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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To say that if you’ve gone no contact you can’t go to funeral

496 replies

Playingdevilsadvocate · 27/01/2022 06:35

My SIL has gone NC with her DF. It’s been a couple of years now. He’s just died. I don’t know what she plans to do regards funeral yet but I feel that if she didn’t want anything to do with him in these last years of his life, she can’t go wailing at his funeral with his grieving family. They all know how she’s behaved towards him and they don’t want a bar of her. She should have thought of this moment before she cut him off! Should his widow (not her dm) have to encounter this person who caused her dh so much pain, at his funeral where she will be grieving her dh? Thoughts?

OP posts:
mdh2020 · 27/01/2022 08:04

My sister is NC with our mother (and, more recently, the rest of the family) and has been for several years leaving me and my other sister to do all the caring involved in looking after a very elderly mother who lives alone. I can’t imagine why she would come to the funeral - unless it would be to make sure she was dead - and as far as I am concerned she will not be welcome.

sweatervest · 27/01/2022 08:05

i hadn't spoken to my twat father for years before he died. i went to his funeral though. sat in the back seat. turned into tommy lee royce during the service (long story).

but if she wants to go and wail and throw herself on the coffin so what.
or if she wants to go and not wail and not throw herself so what.
if you really hate someone then it can be reassuring to see them in a coffin with the lid locked tbh.

Inspectorslack · 27/01/2022 08:07

And you mention in your post that there’s a widow who isn’t her mother. Whose grief you put above your SIL.

That’s nasty and unfair of you. Regardless of anything else.

Migrainesbythedozen · 27/01/2022 08:08

OP you are being massively unreasonable and I think selfish. NO ONE goes NC without a valid reason. No one. If she wants to go just to make sure he's dead, that's her prerogative. Mind your own business and pull your head in.

TrivialSoul · 27/01/2022 08:08

I had a relative who was NC with all of her family, she came to her parents funeral. She sat quietly at the back. I assume that she was grieving for the relationship that she had had before she decided to go NC. It didn't mend any bridges with anyone else in the family but nor did it cause any trouble. We grieved, she grieved. It wasn't anyone's place to judge her motives for being there.

BABAHOTEL · 27/01/2022 08:09

@Migrainesbythedozen

OP you are being massively unreasonable and I think selfish. NO ONE goes NC without a valid reason. No one. If she wants to go just to make sure he's dead, that's her prerogative. Mind your own business and pull your head in.
Of course they do!
Puffflashpuffflashbang · 27/01/2022 08:11

It couldn't be further from your business.

MrsTimRiggins · 27/01/2022 08:11

My thoughts are that it’s absolutely not your place to be judging anyone in this situation and that you should mind your own business. Hope that helps 👍🏻

roastingmichael · 27/01/2022 08:11

It's not for you to decide if she goes to her parent's funeral.
I've been NC with a parent and still went. In fact I was under quite intense pressure to go.

There are many reasons why she might want/need to.

Migrainesbythedozen · 27/01/2022 08:12

And her father obviously caused HER a 'great deal of pain' or else she wouldn't have gone NC. So maybe support her and give her a shoulder to cry on, instead of being selfish and judgemental. He clearly hurt his daughter very, very much.

ShadowPuppets · 27/01/2022 08:13

You absolutely can’t make a generalisation about this because there’s a whole spectrum of reasons why people go NC with their parents.

You also sound v invested in the situation considering your role, I’m wondering if you’re closer (in terms of relationship role) to this than you’ve let on.

Kshhuxnxk · 27/01/2022 08:13

Quite sure you won't know the whole story, no one apart from the two involved will so perhaps keep out of it.

FKATondelayo · 27/01/2022 08:14

I notice the OP hasn't responded.

I was NC with my father for nearly 30 years - even when he was dying (though to be fair it was lockdown). I went to his funeral. My DM and family expected and wanted me there. They knew and understood my reasons for NC. I wanted to support them and be there for them as their relationships with him wasn't my relationship.

I have no regrets about going, no regrets about not seeing him again for years and the funeral was probably the nicest time I ever had with him. It was cathartic.

I was nc with my dad. I went to the funeral just to make sure the fucker was cremated.

Yes, this is a good reason - closure.

He's your FIL OP. It has nothing to do with you.

AnyFucker · 27/01/2022 08:16

Keep your nose out. You don’t have the 1st idea about what happened between them.

Hadenoughofthisbullshit · 27/01/2022 08:16

Are you the one who went for Christmas lunch with her SIL’s parents because she wouldn’t as she had cut contact with them?

You sound remarkably similar to that op.

You don’t know what your SIL is planning to do, and it’s her father not yours, so keep your beak out.

granny24 · 27/01/2022 08:19

@IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads

Anyone can go to a funeral, they often provide closure on bad feeling and difficult circumstances and “let bygones be bygones”. They are as much for the living as the dead.
This. And are you always this nosy and interfering?
namechange30455 · 27/01/2022 08:19

I don't know why you are making such a big drama out of this given you don't even know whether she's planning to go or not! None of your business anyway.

Why do you care more about your SIL's dad's wife's feelings than your SIL's? If I'm understanding correctly this isn't your family - SIL is married to your or your DH's sibling?

UniversalAunt · 27/01/2022 08:21

YABU
MYOB
Not your dad.
Not the family you grew up in.
You are not that daughter.

The widow married a man with children & with that deal comes a load of family ‘joy & baggage’. This includes the ups & downs of relationships between parents & children set in place long a go.

If said daughter was NC, she will have her reasons.
She’ll want to say goodbye in her own way.
Funerals are public events for a reason.

If you want a stance or position to take on the day, be at least neutral & polite with your SIL at the funeral.

StrictlySinging · 27/01/2022 08:22

I wonder if you have considered her perspective. at all? She is human too and in order to need
to go NC was possibly suffering a lot.

Also it’s not just the finishing position that is relevant is it? There’s everything before that.

I hope you are not stirring unnecessarily. Better to be supportive and neutral, honestly.
Don’t add to any hostility.

SnapAndFartAllDayLong · 27/01/2022 08:23

Op I can see myself in the same position when my DGM goes. My DM has gone NC because she's been hoodwinked by her father (I refuse to call him grandfather!)

It breaks my heart to see my nan hurting and I know when she goes my mum will be crying and saying about how she wished she spoke to her etc 🙄🙄

I know I will want to flip out at her and tell her not to come to funeral etc, my DH says that's wrong as its still her mum so 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ I'll just make sure I have a shit ton of chewing gum so I dont bite my tongue off 🤣🤣🤣

MooSakah · 27/01/2022 08:24

Thoughts?

You are too involved in your in-laws family dynamics. Butt out its a hard enough time as it is.

StrictlySinging · 27/01/2022 08:25

This is a reverse?

If so I hear you - people on the sidelines have no idea!

AnneLovesGilbert · 27/01/2022 08:26

Some people go to funerals to grieve the loss of the deceased. Others go to grieve the relationship they wish they’d had with the deceased. My mum should have gone NC with her horrific parents but as an only child with a well developed guilt complex and a persistent hope they’d one day be better she didn’t. When they both died she cried for the loss of the parents she wished they’d been, for the family she could have had, for all the wasted years of pain and trauma and disappointment.

Try for a bit of empathy OP instead of looking for drama when someone you know has just died.

Inspectorslack · 27/01/2022 08:27

My father and his wife have told lies about why they no longer see me.

Anyone listening to them would have no idea of the real reasons.

Warblerinwinter · 27/01/2022 08:31

I am nc with my father. He rejected me becuase he knew I was thinking melovolent thoughts about him and his partner. I wasn’t. He didn’t know what I was thinking. He is passive aggressive- always had been . I know he’s not evil or a bad person, just lacks emotional intelligence. The pain of that rejection is enormous despite it being nearly 20 years since I last saw him
But he feeds this line to people that I am not speaking to him, I think it’s so he can cope with what he did , sends me cards e twice a year that I now put in bin as they cause me so much pain …no message apart from “love dad”…
He is now elderly and I wonder how I will feel about the funeral. I have pretty much done my grieving (all those stages) , but can’t quite Getty acceptance that our relationship is over. I think it will take his death and funeral to do that. But I am aware there are expel there that see me as a very nasty person based on the story he has in his head and it actually makes me very scared.
You really don’t know what happened with your SIL . You were not there when she was a child, you don’t know the dynamics of her and her fathers relationship . You cannot take his version of events or anyone else on “his” side as the full and joy narrative.

If she attends she is doing so to complete her grief that has been in suspended animination . She is his child and part of her psychy will have always sought reconciliation- no one on either side of nc for parent and child finds it anything but extremely difficult.