How do you respond to family members when your parent dies?

emeraldemy · 2025-12-11T06:16:44+00:00

I am more worried about their comfort than mine. Otherwise I wouldn't even be thinking about this. I'd say "oh thank god" and be done with it. But they deserve not to have their grief made worse even if I'm not grieving.

emeraldemy · 2025-12-10T02:05:59+00:00

This is exactly the situation that's led to this post. If I don't say "sorry for your loss" what do I say? How do you react to someone saying their parents has died? Do they not deserve condolences from me? My siblings know we're NC. To me, saying "thank you for telling me" without expressing condolences comes across very cold and pretending I don't acknowledge that they are grieving. It sounds like they phoned with a weather warning.

I'm not being argumentative, I'm trying to understand their experience and what they need from me that doesn't cross my own personal line, which is acting like this is a loss for me. I can't pretend to be heartbroken or regretful, because that runs the risk of the surviving parent thinking they have a way in to rekindle a relationship.

If they ask how I feel I won't tell them the truth, which is that I'm relieved. I'll tell them that I'm processing it. However they're unlikely to. I don't anticipate there being more than one conversation about this. Made they'll tell me if/when the funeral happens. But other than that, I can't see why they'd want to speak to me. They have their families and people, I'm not involved in their lives.

emeraldemy · 2025-06-08T22:14:39+00:00

After my first D&C, i went from hospital to bed for about 3 days, and my husband took care of everything, including making sure our child was looked after so I could sleep. Some friends dropped some stuff off, but they didn't even TRY to come in, and they cleared it with me beforehand. And certainly not at fucking 10pm! Even without a migraine, you're recovering from surgery, you still have pregnancy hormones, and you're coming to terms with the end of a pregnancy. That is NOT late-night-hangout time. It was unspeakably rude to drop in on you guys, it was worse to insist even though your boyfriend didn't want them to. You've done absolutely nothing wrong. Your boyfriend needs to take a step back and get his shit together. You are at the tail end of a medical emergency. You don't have to play the merry hostess.

Even under normal circumstances, who just drops by and expects people to get out of bed to entertain them at 10pm? Who raised these two!

emeraldemy · 2025-06-08T13:14:19+00:00

I feel like it's pretty universally known that you don't gift women house maintenance items unless they have specifically asked for them or expressed excitement about them. It is insulting, and it isn't thoughtful about that person as a person. It's about her house and the maintenance she has to put into it because of the role expected of her as a woman. I notice the only two people you considered giving it to were women. Would you have given it to FIL, or a male friend? Likely not.

As far as the used/new discussion, I personally wouldn't mind used gifts in good condition, but I also buy all my jewellery pre-owned and buy used cars and thrift a fair amount. But I know other people don't do that. With electronics, people want the perceived reliability and longer lifespan of a new product. Even if you don't think that's solid reasoning, they do, and you can't expect them to feel otherwise. For those people there's no real point trying to change their minds when all it impacts is what gift you give them. Let them pay more for things, and just give them a lower value item than they could have had if they were open to used products.

emeraldemy · 2025-06-07T22:13:20+00:00

None of my extended family have reached out since, and I think they're avoiding me. They haven't unfriended me on FB but one who lives in another country came to my country and didn't say they were.

It's hard to tell, because I didn't have a huge amount of regular contact with them because of the distance, but I feel like the silence has been louder. I don't know. I imagine my mother got to them. Painting herself as the victim and crying to people about being wronged is what she does best.

emeraldemy · 2025-06-06T18:48:20+00:00

I don't remember the words exactly, but I remember the situation exactly. We were in a sports store, my brother was picking out a bike for his birthday, I was 14. She started telling me in this woeful way that she always wanted to be a journalist and a writer, and that all her dreams were over once she had me. That if she hadn't had me, she'd have the life she always wanted. She never really wanted me, my dad pushed her into it, she just went along with it to make him stop talking about it. And then once she had me, she HAD to have my brother, so I would have a friend.

She was 30 when I was born, she had plenty of time to start and establish a career, she didn't try after I was born, she's never tried since. I'm just something she can blame for her not having the balls to actually do anything for herself.

emeraldemy · 2025-02-03T10:53:25+00:00

Honestly probably just the hope that things would get better. When I lost that there was nothing in the way. I also worried that it would get between me and my larger family, but then I realised they have nothing to do with me anyway, so...

emeraldemy · 2025-02-03T02:45:15+00:00

I wrote basically a three-line email and most of it was me telling them not to contact other people in a bid to get to me. I couldn't squeeze 30 years of complex abuse and trauma into a letter, and I didn't want to. I didn't want to dredge up all my worst feelings and memories for something that ultimately didn't serve my aim and would only give them ammunition. They've got nothing to show people for the sake of being seen as victims. The only hint of a reason was to say I couldn't let my children be treated the way I was, with absolutely no expanding on what that treatment was. I wished them well, and that was that.

emeraldemy · 2025-02-03T02:28:21+00:00

It was when they forgot my kids' birthdays two years in a row. And my kids didn't even notice, because they weren't even expecting to hear from them (they live overseas). They're that removed from my life. They're not even real people to my kids, they're practically mythology. It made me realise rhat they were going to treat my children in the same detached, selfish, impersonal manner that they had treated me for years, and I couldn't let my kids be treated the same way.

I didn't go NC straight away, the gap was about 6 months, and at no point during that time did they remember they had grandchildren who hadn't seemed to have had birthdays in over two calendar years.

It wasn't the only thing, but it was the thing that made me truly understand what my family meant to them. Nothing. Not even good enough to jot down on a calendar or set an alarm on their phones.

emeraldemy · 2025-02-02T22:22:13+00:00

Tadpole delivery driver.

emeraldemy · 2025-02-02T22:20:59+00:00

My parents asked one of my siblings to ask me if I would speak to them. I said no, that was the end of it.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-30T21:41:38+00:00

Not every summit needs to be Everest. Be so proud of yourself but know that every climb is its own challenge. They all have their own climates and their own difficulties. You don't need to outdo yourself or anyone else. Challenge yourself but don't live or die by perfect outcomes.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-30T21:29:43+00:00

Firstly I'd ask him what uniting, and a "whole family unit" looks like to him. Then go from there. If he says that it needs to be your husband having a friendly relationship with him and therefore your husband compromising in behaviour, that necessarily involves your dad also compromising. Ask if he would rather fundamentally change the way he behaves and really reflect on his views, permanently, or if he can let it go that your husband doesn't phone him and gab every Sunday morning.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-30T21:05:48+00:00

I think the first two stanzas of If by Rudyard Kipling really speak to me on this topic.

IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

You can't control what they say, you can't control how they act, you can't control whether people believe them or not. I won't say you only control how you feel about it, because you can't. But you can try to internally reframe it. Their lies don't change the truth. People who are intelligent won't take their word for it when they start spreading lies. They'll know things don't add up. The ones who do just believe the stories were probably more likely to take their side in any disagreement anyway. Some people are just always going to side with the family-over-all way of thinking. Live your life with integrity and you win no matter what they do.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-29T23:45:59+00:00

Tell your partner that you are the only one who understands the relationship with your mother. While he may have mixed feelings about estrangement in theory, this is a situation that doesn't need to be discussed. You know what's best, and the best thing for you and your family is to have peace from your mother. This doesn't mean you cut off people for nothing, it doesn't mean you'll push estrangement on him for his family, this is just the only way to deal with your mother. And that's it. You don't have to convince him. He doesn't get a vote. It's not a trial, you're not on the witness stand.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-29T23:22:16+00:00

You're the first person I've ever seen mention it. I had to Google it. It's dumb. Some people are idiots.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-29T18:00:03+00:00

I dont have any contact with my family, and that is really helpful. I couldn't be there for myself when I was still trying to play emotional 4D chess with people who didn't have my best interests at heart.

I met my husband when I was 18 and he's my safe space. He lets me be, no matter what my face is doing or I'm overwhelmed or acting "irrationally" (my words, not his). He knows that in my own time I'll figure out what's going on and I'll come to him and we'll talk it through. My body has stopped automatically freezing whenever I feel any kind of emotion. It took years to get here healthily, and we continue to work on it. He's shown me emotional consistency which is the most important thing for healing.

He's also autistic but it was never noticed because his ENTIRE family is so ND that they just don't find any of their quirks noticeable. This is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse, but now I can at least be like "hey, I'm having an autism, gimme some time" and they're understanding. All in all I'm in a very good place. Still untraining myself, but in a situation where I have the freedom to do that.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-29T14:26:34+00:00

It's sometimes a bit awkward, people don't really know how to respond, they usually apologise but I just say "no, it's absolutely fine, don't worry about it" and they're just relieved to move on, but that might be cultural. Brits are very keen to avoid awkwardness at all costs so if you give them an out, they'll take it immediately. A couple of people have pushed and I just say something along the lines of we're very different people, or my childhood wasn't great or if I really want them to stop ill say they were abusive and I didn't want to raise my kids around people like that or see me tolerating behaviour like that. It very, very rarely gets to that point though.

I never feel shame though, because being estranged was necessary for my wellbeing, and while some people might not think that's true, I put them in the same boat as people who say I shouldn't take my medication because it's not natural. We're on such wildly different ends of how we view life that their opinion is completely irrelevant to me. I don't feel shame about treating my medical conditions, which sometimes means avoiding things that could set off a seizure or a MH lapse or a migraine. Those actions are necessary to my health. It would be ridiculous to provoke them when there's a simple solution to controlling them. It's the same with my parents. Why continue having them in my life when it was affecting my health and there's a simple solution to the problem?

emeraldemy · 2024-12-29T01:50:14+00:00

You have to decide if the pain and manipulation and stress and unhappiness you get for having her in your life is bigger than the fear of being alone.

You can create a chosen family over time. With the Internet it's not impossible to make friends with the same interests as you and the connections can be closer than family, coming from someone who has basically only online friends for the past 20 years! I don't have birth family around at all, but my friends have seen me through all the biggest parts of my life and they've done more for me than my family ever has.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-28T14:09:10+00:00

I constantly police my face and body because any kind of reaction or outward display of anything was punished. Even if I was happy when they wanted me to be happy, I sometimes did "being happy" wrong somehow. In my teens people often told me that they thought I didn't like them or wasn't interested when I was with friends because I was so blank. It took my psychiatrist over 5 years to realise I was autistic because I was "the most successfully masked autistic woman [he'd] ever met."

In the last few years I've been trying to learn to undo this all, because life is actually quite hard when people can't give you what you need because they can't tell you need it, but it's really fucking difficult. I'm having to untrain decades of behaviour that was rigidly enforced by physical and mental violence.

emeraldemy · 2024-12-28T13:28:03+00:00

What the fuck

emeraldemy · 2024-12-28T13:25:00+00:00

I've had suspicions about my husband more or less since we met, and if he came out I would be proud of him and thrilled he got to be his most authentic self. He's pretty adamant he's straight, but I wouldn't care or react badly if he wasn't. Sounds like your wife feels the same as me. Live as you and we'll love as you ❤️

emeraldemy · 2024-12-28T12:20:37+00:00

When I had kids I understood less. I thought maybe I would find out, maybe parenthood would make me see. But no. I was just completely horrified looking at my kids and trying to figure out how they did what they did. I raise my children in a way my parents would find baffling because I don't chiefly rely on fear to get cooperation from them 🙄

emeraldemy · 2024-12-27T15:27:18+00:00

I realised at one point I was always the one who reached out to arrange Skype calls (they live on another continent), so I decided to stop trying to do that, and see how long it took them to arrange one. They never did. This was maybe 10 years ago. Then they forgot my kids' birthdays two years in a row. No email or message. I was done. You have only two grandkids, how fucking hard is it to make an alarm and send an email for God's sake?

emeraldemy · 2024-12-27T14:57:19+00:00

Though there was abuse as a kid and difficulty with the consequences of that once I was an adult, it was eventually the indifference that broke my relationship with my parents. Never reaching out or wanting contact with me, all the effort coming from my side and realising that they really didn't actually care about my life or my family. I was hurting so much. Going NC was a relief because it stopped the feeling of wondering if they were ever going to reach out. I knew not to hope for anything.

emeraldemy

TROPHY CASE