Don’t want to be around bereaved MIL anymore

[turquoisepenguin]

This is probably going to make me sound like the worst person in the world but here goes.

FIL died eighteen months ago, it was quite sudden and he was relatively young (65).

MIL is now very depressed. I do feel very sorry for her because FIL was basically her whole world. She doesn’t have any other family, doesn’t have many friends, doesn’t drive, and is retired. She used to spend most of her time with FIL. So it is really sad.

She recently came to stay. This was actually my suggestion as I know she is bored and lonely and I thought it would cheer her up. Unfortunately it was a disaster. She was in a terrible mood with DH because he asked her to get the train (he used to pick her up and drive to ours but it’s a six hour round trip). So she barely spoke to him or me for the first 24 hours. She didn’t want to go out anywhere so she sat and watched daytime TV for six hours (this is not an exaggeration). She cried a lot of the time and turned most conversations round to FIL.

She is clearly depressed but won’t go to the doctor or have counselling. She is in a terrible place but she won’t accept any help and is very rude to DH. She refused to say goodbye to him, again because she was unhappy about having to get the train. At the end we were both completely exhausted and fed up and the kids were a bit confused by the whole thing.

I had suggested to DH that we should invite her to stay again in March but I’ve just said I think we should abandon that idea because I don’t think I can face it again. However, I also feel like a terrible person because she is obviously very sad. I don’t know what the answer is really. But I have my own issues with work, family illness, kids etc and I just don’t think I can face this on top.

Yep. Fear of open spaces. It’s a trauma response, usually where there has been a sudden or unexpected death. It suggests that the bereaved person has tipped into complicated grief, the signs of which are all there in MIL, according to the OP’s posts - she focuses on the death of her partner to excess and brings the conversation around to it whenever possible, has problems accepting his death to the point where she is angry and lashing out. She has trouble carrying out normal activities, (hence the problems with the train) and isolates herself, withdrawing from social contact (focusing on TV and weeping all the time) From what the OP says there’s evidence of deep depression and the constant rehashing of the last days leading up to his death suggests she believes she did something wrong or could have prevented his death. It’s all there. There’s been much argument on the thread about what does and does not constitute grief and what the bereaved person needs by way of support. All of the information is out there on the internet, so anyone who wants to educate themselves only has to look.

As sausage says it's all out there it really is. Agoraphobia is very common especially with a sudden death .

When my husband died I didn't want to go out for a long time, because I was scared to come back to an empty house. I was also scared something would 'happen' to me when I was out, and I had no-one at home to phone to rescue me.

Does anyone know how to stop notifications for this thread ? I’ve clicked on unwatch thread but I keep getting notified of replies and feel obligated to respond. I really don’t think my continued input is helping myself or anyone else. Thanks.

Sausage

I think you can hide threads. For what it's worth I think your input has been very brave very honest and hopefully enlightening to lots. Good luck to you xx

Haven’t rtft.

It is fine for her to grieve and feel sad for as long as she needs.

It is absolutely rotten of her to ignore her own son for 24 hours because she had to get a train. She sounds petty and spiteful and no, losing her dh 18 months ago I’d no excuse for doing that. I would never treat my child like that.

Absolutely no reason she shouldn’t be able to take a 2 hour train journey. She is not elderly or infirm. She sounds awful and frankly I wouldn’t be bothered seeing her again for a long time - bereaved or not.

Was she like this when your dh was growing up? I feel sorry for him if she was.

Thank you, that’s very kind and very much appreciated👍

You really do need to read the thread. This isn’t helpful advice as you will see if you read back.

I've read the thread. I've also read the OP's other thead where she was at her wit's end after having the MIL stay over Christmas, where she cried in the living room for 6 out of the 7 days, frightening the OP's children.

There she was advised to get the MIL to catch the train, as DH could not keep using up days of his annual leave to drive 3 hours to pick her up and then 3hours back to his place. Then repeat the 6 hours drive at the end of her stay. I believe he took the train with her once to get her used to it.

If you'd actually read and understood the OP's posts on this thread, you would know that this did not go well. It is a pity you cannot extend your concern to her or her DH, who is having his own grief re-traumatised by her recounting his father's death over and over and over to him. I can't imagine it would make for safe driving. I don't think it is healthy for young children to be exposed to this sort of behaviour, either.

But as you seem so insistently knowledgeable about grief, and so keen to pander to the MIL's tantrums and excuse them as signs of grief, and as you have so much time to lecture others who do not follow on your directives on this thread and dare to think otherwise than you do, perhaps you could volunteer to drive and pick the MIL up and drive her back and so on, for all future visits?

Your post perfectly demonstrates that people are reading but not understanding. It also perfectly demonstrates why AIBU on MN is not the place to post for this kind of advice.

There has been a wealth of experience based advice from quite a few posters, most of which has been met with sneering comments until they have left the thread. The poster you are answering has posted several times in direct response to the OP with some suggestions as to where to get help, and trying to provide some understanding of the reasons behind her behaviour - all of which is part of the late stage grieving process. It’s not trying to ‘excuse’ MIL’s behaviour, it’s trying to provide some insight into why she’s behaving the way she is. She’s in the second year of her grief - for a lot of people it’s much harder at this time because they’re still grieving the life they lost while fully realising that this is the life they have now. Agoraphobia is common after a sudden loss, but several posters attempted to bat that one away because it didn’t fit the narrative, although it’s certainly a factor and could be the reason (not ‘excuse’) that MIL is having trouble with the train.

The behaviour is not easy to deal with, it’s not pleasant to watch and it’s hard to know how to help, but burying your head as to the reasons it’s happening and dismissing someone’s obvious struggle with complicated grief as ‘tantrums’ isn’t the way to go. I hope the OP has found at least some parts of the thread helpful and hasn’t allowed the bias and lack of empathy to cloud her judgement in looking at some of the sound advice available. I’m reporting this post because it’s not helpful to anyone now. The OP hasn’t been back and there are now more posts criticising previous participants than there are actually seeking to help the OP. I’m off now, before I too, am accused of ‘lecturing’!!

I have never figured that out either. I think your contributions have been important though.

Your post perfectly demonstrates that people are reading but not understanding.

That is really patronising. By "understanding" you seem to mean agreeing with you, that only MIL's feelings count here. Not the OP's, the grieving DH's, or the childrens'.

I think that's what some people are missing here. It's not that people are saying that MIL's grief isn't awful and all-encompassing, they are just disagreeing on how far OP and her family need to let that impact on them.

No they are disagreeing that MIL is a cheeky fucker or has mental health problems and saying her responses are in the normal range.

This was also my interpretation

What @FrostyFifi said, I mean

No - not at all. Sorry if you think it’s patronising. Simply saying that you made the statement that you thought the previous poster was lecturing people and appeared to be ‘insistently’ knowledgeable about grief and I think that’s actually wrong. She wasn’t trying to excuse the MIL’s behaviour, she was trying to explain it to the OP based on her similar experience of losing her own partner, so that she would have a better understanding of it and be able to help MIL deal with it and become more independent.

Grief is like a physical illness. What’s going on on the surface can be very different to what’s happening deep down. Some people who are grieving are like swans - calm at the surface and paddling furiously underneath to avoid sinking - as an example a good friend of ours lost his wife of 30 years a while back and everyone thought he was dealing with it reasonably well. Until he took his own life. Others are chaotic because they can’t deal with the slew of feelings that come at them all at once - the perfect example of this is MIL’s behaviour. People who experience sudden death are traumatised and often tip over into complicated grief, which usually needs expert help. All the signs and symptoms are there with MIL but there’s no point in trying to deal with the symptoms on the surface -either by leaving her to ‘get on with’ or anything else. You have to get to the root cause and help deal with it otherwise nothing will change and life for the OP and her family will be miserable whenever MIL is around. That’s why comments from a lot of posters saying things like ‘leave her to get on with it’ aren’t helpful. They’re dismissing MIL’s ‘symptoms’ as just bad behaviour - one poster even suggested, that she was just an awful person and was using her grief against her family. How is that helpful ? Grief is a process and like it or not, as one recent pp put it, there is some breathtaking ignorance here as to how it works - I would add that there’s an unwillingness to understand it too. We don’t accept death as part of life in this country so no wonder we have such problems when we encounter it. I’ve also turned off notifications - only came back to answer you. Hope MN takes the thread down soon because it’s become pointless.

I think the issue with this thread is that we all experience bereavement - it is a universal human experience. Some posters have decided their personal experience makes them particularly expert on the subject, free to opine at length and patronise all those who disagree. This is not helpful or constructive.

For the OP, I think you have to stand firm on the train issue, or you are setting up a long term expectation. If MIL is prepared to get the train, then the visit in March should go ahead, but your DH does need to talk to her about how her manifestation of grief is impacting him and explore ways she can begin to move forward. She had a long life ahead of her so she does need to think about how she is going to navigate that and start to make baby steps to move forward.

It sounds very hard and draining, you have my sympathy.

I thought you were leaving @Rosscameasdoody?

@HeadNorth Some posters think because they have managed fine after a bereavement that anyone who does not is throwing tantrums.

I don't actually think that is fair - I haven't seen any tantrums thrown. As I said, we all have our losses, some more traumatic than others. Anyone acting (at length) as if they are an expert on bereavement is bound to get people's hackles up, it is very insensitive behaviour. A bit of recognition that we are all flawed humans struggling through and a touch of humilty in the face of other experiences would go a long way. The OP asked for advice and support, not pages and pages on how hard someone found it being a widow (before they remarried...). It does not in anyway help the OP navigate the visit by her MIL, how deserves compassion and understanding, but so does her son and the poor old OP stuck in the middle.

She wasn’t trying to excuse the MIL’s behaviour, she was trying to explain it to the OP based on her similar experience of losing her own partner, so that she would have a better understanding of it and be able to help MIL deal with it and become more independent.

I think she conveyed her point in her first ten or twenty posts. The OP is clearlry not insensitive to MIL's grief, she does not need a pamphlet on the grief process, she is trying to keep her own family and DH from going under c/o- it.

Guess what? I, like many on this thread, have experienced grief. Severe, and complicated. Am agoraphobic, also. You really need to pull back from this role of senior expert in grief, vacated by the sausage dog.

Some posters think because they have managed fine after a bereavement that anyone who does not is throwing tantrums.

I would call refusing to speak for 24 hours to express displeasure at being required to catch the train throwing a tantrum.

You have to get to the root cause and help deal with it otherwise nothing will change and life for the OP and her family will be miserable whenever MIL is around

@Rosscameasdoody please can you give some practical suggestions of how to help deal with the MIL’s grief so that things change, bearing in mind the many suggestions which OP has said MIL will not try?

The OP asked for advice and support, not pages and pages on how hard someone found it being a widow (before they remarried...).

Very late to the thread and wasn’t going to comment until I saw this. So what you’re saying is that the OP’s mother in law should be moving on with her grief after 18 months, but you’re having a go at the previous poster for remarrying six years after losing their husband ? So mother in law should get over her grief so she’s not a burden to her family, but not so much that she finds happiness again further down the road !! Unbelievable.

For the love of Jesus, nobody is saying the MIL should be "moving on" with her grief. They are saying the OP has a right to protect her family, and her husband's income, from her acting out in her grief. He can't keep taking time off work to drive. She refuses to enage with any other support OP has suggested, and appears to find catching the train so upsetting everyone must suffer as well.