Is this a normal grief reaction?

[Baffledcousin]

My uncle died, aged 81, in April. He had been a widower for many years and had a very close relationship with his daughter, his only child. They lived a couple of streets apart, saw each other every day, did their weekly supermarket shops together etc.

Uncle had three serious health issues in his 70s (cancer, blood clot in his leg, heart bypass) and bounced back each time. He was in excellent health when he turned 80.

Unfortunately a few months later he fell, put out his hand to save himself and broke his arm badly. Scans showed osteoporosis. It did heal, but he didn't have the strength in it, or the movement, he'd had before. His daughter started visiting every morning before work as well as seeing him in the evening and a carer came midday. He then became very ill very quickly and was admitted to hospital, but fortunately it was a UTI which was cleared up with antibiotics, and he got back home. The carers started visiting twice a day.

He was in remission from the previous cancer, but had regular check ups, and it was found that the cancer had returned. And then he took ill again, was admitted to hospital, diagnosed with pneumonia and died in hospital a few days later.

His daughter is convinced that he'd have recovered from the pneumonia if the hospital had treated him "properly." She has tried to get other family members to say that he was in good health prior to the last admission to hospital. No-one will say that - various cousins visited him in the last few months and we all thought he was becoming very frail. She is wanting to pursue a case against the hospital, but no-one in the family agrees with her. She's been saying stuff like "Pneumonia isn't serious - people don't die of pneumonia" when, obviously, they do, especially when they have underlying health issues such as cancer.

She has been abusive towards family members who won't back her up; angry phone calls, abusive texts. It's impossible to communicate with her. For instance I sent her a message on Father's Day saying I knew that it would be a difficult day for her, and I was thinking about her and she replied "Fuck Off! How dare you suggest I only miss Dad on special days. I miss him every day". She's describing family members who are doing things such as going on holiday, or celebrating birthdays, as insensitive and despicable, and tells us that she doesn't want to speak to any of us unless we agree that her father was in good health up to the point he was admitted to hospital, and that she should take matters further.

Is this a normal reaction? How do we react?

She has talked to the medical staff, and she's had an exchange of letters. She's claiming they are lying to cover up mistakes. She needs other family members who visited him in hospital to confirm her version, but we are all refusing to do so.

Does her version of events differ from yours or are you not able to recall the details she recalls.
She will have been in so deep during his care and will find it hard to understand that you didn't see what she saw or thought she saw.
Not criticism of you btw.
Has she had his medical notes and had someone walk her through them - as next of kin she might be entitled?

She could try the PHSO - should be able to find web address via google. I think she might need to go via her MP. They are used to it so shouldn't be too tricky.

It's only been a couple a months so it will be very raw considering they had an everyday relationship. Do you live close by? Could you invite her around to experience 'normal' life - especially if you have DC (who are naturally life affirming and forward looking)? Maybe point her toward online bereavement groups that will understand her feelings. I really don't think that now is the right time to tell her that her response is not acceptable even though she might be going about it wrong.

Also a degree and a good job are no 'innoculation' against grief and grief is not a mental health condition. Loss of parents happens to us all. RL family and friends help us deal with grief.

From what you've written it doesn't sound like an 'abnormal' death IMO. As PPs have said, pneumonia in cases like this is very common and a common cause of death.

Is there some way you could bullet point the facts for her, the care you know he received and the fact that death from pneumonia in this sort of case is common, and leave that with her, as some way of saying 'this is how it is, let's leave it there' ?

Could you say 'because of the facts, I won't engage in your endeavours, but I'm here for you while you come to terms with the loss'?

strikealight, it's a mixture of the two.

In her version, her father was in good health, then something went badly wrong in hospital. In our version, her father's health was declining. I have a sister in another time zone, and I e-mail her regularly. So I can see comments I wrote in Feb / March / April about visiting him and thinking that he was in a bad way. DH and I had already discussed how much to tell the kids, and when to tell them, as we expected this to be their first experience of the death of a relative.

Another cousin travelled 300 miles to see him 6 weeks before he died, because she thought that time was running out for her to visit. And when she visited, she said that she was glad she'd made the effort because he seemed so frail.

On the day he was admitted, she phoned for advice, a paramedic came to check him over and the paramedic called the ambulance. In her version, she just needed advice, and if they'd left him at home, she would have nursed him to recovery. But instead they took him to hospital and mistreated him, resulting in his death. I wasn't there, but my gut feeling is that paramedics don't call ambulances for no reason. But she is the only one who knows what happened at that point.

She says that the figures in his notes, about oxygen levels, are wrong - she remembers different levels. She thinks someone has written in false levels to cover up a mistake. I have no idea about this - I paid no attention to any figures, and I don't think that any other family member did either.

At one point she was suggesting a Harold Shipman scenario of surreptitious murder, but she now thinks carelessness or accident.

So it's a mixture of different versions and not recalling the details.

If you want to help your cousin, and you have the time/energy/inclination, I would screen shot and make a timeline of the events and state your uncle was in and give it to her. Help her see the actual picture, not the one she has in her head.

Although her behaviour must be very frustrating for you all, I think you will feel better if you present her with facts to help her see. And hopefully with time, it will help her come to terms. It must be awful right now to be her, looking back and feeling like something could have been done to save him.

If nothing could have been done, it will eventually be a relief for her to know that. It might take a while, but facts will help.

She might be feeling immense guilt at the moment, thinking she should have intervened or pushed harder for better care. She needs to understand that it is nobody's fault.

OnceMoreIntoTheBleach
She might be feeling immense guilt at the moment, thinking she should have intervened or pushed harder for better care

She's feeling guilty that she allowed a paramedic to decide that her father needed to go into hospital. She thinks if she'd fought to keep him at home and nursed him herself, he would have pulled through and still be alive today.

I've seen reactions like this following bereavement. I'm a NHS manager. Inevitably when you talk to the angry people and listen to them you hear guilt coming from them. It's misplaced of course and they have usually fought very hard for their relatives but will still say they should have done x or y. In your case I wonder if the daughter feels she didn't fight hard enough to keep him at home. Perhaps at some level she knows he would still have died but it might have been in his own bed. Perhaps she believes she condemned him by not fighting to keep him at home.
Either she will come to terms with that and realise that it was as it was and it's nobody's fault or she will stay angry. I don't think you can help either way but you are totally right not to feed her anger by agreeing with her. You and the other family members refusal to go along with her complaint is the best thing you could do.

X posted - I see I was right about the guilt. Poor woman

The PHSO - Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman- is a route for her if she wants to get this out of her system. She will have had to have exhausted the local complaints service at the Trust first.
Not saying she has a case but she thinks she does.
When you are up close with a dying relative in can be hard to see their decline. Not until something causes an irreversible dip. My mum sermed bright eyed and sharp right up to the end. If I hadn't been so "sanguine" about the whole thing (been through it with Dad), I would've thought there was a way out back to some kind of normal.
And yes, the guilt is very powerful and distorting.

Northern Lurker, that's very helpful. Uncle had been shown round a hospice after his cancer had returned and had said he would die there. So he definitely hadn't expressed any desire to die in his own bed, quite the opposite. But going into the hospice was still well in the future, mid/late 2018, possibly early 2019 at a stretch. We hadn't realised that cousin expected him to beat the cancer a second time until after he died.

strikealight, she has been talking about an ombudsman, so it's helpful to know who this is, thank you.

For sure if he had pneumonia, she couldn't have nursed him through it at home. He needed IV antibiotics.l, therefore hospital. No option there, so she shouldn't be feeling guilty there, there was no choice.

She has unfriended me on FB. If she wants to go No Contact with me, I'm not going to try to change her mind, so I guess that's it for the foreseeable future.

Oh dear, I was hoping for a more positive update. Your reaction is a very measured response to a tough situation.

Sorry about this. Sorry for all of you. She's got a tough road ahead and needs people who love her. She's shut the door on you. Hope you can open it if she comes around.

I posted this 3 months ago. Nothing has changed. I'm still unfriended on FB. We haven't seen each other. There have been a couple of rather stilted phone calls, but basically unless we support her complaint against the hospital, she doesn't want contact. She's still saying the hospital "murdered" her father. She's been through PALS and is now at the Ombudsman stage.

Apparently her colleagues at work are appalled at our behaviour and don't understand how we can treat her so badly. No idea what she's been saying about us.

Part of me thinks that it's no skin off my nose if she cuts contact, as I have plenty of other family members, but part of me worries she'll end up as one of those people who die alone and their body isn't found for days. I'd really like to know that her friends are rallying round, but I don't know if she's got many friends. Almost everyone at the funeral was family or a neighbour of her fathers.

It might be that she's actually ok, has supportive friends, colleagues etc. None of her friends saw her father in the last month, so she won't be pressuring them to say that he was in good health prior to going into hospital.

Should I try to keep in contact? Or back off completely and just send Christmas and birthday cards?

I would keep the lines of communication open: birthday, Christmas cards including your address and phone number.
Tell her that you are concerned and, if it is the case, that you are there if she needs you.
I'm sure that others have said this already but it does sound a lot like a complicated grief which will take a long time to resolve.
Best wishes

I would be keeping very limited contact for now and letting her know that I can't do what she asks as it wasn't what I saw and would be lying to say otherwise.

I think it's very unlikely that she will get the result she is looking for and when she can no longer project her anger and guilt at the NHS, she may look for someone else to direct it at, keep yourself out of the firing line.

It is, of course, very sad and I do hope she finds some peace, sometimes grief can be so destructive.