To abide by my mother's wishes and not let my sister know when she has died?

[Bonjelica]

Half-sister has been estranged for nearly 10 years. She has MH issues, had a breakdown and started accusing my parents of doing awful things to her when she was a child. She insinuated my father (her stepfather) sexually abused her. This was a lie and is unforgivable. My mother took the painful decision to have no further contact with her and therefore her children because of this and has suffered greatly for not knowing how her grandchildren are.
Since then she has posted occasional nasty messages on Facebook but we have not heard anything else from her.

Mum is now 75 and has been in ill health for the last year. She has stated clearly that she does not want my sister to know when she dies, to be invited to the funeral, or to know where she is buried.

This doesn't sit right with me but I have to honour her wishes don't I? Despite being extremely angry with my sister (still), I think she at least deserves to be told when she passes.

Any advice on how to handle this would be appreciated.

Boney, have you read my posts, if so I do not understand your last paragraph.

I was addressing Ripple.

And I never said OP's father had definitely abused her sister, because I don't know that he definitely did.

I said I believe her sister, which I do.

Anotheroneofthese

"Therefore, whether the allegations are true or not, the OP and her sister should respect the mother's dying wishes."

I have put in bold where you say that the OP's sister should respect the mother's dying wish.

I don't understand this for two reasons
1/ the OP's sister is unaware of her NC mother's health.
and
2/ They have been NC for 10 years (at her mother's insistence) so why should the OP's sister care what her NC mother wants?

Boney, I've made it clear that the OP's sister is unlikely to care. I think I've said this in mant of my posts. This bit you have highlighted was in response to those who say the mother is impacting on the relationship between the two sisters, implying that the sister may want to know and may ask/insist thereby leading to tensions between the two sisters. Hence why I say that the two should respect the mother's wishes. If the OP explains to her sister what the mother wants, the OP's sister should not press the issue. However, I doubt such a situation would arise because, as I have said several times begone, the OP's sister is unlikely to care.

If your mum doesn't want them at the funeral then please respect that.

I've had to deal with 2 funerals where:

1. when my mum was dying she requested to all her children she didn't want flowers at her funeral as she said flowers were for the living not the dying and promise not the waste our money. So what did the siblings do? (who didn't help my sister and I with planning or paying for her funeral, even though we begged them to get involved). They got the biggest fuck off flower displays ever and told everyone about them pointing them out. They were the ONLY people who did that, everyone else obeyed my mums wishes and donated money to her fav charities.

2. dying close relative didn't want another relative (let's call them the tit bitch) at their funeral due to some pretty horrific things that tit bitch had said and done to her family in the past. she told all her family about this. So when she died her twat of a brother (who hadn't seen her in over 4 years and didn't help her family organise the funeral) invited that arsehole tit bitch to the funeral even though they had been told not to. I had to deal with telling the tit bitch to fuck off at the wake afterwards because she was laughing and telling ppl she was glad she was dead etc etc.

A funeral is NOT about the living. It is about the person who has died.

If someone Is dying and doesn't want someone there at THEIR funeral then don't DONT FUCKING INVITE THEM!!

It's not about the person they don't want there or about you or any one else. It is all about the person who died.

Pisses me right off as 9 out of 10 times the funeral ends up about the living and NOT the person who has died.

Anotheroneofthese

I suspect that we are in agreement that the sister need not be told, but for very different reasons.

You have no way of knowing that she wouldn't care

The OP's mother wants to take choice and autonomy away from both the OP and her sister

A funeral is NOT about the living. It is about the person who has died.

Have you not heard the popular saying about funerals being for the living and not the dead. They're for both, in reality.

I totally think funerals are about the living and the dead. Theure a rite of passage and needed by the living as part of the grieving. But they're not for the living to mock and muck it up for the test of the living so tit bitch was well out of order.

However it seema a bit odd this thread is still going given that the OP didnt bother coming back.

We believe you, is surely about supporting those who've been abused, without questioning or probing. Believing and supporting.

Which is why I don't subscribe to it. The fact that most people don't lie doesn' t compensate for those who do in a deliberate attempt to wreck lives or relationships. Of course you say you believe but it's important to be aware that people do lie.

MyOtherProfile

It is an emotive subject with quite a few people in the same or similar positions, So not so odd..

Whilst we should always believe children who disclose abuse (as our starting point) the same should not be true of adults who disclose 'historic' abuse. My own DSis, who has schizophrenia, made, as an adult, lurid and incredible allegations of sexual abuse against her/my father and, later, against myself - there was no truth in any of her allegations. Both my father and myself were forced to go totally NC with DSis, because if we were never in her company she could not make further allegations against us (the last time I was alone in her company, giving her a lift to a job interview, I ended up with her reporting me to the police for violently assaulting her and stealing her money). When my DM was dying she was regularly in touch with DSis, who made the ordeal of losing DM much more traumatic than it ever needed to have been. Mental Illness is a total motherfucker, and no mistake...

@cooliebrown i can very closely relate, my case it was a paranoid schizophrenic. The emotional and financial repercussions of false allegations, no evidence, infact some we could disprove by physical location impossibility, go on for years.

So silly to worry about what a dead person may have thought or wanted - if alive. Because they're dead! If there's one person's opinion you can happily ignore, it's that of a dead person.

My father died 7 years ago and apparently told my mother that he did not want me at his funeral I was told of his death via a phone call from my ex husband who is a good guy and always kept in touch with my parents. I was however invited to bury the ashes....how kind....has put huge barrier up with both my mother and sister now....I didn't even know when the funeral was and where it was taken place....has caused me great hurt can't seem to get over this and feels like I never new my dad really....very sad

My grandmother, who very resentfully raised me after my parents abandoned me as a baby, always hated me (for no reason other than her own mental health issues) and left instructions that I was not to be told that she had died and was not welcome at the funeral if I happened to find out. I was eventually told, gloatingly, by an ex boyfriend six weeks after she was cremated.

At first I was very upset to have it confirmed just how much she had hated and resented me and then I realised that she had WANTED me to feel hurt and ashamed and that hardened my attitude towards her and the rest of my family - to the point that I now have as little as possible to do with any of them, despite their efforts to stay in contact with me. It's just one of those things, I suppose, that you just can't ever really get past even though I am obviously not smarting as much about it now as I was twelve years ago!

OP you said in a post you didn't speak to your sister about the abuse claims. Sounds like you were brain washed into your DMs beliefs rather than listening to your sister and making up your own mind. It may have been easier to do this, but it's not right.
Regarding your DMs wishes, well she's making sure you still don't listen to your sister and keep the idea that DSis is the unhinged one. It may be true but equally it may not be. I know it's not want you came onto discuss but it really sounds like you took the 'easy' path here.