When my DH finished work I got him to come to their house to help. Our two kids have isofix car seats that we have never taken out of the car since they were fitted. Friends had left their daughter's car seat, which could be fitted with a seat belt. So I put our kids in my car in their seats, DH put their daughter in his car with her car seat. We drive virtually in convoy back to our house about 20 mins drive away.
Bit of a rough night as expected, their daughter clearly upset at not having mummy and daddy and being in a strange place, but we did eventually get some sleep.
Friends called this morning to say that yes sadly mum had passed in the night but they were heading home and friend's brother was taking care of things. A few hours later they arrive to collect their little one and I just describe what we did in the afternoon and evening, including mentioning in passing that we had been slightly flummoxed about how to put her car seat into DH's car but we got there in the end.
My friend then looked all incredulous and wide eyed and shouted that she should have been with me as I was the one who had said yes to taking responsibility for her. I explained that I could virtually see DH's car the whole way back, and also apologised saying I hadn't realised she would feel strongly about it - it just seemed the most sensible and obvious way to get all three kids home, given my car has the fixed seats in it and couldn't have fitted the third seat (OK technically could have gone on front passenger seat but I don't know how to turn off the airbag). She calmed down a bit but they left shortly afterwards, without her thanking me (though they had been very effusive in their thanks when they first arrived) and was really frosty. Her DH just looked a bit blank, so I'm not sure whether he thought it was an issue or not.
Do you think she was just stressed out by grief and blowing things out of proportion a bit? Or WIBU to put her kid in my DH's car for a 20 minute car journey?