Thinking this is an over-reaction to my thoughtless comment

[Clemcy]

Today at work I spent lunch with some colleagues who have children a similar age to my eldest, 16-18 sort of age. We were talking about uni/fees/tech/accomodation etc.
One colleagues wife passed away when their child was younger, he sold the house, moved away to somewhere much cheaper mortgage free etc. and put the rest of the money from the sale away for his daughter.
He was explaining he's not worried as he has enough to buy her a flat/house when she's in second year, pay her fees and keep some back for wedding/emergencies. He quite causally said "yeah there is about £800,000 waiting for her."
This is insane to me, my house is worth a quarter of that, while I appreciate the circumstances that have allowed them to accumulate that money are awful it is a large sum!!
I thoughtlessly said "oh wow lucky girl" and everyone sort of looked at me, I realised and apologised.
Since I've gotten home 3 separate people have messaged me to let me know said colleague is quite upset at my insensitive comment, and there is nothing lucky about your mum dying - I never said there was!!
I messaged him to apologise but he just replied with "no amount of money will bring her mum back, be careful what you say"

I'm now sat quite upset, I genuinely wasn't thinking, heard the amount and thought wow!
AIBU to think this is an overreaction to a thoughtless comment?

Total overreaction, don’t worry OP. He downsized, saved money - not such an obvious causal link to his wife’s death (like an insurance payout) to merit such a reaction from him.

@coldcallerbaiter - the man has lost his wife, his daughter has lost her mum, and his colleague said his daughter is lucky - it is hardly surprising that her comment upset him. The way the OP described things, I don’t think he has ‘made a meal of it’ - I think his reaction to the comment was perfectly reasonable, and his response to her apology was pretty mild, all things considered.

Sorry, but what do you want the OP to do ? She said something before thinking and apologised immediately. You either accept the apology or you don’t - if you do, you put it behind you and accept that we’re all human and we’ve all done something similar. Or you don’t, and you never speak to the person again. What you don’t do is hound someone about it until they get to the point at which they have to post on MN to get some perspective. She’s apologised, she can do no more than that and it’s time for everyone to move on.

I imagine raising his daughter without his partner has been hard. There will have been a million moments when she was misses.
So not an over reaction. However it's done now, acknowledge his text and your reinforced your apology. Then it's done. No need to discuss it at work tomorrow, unless he brings it up. Let the topic end now.
We've all put our foot in it at some point and lived to tell the tale.

Yes, I think this is an overreaction. If you’d tried to justify your comments, or not apologised at the time, then yes it would have been appropriate to message you after.

No, I think it’s tasteless too. He lost his wife but he was the one who brought up the money side of things. And it wasn’t as a direct result of losing his wife - he downsized and is in the fortunate position of being able to set up his DD for life. And she is lucky from that point of view. And that’s all OP meant.

Like I said, I don't believe it was a heartfelt apology. They don't sound hounded to me. The response like that is something someone would send to a halfarsed apology, and obviously other people were shocked at the situation too.

But unless the apology message is posted then we don't know.

You're incredibly unsympathetic towards someone in that situation. People don't ever move on from these situations, and it's a raw wound every time it's reopened. One word isn't going to fix anything.

This!

I’m reading this as the colleagues overreacting after she already apologised directly after she said it.

Are these the colleagues that were there when she said it or are these colleagues who found out from him or others and they contacted her to tell her how upset he was?

It depends on your apology. You don’t sound sorry. I lost my husband and my daughter was 10. I tend to keep quiet about the fact that when my mum died tragically I paid my mortgage off but would rather have had my mum. Then when my husband died I got a small lump sum. It is a tenth of what your colleagues daughter will get but I would not begrudge her that. It is damn bloody hard losing a parent and husband at a young age. People don’t understand and do come out with some crap. I would forgive you if you apologised in person and sounded understanding, 800k is nothing compared to not only the person but also the future that girl has lost.

Yes. They are overreacting.

The op intended no malice whatsoever. Anyone is within their rights not to forgive but if being the recipient of the comment the op made is the worst thing a person experienced in their life, then they are much more fortunate than most people on the planet. I think forgiveness, especially when the op feels so bad is reasonable.

Everyone sees the value in a shit ton of money. The "I'd give it all for one more day" thing is sweet obviously but also a choice you're never actually going to make so a pretty easy thing to say. Especially when you've actually got the money

There's loads more possibilities than living mum or 800k isn't there

Were you there. ? What would you like her to do - grovel ? I’ve been in a similar situation myself after losing my husband several years ago. A friend made a similar comment about a life insurance policy. It was insensitive and crass, but she apologised immediately and said she had spoken without thinking about the sum involved, not the bereavement I had suffered. I understood and we moved on from it. If I went through life with the attitude you’re suggesting, I’d lose many good friends because we’ve all done it.

This still cracks me up.

I think to be told off four times after you'd already apologised is a bit much, yes [though presumably they didn't all know that they were all going to contact you.]

So the OP never came back despite over 400 replies?

I suppose it's a different spin on all the other inheritance type threads MN seems to be overrun with lately...

Blimey 18 whole pages and only one single post from the OP. Talk about invested 🤣

Exactly this.

Instead his response was to guilt-trip OP with "no amount of money will bring her mum back, be careful what you say". It is graceless to respond in this way to an apology for what was so obviously a merely thoughtless remark, moreover one prompted by understandable surprise at hearing the huge sum of money involved.

Was he expecting everyone to say, oh dear, how horribly tragic that your daughter's going to get £800K?

I'm surprised that OP is being given such a hard time. I think most people who have lost loved ones, including under tragic circumstances, are used to having people make slightly thoughtless comments. You have to try and not let it get to you. I've even known people have a bit of a laugh about things that were quite bizarrely inappropriate. A friend who has experienced a stillbirth has some mind-boggling examples.

Of course her colleagues daughter hasn't been lucky to have lost her mother when she was younger, but she has been lucky to have a father with the wherewithall and motivation to make the changes and financial decisions that have led to her having this huge sum of money. Most bereaved children don't have such good fortune.

This is incredibly crass. The worst thing that’s happened to him is most likely his wife dying, don’t you think?

Having said that, I don’t think the OP should beat herself up too much about it. She said something insensitive and has apologised.

However, she also needs to accept that he has no obligation to forgive right away. An apology is a step towards forgiveness not a way of buying forgiveness. He’s entitled to still be miffed. An apology that is given just to make the other person “get over” being upset isn’t really an apology.

I don’t think anyone has overreacted. OP just needs to give him a bit of time.

I don’t think this is an AIBU scenario, there’s no right or wrong. He doesn’t have to accept your apology and there’s probably context to their reaction that you’re unaware of, given they’re a work colleague rather than your best friend. There’s not a one size fits all reaction or timeline for grief.

Equally, you know the spirit you said it in and you’ve apologised. There’s not much more you can do - sometimes we can’t fix the impact our words have, even they’re not said with malice.

My dad died when I was 12 and the impact it had on me was huge. It was incredibly painful and it took me many years to come to terms with. A few people made thoughtless comments to me like “it’s not so bad now you’ve got a stepdad” or “you were so young, you must not really remember/know any different” - they didn’t mean any harm but I still remember those moments very clearly 20+ years later.

As someone who lost a parent young and also inherited a decent amount (not as much as stated here!) - I got quite a few insensitive comments similar to what you said. I did not react as strongly as he did, in fact they probably didn’t even know how much they upset me as I knew they didn’t understand what they had said or mean it as it sounded, so didn’t say much. I certainly would not have spun it out so much. You have apologised, don’t torture yourself. The girl in question is lucky to have that money to set her up, but it will never make up for losing her Mum. As others have said, both are true.

Yeah, that's a bad comment. She's not lucky - you're wrong