Feel awful about MIL's passing but struggling with baby - AIBU?

[Charlottef94]

My MIL sadly passed away last week after a terminal illness. She and FIL live in a very very remote part of UK which takes around 12 hrs door to door from us. We were there a week ago luckily before she passed, with our 4 month old.

When she passed overnight last week I stayed as we had already postponed our babys vaccines by over a month due to all the travel over Christmas and up to see them, and they were due to have them that day. DH went up to FIL straight away - however I now feel that he is angry with me that we didnt go immediately and is being quite insensitive to me in having to make this huge journey now on my own as well as currently solo parenting our baby who is going through 4month sleep regression.

I have offered to go up asap, however with the funeral date tbc I would like us to stay up there, until the funeral rather than come back home and back up again. I just feel that it's so many extremely long journeys for our baby who was v unsettled last time we went up there, has just settled down at home again - this is why I wanted to give him a few extra days to get over his jabs and be at home before more upheaval. We have also only been married a year and I did feel that at such a raw time for FIL, having me there hanging around in the very beginning would feel intrusive on his grief as he is alone with DH at the moment.

I just feel my DH is not caring about us at all at the moment, he is barely speaking to me and keeps making sharp comments about how he wants me to get there asap as FIL is really keen to be surrounded by all the grandchildren, as if I am refusing to go. His SIL gets there today with baby. There is a turn in the weather this week meaning I am unlikely to be able to make it to where they live this week or could get stranded with our baby, but I feel DH will tell me we have to try and make the journey.

AIBU in feeling a bit upset myself? I know he has lost his mum but I am trying my best to hold everything together and stable here for our baby and I feel so alone and worried that I've been unreasonable in staying home for a bit longer given the circumstances.

Oh for goodness sake. It's not the middle of nowhere TO THEM. It's their home. They've lived there with little babies, and looked after them there. They're used to travelling long distances back and forth, often in bad weather or under the strain of bereavement or other difficult circumstances, and will have done it many times themselves so know that they would be prepared to do exactly what they are asking of her. They're used to making judgements on the most effective way to travel. They're used to community norms which include close relationships with neighbours (including meeting new babies). They will expect new members of the family to be able to participate in their community and its customs and will be hugely upset by the OP's reluctance, which they won't understand and will be a cause of real embarrassment to them.

This is not sexist - it's a total failure on the OP and many PP's part to understand that unwillingness to put aside her (urban? southern?) perspective and do what is needed in this situation is going to be profoundly hurtful and has the potential to do lasting damage to both immediate and extended family relationships.

I'm really shocked by the cultural and geographic insularity shown right through this thread. But I also don't think you need to be an anthropologist to realise that the OP should just get it together to do the decent thing to support her husband, and have a bit of compassion for her FIL even if she finds him hard work.

Well, it has happened to both me and my husband and neither of us went through any turmoil. We were just grateful that we were adults when our parents died and that they lived as long as they did.

Or @OhBuggerandArse its a highly misogynistic culture which expect women to drop everything and do what they are told by FIL

Haha! No. I mean—I used to be an anthropologist. I worked in a small south asian village setting. This is not about old values of family snd community vs cold/selfish southern ways.

Old man just lost his cook and skivvy. He and his son want someone to housekeep for them so they can host guests and handle the funeral. DH could do that but he is a man so won’t. If dh were a woman he would do everything and probably not ask his wife and child to make the trip until the funeral was arranged.

What absolute barmy nonsense. There's been a collective process of invention and scapegoating on this thread which bears absolutely no relationship to anything any of us actually know.

@pikkumyy77 Old man just lost his cook and skivvy. He and his son want someone to housekeep for them so they can host guests and handle the funeral.

This is absolutely wild projection, and such a cruel way to speak about people who have just lost their wife and mother. I can't imagine what leads you to be so unpleasant in your interpretation.

Nope, there's nothing at all in any of OPs posts to suggest FIL has done the journey being asked of OP with a baby. And we know DH hasn't done it solo, as OP is breastfeeding. That's simply invention on your part.

Additionally, the cultural norms of the local area will not render OP able to drive, the road safely paved for her to push a pram or the weather clement. These things are all facts that mean she's going to be isolated. In a way that they won't be when they're in the same location. One doesn't need to be an anthropologist to understand all this.

Anyone who lives there will have done those journeys many many times. That's just experience. And whinging about the weather? Really, grow up (and buy a decent raincoat).

Nope, anyone who lives there will not have travelled from what sounds like the urban south east of England solo with a baby many times. It isn't a requirement of residence. There's no reason to imagine FIL has done this particular journey before and we know DH hasn't. Because this particular journey involves a baby. That means your claim that they'd be willing to do what's being asked of her cos they've done it, completely wrong.

And the rain makes it even less safe to go out for a walk in an unpaved isolated area, given the impact on visibility. A raincoat won't solve that. Bizarre to imagine it would.

It's just a baby.

It makes it a bit harder, but it's a train and a ferry, hardly lugging baby up Everest.

Well, we're all pretty doomed, aren't we? If the collective understanding of this situation is that the best thing to do is stay put in a wee flat in the south east, confine one's obligations to a restricted nuclear family unit, never challenge one's expectations, never put oneself out to help someone whose perspective on life differs slightly from one's own, never learn to experience anything a bit different from what one might be used to, dress up the most self-serving weaponised incompetence as 'drawing firm boundaries' and re-interpret grieving people's hope for family love and support as sexism - what hope for any of us? How thoroughly depressing.

It’s in the middle of nowhere TO OP. A month is NOT reasonable. The DH begrudging OP an air ticket is not reasonable. The DH saying he won’t collect his wife and baby from the airport is not reasonable.

Stop digging your heels in and think about it fairly.

Oh look, a strawman. If it's that easy, presumably you at least agree DH is in the wrong not to want to drive a couple of hours so OP could take her preferred form of transport? Since he's so used to it and it's a mere trifle.

I've said throughout that she should travel in a way that suits her. If that means flying or not coming, that's her husband's decision to make

im leaning to she should go for perhaps a week, fly and he does the 4 hour round trip to collect, fly back after about a week as it sounds like then she can have two weeks at home and fly back for the funeral. That’s what I’d tell my dh is doable.

It’s called humour. You may want to look at getting some.

With upcoming weather warnings highly likely to cause disruption and uncertain timescales, it would be sensible to pause for a few days until timescales around the funeral are clear and then plan.

It's a long, awkward journey even without factoring in an unsettled 4 month old baby.

It's also an awkward location for a prolonged stay. OP has no means to transport herself safely when there so it needs to be sensibly planned to meet everyone's needs.

I've been through the loss of a parent. DH has too (both).
Sometimes circimstances aren't ideal and logistics of life continuing have to be considered.
My experience was a sudden, premature shock. Family travelled to come together for a few days but then had to return to normal business until the funeral a couple of weeks later. I had two days off school, and a half day for the funeral. I didn't have the full day off because it clashed with my secondary transition. Missing that entirely would have caused additional stress on starting secondary school while already being a couple of months into deep grief.
When MiL died, we had to cut short a holiday, get home then travel for the funeral on a short turn around. DH and I travelled back seperately with a DC each due to some important commitments for DS. We had discussed what to do in the event of MiL dying around that time, so already had agreement and DH had already discussed the possibility of DS and I travelling seperately with his siblings.

Few people can logistically manage short notice, extended visits to remote locations for potentially prolonged periods. It's not a default expectation.

Grief is hard, but it's a marathon not a sprint. The early phase is raw and painful, and support needs to be sustained, not burned out in the first few weeks. OP is sensible to consider her's and baby's needs because if they're not met, that compromises how she can support her DH and FiL.

My advice is to buy a Covid test and draw an extra line on it. Yes, it is dishonest and I may very well burn in hell for suggesting this. You can recover in time for her funeral but being there for a month beforehand is just too much. The kindest way to get out of current expectations is for something to 'happen' that you simply cannot compromise on. Telling the truth, that you cannot hack it for that length of time, will likely cause more upset.

A few people on this thread have mentioned Ireland, cultural importance and customs and whatnot. I am from a Northern Irish Presbyterian family descended from Ulster Scots.

Yes, we gather the clan. But everything happens quickly and spouses from elsewhere don't have to be holed up away from home for weeks on end. My dad died when I had a 2 year old and my mum when I had a 4 year old and a baby. SIL was heavily pregnant at dad's funeral and had that child in tow at mum's.

Both parents had been terminally ill, declined with children called home in the last few days. Funeral director (the same one who buried my grandparents and various great aunties and uncles) and church minister came to the house the next day as a team and went through all funeral arrangements from timings to wording of death notices in the paper/ online to hymns to clothes for the deceased, all done in about an hour and a half. Body gets delivered home the day after that- open coffins; Irish morticians are absolutely ace at hair+makeup. Deceased gets waked for a day or two after that- this is when the trickle of neighbours and extended family bearing stews, traybakes and condolences becomes a steady stream and cousins from London and America start landing. Funeral and commital the next day followed by tea and sandwiches in the church hall (the latest family funeral was 3 weeks ago; DH declared the chicken sandwiches to be the best he'd ever tasted, having picked our two up from school and brought them to the "afters"...the local church catering team would probably win awards if there were championships for such things). Then everyone goes home. The whole lot is over within a week.

Pregnant women and mothers with young children get a bit of leeway. Live children matter more than dead old people so consideration is given to helping the parents. When my brother was not actually standing in the lineup before the services or carrying his parents' coffins, he was keeping an eye out for his wife who is not from here. DH looked after our children then took the elder one back home the day after mum's funeral leaving me with the EBF baby. My big sister- who hadn't yet met her fella back then- managed not to collapse into a shell of grief without the emotional support of a partner and instead cracked on doing the bulk of the death admin (she's a champ).

That's hard on your poor mum

That was mean of me to impugn the motives of FIL and DH in insisting that OP drag herself and baby 12 hours through bad weather to squat in a strange house for a month while her dh retreats to WFH into the bedroom.

Imagine if they were reading here?! How shocking to have their motives, humanity, kindness, competence and thoughtfulness attacked and be accused of such terrible inhumanity that any right thinking person would divorce them? How awful to be so attacked.

I don’t see you defending the OP who is actually reading this thread when she has had much worse said to her.

As for people saying, oh, it'll be picturesque, it'll be idyllic, go birdwatching! ...good grief.
I assume it's a Scottish island....feck me. Have you seen the forecast? It's flipping January. Met office gives 35mph av winds this weekend for western isles, gusting up to 85mph. Even when it dies down a bit next week, still gusting 35mph. Weather fronts coming in one after another...precipitation on met office site divides into rain, snow and hail. Scotland getting hail. Lots of hail. So the westerlies will be roaring in off the north Atlantic lashing hailstones into OPs' face when she goes on her lovely walks. Either with a 4mo baby in a front carrying sling (my lumbar spine is screaming just writing that) or leaving baby in the care of overbearing dummy shoving formula toting FIL. There won't be any tweety birds to look at just the odd grey crow searching for sheep carcases. You can walk between the hours of 8am and 4pm when it's...not light, exactly, but not dangerously dark. If you can brave the blind bends on the shitty single tracked potholed road. I live rurally and tried to avoid this. Something dispiriting about being on a constant watch for vehicles and having to climb into a hedge or jog to the nearest gateway, while thinking OK I will just go as far as the next telegraph pole then turn around and trudge back. It will be the same shitty walk every day. Scotland have the right to roam hurrah! Though the local farming community might not love OP for availing of this right....and if she does so she'll probably have to climb gates that are padlocked or have latches secured with stiff fencing wire, or climb sheep wire with a couple of strands of barbed wire above it. To trudge across a field that will suck her wellies off. I do this every day to check my own ewes and have done so with a baby in a sling...deffo not idyllic.
Other appealing strolling options may include: blanket bog with thigh high stemmy heather and peat hags higher than your head; commercial spruce forestry that hasn't been crown lifted and is thus completely impenetrable: steep rocky hillsides that you have to scramble on your hands and knees and hope to god you don't slip; and an unfenced crumbling cliff edge with a sheer 200ft drop onto rocks.
If it's anywhere like where I live- nowhere to sit down, no stiles, no free swinging gates with nice easy latches, no footpaths, no bridleways.
OP doesn't drive so will be completely trapped.

Also- DH will be WFH so I bet that means closing himself in the room with the best wifi all day, not to be disturbed, leaving OP to deal with his overbearing dad ALL DAY. Then reach 5 or 6pm with a tired, angry, hungry baby (my EBF babies tended to ravage my deflated boobs all evening at that age, as milk requirement was so high at 4mo old and by evening I just needed time to refill). Milk drop under stress is a real thing too, it's amazing how much a stressful day knocks back production.

That shit for a month? Hell no.

@jannier that’s all that some people can take off work.

My DM wanted some time alone after DF died. I listened to her wishes. And I know for one she wouldn’t have expected anyone to spend weeks on end with her and if I had suggested DC needed to travel 12 hours to see her she would have given me short thrift

Good for you. I was thankful my husband cared enough about me (and my Mum) to travel to support us when my Dad died.

Oh come off it! What do you think single mums do? I wouldn't want to make a 12 hour journey with DS on the edge of a storm, but looking after him is my job.
(Definitely wouldn't want to be on a ferry either, but I have a terrible fear of deep water and so that would be a huge nope.)

It would have been, but she had my three adult siblings at home (and my sister was pregnant at the time.) We talked on the phone a lot (still do.)