Grief Vampire

[Beebopbopbopbopbop]

Ok I don’t think I am actually being unreasonable but happy to be told otherwise.

I have an old friend who seems to absolutely make a song and dance about every death of someone she even vaguely knows, but emotional Facebook posts etc.

As an example when we are secondary school a boy a few years above is died. She didn’t know him well - but think her brother was friend with him. She posts a memorial every single year on Facebook (we are now in our very late thirties - the photo she uses predates digital). It’s always with a big heartfelt “gone but not forgotten etc”.

Second example - bloke from a local shop died. She asked me if I’d be going to the funeral as she was.

Aibu to find it absolutely weird and bizarre. What do people get out of this behaviour?

On a slightly different tangent but similar.

I used to work with a man whose mother died Christmas day in 1995. He was 32. It is of course, sad to lose your mother at any time, and it's harder when you're a fairly young age, and it's especially tough on Christmas day...

So understandably, he wanted Christmas off the following year, because it was a melancholy time for him. He also wanted it the year after - and the year after...

He milked it for YEARS. Even in his mid 40s - 13 to 15 years after his mum died, he was still demanding Christmas off, 'because I lost my mum on Christmas day.' Whilst everyone acknowledged it was sad for him to have lost her, and especially at Christmas, he milked it for years, and continued to demand Christmas off.

It stopped when a new manager forbid it and told him flat out he wasn't getting it. His mum had been dead 17 years at that point, and he STILL demanding Christmas off AGAIN because his mum died nearly 2 decades earlier! He sulked like a bratty toddler, but the new manager wouldn't give in to him.