To think my brother bringing a new girlfriend to see my dead father is inappropriate??

[Meeemeee88]

Basically my father passed away . The day AFTER this happened with everyone at my mums house obviously mourning , upset etc … my brother turns up with a new girlfriend ( first time anyone had met her !!) it was very awkward as we knew nothing about her etc . No one said anything as didn’t want to cause more upset . But he then brings her to view my father’s body a few days later !!! I’m sorry but isn’t this really inappropriate and just insensitive?? My mum isn’t happy about it but again no one wants to cause drama . I’m worried he will bring her to the funeral now but am I over reacting … maybe she has been supportive etc but timing is so off here isn’t it ? To introduce her now when they have only been other a short space of time .

Sorry for the loss of your father.

The thing is with grief, we all do it differently. Nobody can predict whether this girl will be with your brother two weeks or forty years. As hard as it is, you have to put that aside and try to look at it as she’s his support now.

You and your mum may be leaning on each other, but for him, that’s who he’s leaning on for now. Maybe he doesn’t want to put more on your shoulders, maybe he’s driven by other things, but for now, she is being his support system and he has lost a parent too.

Try to view it that way if you can and don’t examine it too closely, especially while you’re grieving. ❤️

Have you thought that maybe she went in with your brother to see your dad at your brother's request?

I don't see how the order of seeing your dad has anything to do with it, unless there was already something prearranged between you, him, and your mum.

I'm sorry for your loss, OP. Of course your brother should have the support he needs, and I can't see any reason for his new girlfriend to come to the funeral with him, but it was really inappropriate for him to bring her to a house, the day after your father passed away, full of grieving relatives who had never met her. However, I think that pales into insignificance when he took her to view your dad's body - that's inappropriate, insensitive, and downright weird. I can understand that it would have been very difficult for you or other family members to have said anything under the circumstances, and that everyone handles grief differently, but the girlfriend should have known better than to have done this. If your brother really couldn't manage without the support of a girlfriend of three weeks when he viewed his father, then she should at least have had the decency to have stayed in the waiting room until he was finished

I am very sorry for your loss but you can appreciate that this is very much about you and your grief and not about your brother and his which is a completely separate thing. Where I am everyone goes and sees the body, open caskets are the norm, whether they know the person or not they say a prayer over the body, so there is just no one right way. Your family doesn’t even have one right way that is not the way these things work.

You and your brother are separate people and will do this journey separately and if you start judging now it will only end in a tonne of bad feeling.

My MIL is at end of life and SIL is very, very unhappy that things are not happening the way she would like them too. She does not seem to recognise that everyone is doing things the best way they know how to and that is different for everyone. Grief is absolutely awful.

Grief is totally irrational OP and I can feel your hurt and you need it to go somewhere. But this isn't a hill to die on. You do you and let your brother do him. What works for one won't work for another.
FWIW I was very pleased when my cousins did not bring their boy/girl friends to my beloved gran's funeral as I (and she) wanted/would have wanted it to be family only. But now 18 months on I do not feel as strongly about it and had it been otherwise I would say no big deal.

I’m really sorry for your loss.

I’m a bit torn here, it’s good for your brother to have support and I understand him wanting her to be there for the funeral but it’s weird taking her to the viewing.

He obviously views this person as important to him and wants him there. I think with everything going on this should be the last thing to focus on.

Maybe she's been through a bereavement and was able to reassure your brother about what to expect when going in there as well as being support for him when he did, rather than leaving him to enter the room alone or have to wait for others to arrive.

It's very easy for bereaved family members to focus on less important things and make them into more when something so enormous has happened.

I think it sounds like he’s loved up
in a new relationship. It’s not appropriate for a new gf to view your deceased father, for those of us who have lost close loved ones, it’s a very private time and not for a new gf. I think attending the funeral will be acceptable though. I feel for you OP but I’d just let it go now, it’s done

Seeing your father would be seen as completely normal in some cultures and as a sign of respect.

OP, you are very upset and stressed.

Don’t focus on this. Just stop and let it go - you are only hurting yourself.

I’m with you OP.

It’s really fucking weird to go and see your boyfriend of 3 weeks dead dad, when you never met him while he was alive.

What a strange woman with no idea of boundaries.

Except when it says house private which this morning on Clare FM most were. So I don't think strangers going to the house is that common now. Funeral and removal everyone, but house less so now.

He maybe didn't want to go on his own. I didn't go to see my mum at all even with my siblings.

Try to reframe it. This wasn't him introducing her to his family, she was there as support, even if you all feel a bit weird about it, which I definitely understand.

I'm very sorry for your loss. Grief can be difficult, it brings up so many different emotions and it must be all so raw just now. Look after each other. 💐

I'm absolutely dumbfounded by some of these responses. It's fucking insensitive, weird and extremely intrusive to bring a stranger into his family's private space in their most raw and vulnerable moments. On what planet is that acceptable? The funeral I think is a different matter, because they are generally fairly public events, but to bring a random woman he's known for 3 weeks to his mother's home 24 hours after her husband died is batshit insane. I don't even have words for how inappropriate it is that she was taken to view your father's body. I'm so sorry. That's such a violation.

Not one person on here telling you it's absolutely fine and dandy would be happy with entertaining a family member's latest shag in their house 24 hours after their husband or father died. This place is like the Twilight Zone sometimes.

I think it was very odd and insensitive to bring very new girlfriend to both of these occasions so far. It was a very small number of people and going through a very sad time.

I think funeral more acceptable as there will be more people who you and your mum may not be close too. Distant cousins, old colleagues and the like so if it helps your brother I think funeral ok.

I'm sorry but why are you so anti this girlfriend? He obviously knows her well and wants her support and she's kind enough to offer it.
I'm sorry for your loss. Everyone needs support including your brother. Unless the girlfriend has done something horrible to you why not warmly try and make friends. Or if not just be civil and accepting.

Very, very odd behaviour from your brother. This is nothing to do with support.

She can support him without intruding on the rest of the family's grief.

Had one of my DDs brought someone's she was newly dating to my home when my late husband had only just died (they wouldn't), I'd have found it enormously difficult. Trying to keep myself together in front of someone I'd never met before?

I'm astonished that so many posters think this was fine.

I agree with you OP, I think it's awful that he brought her, especially to see your father's body, I think that's appalling. He's known her for 3 weeks and she'd never met any of the family, it's totally inappropriate that this stranger should be intruding on this immensely difficult family time. He can get support from family members, what real support can a 3 week girlfriend give.

I would also deeply question what kind of person she is if she thinks it remotely acceptable to meet a new bf's family when they are in the midst of immediate grief, or if she thought it was fine to view the dead body of someone she'd never met.

If either of my siblings had done something like this when my own father died I would have been livid and I can't imagine what my mother would have thought. At this time most people are randomly crying, trying to sort out the funeral, not up to meeting new people, they would not want a stranger in their midst.

I certainly would not want her at the funeral and I can't imagine why she would think it ok to attend, when everyone else there would have known and be connected with your father.

I can understand that your brother wanted support but it was very weird of the gf to agree. A request to go and visit a dead father after 3 weeks would have me running for the hills.

I work in a catholic area of Belfast. No one would bat an eyelid here and would be totally acceptable.

It can depend on the family concerned - one where a person feels as though they're walking into a lion's den could mean the difference between going and not. Not everybody sees 'Family' as just blood relatives and, as PPs have said, different cultural traditions and expectations can be a significant factor.

Maybe your brother felt he needed her by his side when viewing his father and it was purely about supporting him, assuming no drip feed of she went in by herself.
The other possibility is, this is basically her only chance to "meet" him, and if things work out with your brother long term, its a source of comfort to one or both that she will have seen/been in the same room with him, even if he wasn't aware.
I'm genuinely sad that my fiance never got to meet or see my mum in person, as she passed 10 years before we met, so i guess i can kind of see it from all 3 perspectives.

Bringing a stranger to see family the day after a bereavement is rude and insensitive, as I imagine you weren't able to talk and express yourselves freely, and it put extra stress on you all when you didn't need it...

Having a complete stranger view the body of a person she's never met is just bizarre... but ultimately not harming anyone.

Bringing a new boyfriend or girlfriend to a funeral to support you is fine and normal I would say...

In any case, as others have said, your brother may not be thinking straight in his grief, and none of this is worth starting an argument over.

I think it is highly insensitive to bring her to your mother’s house the day after your father died. If he needs support, surely his family are best placed to help- not someone he has known a couple of weeks. No thought to his mother and siblings feeling at all.
Her boundaries are very off. A sensible woman would have kept away at such a painful time even if he asked her to be there.