FYI - Here is the letter I have just posted.
I am writing you this letter as I feel that there are things that you said to me that are still not acceptable. You may have expressed some regret to my Mum on the phone, but nothing has come from you direct which is astonishing.
You have absolutely no idea of my relationship with Hilda, my Grandma. You think you do, based on misguided assumption and ill judged presumption.
You have no idea when I visited her. I wrote in my own notebook to communicate with her when I visited. One of the nurses at X told me you always made a point of demanding to know who had been, as did one of the nurses at X Hospital who asked me ?why is that woman always so rude?? X always warned me to watch your motives and you could turn at any moment and how true that was on the night of our phone call.
What Dad and I shared with her can never ever be known by you, you were no where to be seen for the last 15 years of his life. What you think you know is totally wrong and does not even scratch the surface. I am not even going to justify your comments with a response; they don?t warrant it. I am her grand daughter, not her child and it would do you good to remember that.
Do you think it was easy for me to see her after what she told me about x? (She told me my grandad use to get into bed with me and she told him to stop, I have no recolection of it, but still horrible to be told) She told me twice once at the temporary home in X and once when she was in X. It wasn?t easy, but I went anyway.
I think you have extreme double standards. Have you been on the phone to X telling him what for, like you did to me? Or any of the other 8 grandchildren that never saw her in the last few years of her life, let alone months. Why did you talk to X, like all was well? Total hypocrisy.
A relationship between two people is not based on the last few months of life, but over a lifetime. We were family, you were a friend. And for you to say ?this would not happen in my family? as if you family and your family alone are holier than thou and set the standard for all families if quite frankly nasty.
I, unlike everyone else, never fell out with Hilda, especially not for years over something as pathetic as a tree. I kept in touch with letters, cards, photos, took her out for lunch at John Lewis and at home, to X X. X went several times to her house to help and we both took her shopping and bought her food. They also came to stay with us in London a few times.
Unlike you, we did not feel the need to make and song and dance about it, like we were the only ones who cared. To disregard our relationship as something not right and inferior is a disgraceful and disgusting insult.
She categorically said to me X was her one and only favourite child, from the day he was born and was the only one who ever did anything for her or meant anything to her. He would have been totally horrified by the way you have treated me.
She used to say that you dressed like mutton dressed as lamb and X talked a load of nonsense like a big head. She liked to say a lot of things about a lot of people.
You think you were the only one that knew X, but as I have said before, this was as a friend not as a member of the family and that is where the level understanding, knowledge, love and truth is vastly different and that you cannot ever touch.
You were a friend not a family member. You helped her in a number of ways for which I have expressed my thanks. You chose to do it, because you say you wanted to and wanted no thanks for it. However, this does not give you the right to treat me in this way.
Instead of mumbling in the corner of the pub about the fact we sent no flowers to the funeral, why didn?t you come and ask me what we did instead? No I didn?t think so, much better to be nasty and wrongly presume.
It is unacceptable that you spoke to me in that way. I feel very sorry for you that you behaved in that way and I don?t know many people who would. The fact you don?t even have the decency to pick up the phone and apologise speaks volumes.