Have I/we been unreasonable in any way on this? All parties are in England.
DM is in her late seventies, has lived alone for a really long time and likes things her way. We haven’t seen her since before the November lockdown and Christmas plans were cancelled when we were supposed to see her.
She emailed me last week to suggest ‘a few days away’ with her and my family once lockdown ends. Discussed with DH and agreed we’d like to - all good.
Rang her on Saturday to say exactly that and asked when she thought would be best, suggesting July after schools break up. She said perhaps August would be better, to which I said that it would need to be during the last two weeks in August because we had booked flights (last October, full ability to cancel) to visit DH’s relatives for the first three weeks. We haven’t seen them since last August and can’t visit for a weekend or similar because they’re too far away. We do usually go to visit DH’s family for a long period once a year.
In response, she started crying and said she had hoped to spend some time with us this year (to which I said what about late August or late July or potentially earlier), she didn’t know what to say and that it was always the same. She then hung up.
DH and I are struggling to understand what we did wrong. We wanted to go away and said so, offering three possible weeks for the few days away to happen in. What should we have done here? (We haven’t thought about this year’s flight booking much because it’s not clear we’ll be going at all.)
Back story is that every few years or so she reacts badly to some thing or other I’ve apparently done against her and then sends me a horrible email to say how ungrateful, rude and unpleasant I am, or words to that effect. I haven’t had anything else yet.