Grief Grabbers-why do they do it?

[PerryPerryThePlatypus]

There was a death in dh family just before Christmas, a much loved uncle passed away suddenly. Funeral was held a couple of days before Christmas.
At the afters of the funeral there was a screenshot of a post by someone who met this uncle maybe twice at the most (she married dh cousin and they moved away didn't keep in touch etc) being shown to family members. It basically said how am I going to get through Christmas knowing Uncle X is not here anymore. RIP I'm heartbroken.

She never even sent a card or came to the funeral. Just a rant.

I remember my mother slapping me when I cried about my Grandad dying. I was 5. It was 'worse for her'. Possibly, but no excuse for that.

She travelled to London to mourn when PD died too. For 2 days.

She has unresolved grief over the death of my Father 50 years ago.
I do think people who do this always have an underlying reason.

But it can be horrible, sometimes aggressively so, in its presentation.

My MIL does this. Any vaguely related death or someone with a serious illness she is all over it on blooming facebook. Some dappy woman actually asked her how she was going to cope when a family member had treatable cancer...... er she isn't ill!

Drives me insane. I wouldn't mind so much if she ever did tat all to help any of them or their families but she doesn't. Just posts endless look at me comments and meaningful quotes.

Yes she is very narcisstic anyway but it is annoying to be polite

@llangennith

My sister also very much enjoys the benefits of my ill health despite visiting little and caring less 😂

When that little girl died on the Scottish Island earlier this year, the girl's mum found out on Facebook. I don't think the person who posted the news ever apologised or even acknowledged her reply "that's my daughter!"

I'm very sorry for all those who have lost someone.

I can't remember who posted up thread about it being an interesting study and I think it would be. Probably a way of feeding the dopamine effect of likes and attention on social media.

Stranger that poor poor mum. There's no words.

The total lack of awareness and sensitivity for actual mourners in this kind of thing is staggering.

The rest of it ... kind of makes sense to me. I think, if I didn't have any consideration for other people, I could easily become a grief tourist.

There's two parts to it, I think

1. attention/validation
2. an outlet for personal grief that you either didn't deal with or are 'supposed' to be over.

attention/validation
For a certain type of insecure person who perhaps doesn't know how to attract positive attention or feels a bit isolated, the attention you get from someone's death is very comforting and does make you feel a bit special. I also think we're conditioned into this kind of attention seeking from being children.

When I was 12 there were two deaths at my school. The first was a teacher who was killed in an accident. I didn't really know him and he wasn't one of my teachers. But I wrote in the condolence book because I thought that we were supposed to. I remember trying to think of something to write and saying that I'd only had him for one cover lesson but he'd helped me understand something I hadn't really got before. A couple of comments were read out at the whole school memorial service and mine was one of them. It was anonymous and I wouldn't have dared tell anyone it was mine but I remember wanting to. I actually felt quite important and felt more justified in crying through the song.

The other was a girl in my year who killed herself. I wasn't friends with her; in fact I was terrified of her. But we had been to the same, small primary school and she'd been to my 9th birthday party. If social media had been around then I can imagine that I might have posted sad memories and expressed grief. I think I was lucky that it was the 1990s and only my parents heard such comments!

outlet for personal grief
My dad died when I was 22. I didn't properly deal with it - went back to work 2 days later, refused to cry at the funeral, didn't go to the crematorium etc. Ever since I have sought out all the mawkish details of the deaths of anyone I vaguely know (and even some I don't know at all!) online and spend ages reading them and sobbing over them. I wouldn't post the details on social media because I'm aware of how it would affect actual mourners and how weird it would look. But I do understand the obsession with death and mourning and I can see how it could slip into making someone else's tragedy all about you.

Sorry tl;dr - in short - it's bad but I get it.

Those ones who do the 'She only lived three miles from me!', 'I went to the same dentist as him', 'If I'd left the house that day instead of staying in I might have got hit by a car too!' type posts make me want to beat them senseless (metaphorically speaking, obviously, MN mods).

manicinsomniac -
that's very honest of you, thank you for sharing that.

I do think that death is not well 'handled' in our society in general so there may be many many people with unresolved grief around who may be reacting to trying to cope with this when reacting to the death of a relative stranger.

I guess the crucial thing is that you have awareness of how you have been affected and the ability to moderate that whereas many do not and can therefore come across in a pretty mawkish and difficult way.

I think it’s disgusting, I’m pretty sure we will soon get selfies with dead strangers or during a terrorist incident.

She also marks herself safe on FB at every disaster, even if she's in an entirely different country (because she maybe once flew over it or other vague 'link')

I agree with @Loughers. Following her must be a right laugh.

I wonder whether for the younger people who do this, it’s a way of trying to understand grief.

Having experienced this year, grief so unexpected and painful that my heart physically hurt, I cannot ever imagine wishing that experience would belong to me, if it really didn’t.

exacty why do people have tp be one up on grief my dad did this yes it was his wife but it was so much worse for him

yes except a month later he was with another woman while we were all still grieving

I know it was sad and shocking when Princess Diana died but i couldnt understand how people in the crowd screamed out and sobbed,,,,i felt embarrassed,

I went into work the weekend after my birthday, people were asking if I'd had a nice time etc. When I says I had one colleague ran over screaming 'How can you have had a good time when Amy Winehouse died? How dare you?' She wasn't even a fan.

I was devastated when Amy Winehouse died. I had a £10 bet with a friend that Pete Docherty would go first!

I don’t know if the Diana thing is related, I think it was a weird one off & people felt like they did know her. I can’t imagine anyone elses death having the same effect on so many.

I think it’s a lack of awareness & selfishness. Why the need to splash it all over social media?

When my Dad passed away, my uncle (his brother) posted it on Facebook while we were all still at the hospital! My Dad has only been dead a couple of hours, if that. We then had to quickly contact extended family and friends to make sure they didn’t have to find out via Facebook

We asked for family flowers only at the funeral. Someone who worked with my Dad likes to flash the cash and decided they just had to get flowers too. We didn’t realise until we saw them around the coffin in the funeral car. The flowers read ‘my dad’s name’ then RIP then ‘his name’. He’d put his own name on the flowers too, the narcissistic twat. My Dad would’ve found it hilarious though!

My mum thought my sister's oh was a twat and didn't like him, he didn't like my mum (probably because she could see right through him). When she died he took more time off work than my dad because he was so devastated

My MIL (NC for many years) demanded she be allowed to come to our DS's funeral. I didn't give a toss but DH invited her. She then spent the whole service loudly complaining that she wasn't sat with the other grandparents, and 'what would people think'. All about how it looked to other people, nothing to do with grief

I think part of it is the desire to be part of something. I have a friend who lives her life on Facebook and regularly grumps that I am incredibly hard to contact and she never knows what I am doing as I am not on it (I have two phones, email, LinkedIn and twitter but hey!). Anyway, I worked in a building very close to Westminster and during the attack in 2017 our building was locked down. It was a bit weird and scary, but we mostly watched the response from our window. I called my Ps to let them know I was fine and unaffected as they are elderly and would worry and replied to any texts to say I was fine.
My friend’s sister showed me her Facebook a few weeks later which showed my grief vulture friend getting ever more hysterical about whether I was involved, it went on for hours and every post had more likes and comments. It was as if she was feeding off or being validated by proximity to tragedy or a news story. Apparently she was hysterical in her office and had to be sent home. People were seriously concerned about her welfare as she was so distraught. At no point did she ring or text me to check I was ok.

ETA my narcissistic brother and wife decided to ignore our request for no flowers and quietly placed them on his coffin at the crem. I was fucking fuming, and still am, 21 years later.

My uncle likes to trawl the obits to find people he knew “back in the day”. He hasn’t seen or spoken to them or about them in fifty years but has to go to the funerals and make sure everyone knows his close friend died. It’s weird.

There’s nowt as queer as folk.

^indeed, animal.

I had a friend who told me she was going to a funeral of someone she knew at school. Thinking how sad, I asked her if she was close to him? No, she replied but there will be people I know there who I'd like to see. It was clear from what she said she wasn't interested in the person who had died, or feeling any grief or sadness, or "paying her respects" (as people used to say). She just wanted to take this opportunity to socialise with people she hadn't seen for a while . I remember being quite shocked at the time. Though she was otherwise a fairly normal person.

Hopefully you can understand what I’m about to write - the relationships between people are slightly complex!

When my grandads BIL died quite unexpectedly (elderly but not ill), one of his DSIS and BIL’s sons - who I’ll call A - was on holiday. Great-aunt and her other children decided to wait and tell A about his dads death when he returned home from the holiday. The funeral wouldn’t be until after he returned and they thought there was no point in ruining his holiday. He has always lived with his parents and naturally helped them out a lot/spent a lot of time with them so was very close to his dad.

Other family members were told and one of my grandads brothers (I’ll call him B) told a cousin (C) of his and Grandad/great-aunts. It is important to note that there is no blood link between C and my late great-uncle. I believe they knew each other as teenagers/early twenties but haven’t spoken in many years. This is because C has lived abroad for decades and has only kept in touch with B over the years. I don’t think he ever met A or any of his siblings and obviously his grief would be nothing like theirs or their mothers etc. However, A does have C on Facebook - you can probably guess where I’m going with this...

C posted about his cousin’s husbands death which of course is how A, who was enjoying himself on holiday, found out. Ruined the rest of A’s holiday no doubt, and most likely upset A’s siblings and Mum who’d chosen to keep it from him temporarily. Everyone else in the family was very annoyed but as far I know neither A nor anyone else in the family received an apology from C.