AIBU to send a message to the man who killed my aunt?

[IcyJoMarch]

My aunt (by marriage) died in a car accident a little over two years ago. She was American and lived there, and her American family refused all contact with me and another relative, and contacting the lawyers she had used in a lawsuit also got no response, so the only information I have is the police crash report, which was released a few months later. It’s extremely well-documented, including photographs and a schematic of the details. She was making a U-turn in front of a lorry. The lorry driver is named in the report, as was his company.

I haven’t been obsessed with this, but every so often I remember it and think about how awful he must feel. The report is strictly factual and does not assign blame, but even if he were 100% blameless, he still caused the death of two people (my aunt’s best friend was in the car with her). I honestly think he was in no way to blame because my aunt pulled out in front of him on a road which had little traffic. She was not a bad driver - the report stated she had only one driving-related incident, over twenty years before, when she was a little over the speed limit - but I find it difficult to understand whether she simply misjudged distance or was distracted or….

Really, I am wondering if this was a deliberate suicide attempt on her part. My uncle died in horrible circumstances during the pandemic, and my aunt sued his nursing home for neglect (and won). I visited her several months before her death because I was there for a work conference and she was clearly still deeply unhappy. The only thing that gives me pause is the presence of her best friend, but I still can’t rule it out.

I’m just wondering if it would be appropriate for me to contact the haulage company and ask them to pass on an anonymised message to say that I hope he got the support he needed and that, on my part at least, I don’t blame him. (I’m not sure how to phrase that.)

YABU - there is no need to do this
YANBU - it would be okay for you to do this

I will be travelling for the next several days so if I don’t respond, please know I am reading every response.

I think you probably need to ask yourself why you can't let this go, OP, and why you think she might have been suicidal. Nothing that you have said suggests suicidality to me - grief is a part of every human life and most people survive it. If she did want to commit suicide in a car, a U-turn with a close friend in the car doesn't seem like the most obvious way to do it.

If you think that the driver of the vehicle is traumatised, which I agree is possible, a note from a member of her extended family out of the blue two years on is at least as likely to retraumatise him as it is to reassure.

I wouldn’t call an aunt/niece distant relations

She is a niece by marriage that is very much a distant relative and not a blood relation.

In terms of the OP thinking she has the authority to 'forgive' the lorry driver over her aunt's blood relatives, she is.

Personally, I don’t think my aunts who are married to my parents brothers are any less of an aunt than my parents sisters are.

Agreed.

And why would she "commit suicide" with her best friend in the car...

You clearly arent close with your cousins given their response and if i had to speculate they dont want you feeding on their grief and making it about you.
Their mother died.

And it was 2 years ago

Please leave it alone...
you come across very strangely here (I cant think of a piliter way to phrase it) and you'd be very selfish and self absorbed to do anything else other than leave it alone.

No don’t be a weirdo. Leave them alone.

Did you not got to the funeral?

there’s no point trying to be in contact with her family who don’t want to know you. This is also not ok to fixate on.

To get over it and deal with the grief either fly over and visit her grave or have your own celebration of life for her. A special meal, memories (if you do it alone write them down), favourite songs and so on and then go and enjoy a beautiful sunset somewhere.

She would want you to be happy and not worrying about this.

If I was in the lorry driver's place I wouldn't be happy if my employer passed on any contact from a complete stranger who didn't even live in the same country and a long time after the event.

I'd be thinking that this person was a bit of a fruitcake.

You might if you were unfortunate enough to be in the same circumstance as the deceased's sisters.

They clearly don't want the OP inserting herself into this and with every post, I can completely see why.

You said'know that I am reading every response' , but if you can keep reading them, why not reply?
Anyway, don't contact this man, it is a really bad idea!

Kindly, I think this is a terrible idea. Please leave it be and seek other outlets for your grief.

Do not attempt to contact the lorry driver. A close friend had a similar experience (though that was a definite suicide). The contact ent him spiralling and he took months to recover.

I think you need counselling to process your feelings rather to force contact with either the family or the lorry driver.

No. No, no, no, no.
Because you’re not really doing this for him, are you? You’re doing it for you. For all you know he’s had months of therapy to get over it and the last thing he needs is some distant family member dragging it all up again, and it sounds like like you’ve already done that for your aunt’s immediate family and they didn’t like it. Why would they?
You're desire to mollify your own feelings, using others more closely involved for whom this may still be quite raw, and two years after the incident, is rather selfish.

Yes I agree. If this is an aunt the OP has grown up with, and not someone who has say married her uncle in much later life, I think the 'by marriage' point is completely irrelevant. My brother's wife is very much a close family member of my son - his aunty, mother of his cousins, who he sees and stays with regularly. If I ever died, she's down to become his parent!

That's somewhat separate from the question of whether the OP should contact this man, but to make out the OP is some distant relative and that the only relationship she has is with her blood uncle is really weird IMO.

While I understand the impulse, I don't think this is a good idea. It's been two years and hopefully the poor man has managed to come to terms with a horrific traumatic incident and move on with his life somewhat. You could very possibly be dredging it up for him again and causing upset.

As for her close family rebuffing your attempts at contact, I imagine they were severely traumatised by the sudden and shocking loss of your aunt and unable to respond as you would have wished.

I think the best thing you can do is remember your aunt in the best way, through all your good memories. And let sleeping dogs lie - you're unlikely to be helping the man through contacting him after all this time.

I agree with this.

@IcyJoMarch I think you have gone down a rabbit hole and need to pull yourself out now.

As mentioned; you are a distant relative, this happened over 2 years ago and the people who are on the ground in the US have declined to have contact with you.

So many things could have happened that you are not aware of.

You really need to leave this alone because at best you will upset people, at worst you will look like a weird drama-llama, interfering, attention-seeking weirdo.

I am sorry for your loss.

No it is entirely inappropriate, it is not your place to do so. To be honest I think you have overstepped the mark by obtaining the accident report.

We don’t know how close or distant the relationship was, though — only that the aunt was American and lived there, and that the OP visited her a few months before the accident when she was in the US for work. Presumably she’d lived there longterm if her husband, the OP’s uncle, had died in a nursing home there over COVID.

It seems odder to me that she wasn’t more upset about the difficult-sounding death of her uncle — but maybe it’s displaced grief? It is presumably the lawyers her aunt had used for her successful lawsuit against her husband’s nursing home that the OP contacted, but it’s very unclear why, or what she wanted from them?

I think you need to seek counselling to deal with your feelings over this incident. I can understand that it was a sudden and violent death in circumstances that are hard to explain, and that her relatives have chosen not to include you in their family grieving. But I think you're seeking closure on it or to understand it further, and contacting the other driver is unlikely to give you that and may be deeply upsetting for a man who is trying to move on with his life.

I had a relative - similar degree, though by blood - who was injured in a road traffic accident to the extent that they had to spend the rest of their life in a high-dependency nursing home, and the injuries eventually contributed to their death. It was a genuine accident though the circumstances remain unclear (the relative was a pedestrian, and it's unclear why they seemed to double back when crossing a road, which put them in the path of the car). The driver stopped, wasn't drinking etc. We've never had any dialogue with them as a family, because that wouldn't be appropriate. I do think about them from time to time, and I hope they have been able to process their own traumatic experience, which is separate from the trauma my relative and family experienced. They won't be able to tell me anything, I have nothing to forgive them for because it was an accident, and we all needed to process our own experiences as best we could.

Just no. No good will come out of it.

Really, I am wondering if this was a deliberate suicide attempt on her part.

Highly unlikely. People who decide to take other people with them are in an extreme minority. It's weird to me that this is something that would even cross your mind as a possibility unless there is some backstory about your aunt-by-marriage being unpardonably selfish as a rule.

Anyway, don't try to contact the man. You don't know the full circumstances and it's not your place as a distant relative living leagues away to exonerate a complete stranger. At the very least, this could bring up traumatic memories for him - he is the one living with this everyday.

Find a way to make peace with the fact that she is gone and the information you do have.

I'm wondering if the deceased's family have got wind that the OP thinks their sister deliberately killed her best friend.

And that this is why they've gone NC with her.

I am really confused about how people are defining the distance between OP and her Aunt. She clearly loved her Aunt very much. Her place in the family tree, and where they lived when she died, doesn't really matter if they were close emotionally in life does it? The idea of 'rings of grief' seems very rooted in a nuclear family with rules around who is allowed to feel what, but life and emotions are more complicated than a diagram

All this to say OP it is clear you are grieving your Aunt and I am sorry for your loss. I can see how doing this might bring you some closure, but the effect it could have on the man involved in the accident is unpredictable. Let's say he gets in touch and tells you he has had no support. Are you going to be the talking therapy he needs? Are you going to pay for him to access it? There is a huge risk you re-open this all and leave him undone with no way to do himself back up. I would focus on ways to help yourself find closure. Maybe have a little personal memorial just for you in a place you enjoyed with your Aunt, say everything that was unsaid, and celebrate her life.

I think you need to let this go. Contacting this man will only bring back the incident for him. For all you know he could have needed extensive therapy. It's 2 years down the road, and not appropriate to start digging up painful memories.

I understand your need for answers, and closure but you're going to need to accept you may never find out the truth.