@AintNoMaryPoppins - it was very sad. What was sadder, though (for me, at least), was the fact that the last 'phone conversation I ever had with my strong, funny, loving grandmother... when I dutifully asked how my uncle/cousins were, she burst into tears - and admitted that he and his sons treated her like the maid, she felt like a drudge, and was very lonely.
Why lonely? Her life-partner (not parent to her sons, and who had been very resistant to the move north, but went because they adored my grandmother) had died 11 months earlier, and she had no one to talk to in an evening, after an entire life of always being part of a family and its chaos. She was expected to be at her son's house (no room at the inn for her, despite the spare bedrooms!) for 0630 in order "to get the children up and ready for school"/make breakfast for them/get my uncle up in time for work - she spent her entire day cleaning their massive house, ferrying children around for after-school classes, appointments, etc., making the daughter's dance costumes, making dinner "for the family". And then, as soon as she'd served the dinner once my uncle returned to his sparkling clean house... she was "expected to leave".
My father and I conspired to have her come visit us for a while - during which time, we were going to try to convince her not to return. I lived in a 2 bedroomed flat at the time, and I was adamant that my daughter would be able to share with me, and my grandmother could live with me, instead. She was a huge part of my childhood, taught me valuable life-skills, loved me despite my many flaws, and I wanted to repay that by ensuring she was looked after "in her old age". Not treated like an employee by her own son/grandchildren. Because yes, my cousins treated her the same way that their father did. For years, my grandmother hated my aunt for leaving him them, but really? By the time all of this happened, I think she understood why my aunt walked out. Anyway. The day we were going up there? I'm getting my daughter ready to go out for the day with my mother, so that my father and I can... I don't know... rescue my grandmother, I suppose... it's early, maybe 7'ish, when my mother uses her emergency key to my front door. And tells me that my grandmother had dropped dead, with a heart attack, in hospital at 0435 that morning. She'd been admitted to hospital with a minor heart attack "probably caused by stress", the previous day - and my uncle hadn't even notified his brothers. I've always said she died from a broken heart, and my remaining uncle takes that to mean because her life-partner had passed not long beforehand... but nope. It was because of her youngest son's entitled behaviour towards her at the end.
I was banned from her funeral, too, incidentally, because I made no secret of how furious I was at what had happened to her, and my uncle didn't want me "making a scene" (which I wouldn't have, but at the life-partner's funeral I made it very clear to him precisely what I thought of him, so he already knew how I felt about the situation). My daughter (who was then 3) and I made one of the cakes my grandmother had taught me how to bake as a child, together, instead, then went to the park and watched all the old musicals that she'd introduced me to in the evening. It's just turned 20 years since all of this happened, and it still makes me very angry. I refused to speak to the uncle in question, or his sons, after my grandmother's death - and when my uncle died? I was invited to attend his burial - but politely declined, shall we say. The daughter is lovely, though. She's obviously a lot younger than me, but we talk from time to time, and she's... a very happy, very competant SAHM... whose sons help tidy their toys away when they're done playing. She's teaching them life-skills, because her father wasn't - and she saw how that turned out. My grandmother would be very proud of her.
So yes; for the lack of life-skills having been taught, a previously close-knit family was blown wide apart by a death that, had those skills been taught in the first place... probably wouldn't have happened. And that is very sad.