I am posting this because I need an outside perspective.
My grandma has always been into men that are a significantly older than her. My grandpa has been about twice her age when they met and though he lived into his early 90s, he died 13 years ago leaving her as a widow in her early 70s.
She then reconnected with someone from her youth and after he was also widowed they became a couple in 2017. Her partner who I will call Bill was a great person, kind, friendly… and 14 years older than grandma, but he was the one that got away so we all shut up.
COVID hit and they went mole mode even after the pandemic. You were not even allowed to visit if you had as much as a sniffle.
Bill died mid december at the ripe age of 98 from something that is normal to die from at that very old age. Honestly I did not have a close relationship with Bill. I liked him, but he was not family to me because we hardly ever met since 2020 and when I’ve been over, he has not been in conversations for about 3 years, only sat there and listened or took a nap.
My grandma is reasonably sad and we try to be here for her. Unfortunately she is the type of person who lashes out when sad.
I visited her the other day and chatted and all and somehow she asked me why I did not seem to be grieving at all and how terrible I am since he was sort of a grandfather to me. I tried to evade I tried to change the topic and talk about how I am generally not the person to display big feelings in public but she nailed me down and in the end I had to admit that surely it is a pity he has died, but 98 is very old age, his health was declining for months and while I liked him, he did not feel like a grandfather to me. I tried to be as kind and careful as you can be with such a statement. I have seen him maybe 10 times since 2020 and he has never integrated into our family.
That is when she exploded in my face calling me all sorts of terrible things and asking me how I could be so cruel because I even CALL my maternal grandmas partner grandpa. I tried to explain the difference (I never knew my maternal grandpa, he has been with grandma for 25 years – so most of my life, he is at every family event, he really FEELS like my grandpa so I asked years ago if I could call him grandpa since he felt like it and he happily agreed) but she was having none of it.
Generally I am not one to lie about this stuff. I think feelings should be communicated clearly and honestly and I would also never claim to be close to Bill as a grandchild when he has REAL grandchildren (who grandma does not like) and I am sure he did not consider me his granddaugther. So it would not have been stretching the truth or anything, it would have been a lie.
But in the last days I have been thinking if I should have lied because she is grieving and I have been feeling terrible for upsetting her futher.
So AITA for telling her kindly but truthfully that I am not as sad because I did not consider him a grandparental figure?
NTA – you are allowed to feel however you want – and it’s not because of his age, but the fact, you weren’t close to him.
NTA. That’s usually the problem with old people, just because they’re older they immediately assume they are right or that they take precedence. Personally, I’m about mutual respect regardless of age and not scared of going toe to toe with anyone even family if I know they’re being unreasonable. You were honest, that’s it. Good for you. What’s the worst thing she can do? Cut you off. She’s not gonna live that long to spite you.
You didn’t have to be sad about him but you could have been a little more sad for her. You didn’t have much of a relationship with him but you could have focused on the loss this has been for her.
Either way, you didn’t deserve to be yelled at for being honest about your feelings, but there’s a time and a place for that much factual truth and when comforting a grieving widow — that’s not the time.
Soft YTA.
Lol yeah, just fake some sadness to make her feel better
NTA – But you handled it poorly. Grieving people tend to be somewhat irrational. And they’re allowed. It’s a really tough space to be in.
I knew a grief counselor once who said there are some things we should never say to people who are grieving. Never imply that the person who died wasn’t important (aka they were old, you didn’t really know him that well, etc). Never imply that the deceased may be better off because they’re no longer suffering. Even if you’ve heard the grieving person say this themselves like 5 minutes earlier. They can say it, you can’t. When they say things like that, they’re trying to soothe themselves. When someone else says it, it’s hurtful. It belittles their pain.
In your grandmother’s case, you probably should have just told her that you were sorry, that you don’t tend to show emotion outwardly, and left it at that. Not let her push you into something that you’re both now regretting.
Give her time to heal and then talk to her again. But stay away from things like, he was old and he was sick. Just tell her that you know she loved him and how much he meant to her, and you’re sorry for her loss.
I tried to leave it at “You know I am not someone to be very open with emotions.”
I tried hard to change the topic I tried to not answer. Tried to repeat that I cared for him. I tried to not answer to a degree In felt rude.
But she kept pushing. She kept asking why I was so calm when I openly cried at my grandpas funeral.
Retrospectively I should have just refused to answer and let her be mad at my rudeness.
She wanted to yell at someone. That’s what’s happening if you insist on prying into someone’s deepest feelings about someone they met only a few times. She knew you felt differently about him than she did and she needed to punish someone because it’s easier to feel angry than sad for a moment. NTA
You were in a no-win situation. Your grandma knew and understood that you were closer to your maternal grandmother’s partner than to Bill. She wishes it was different, but she’s not going to blame her dead husband for not “engaging.”
So she’s blaming you. She thinks, if you loved *her* as much as your other grandma, you would have made more of an effort these last 14 years to make Bill your “grandpa.” Fake tears and lies were not going to convince her otherwise. She wanted to have a fit, and she had it.
All that said, I’m not going to call her an AH for how she is grieving. NAH.
Worse than 14 years, they became a couple in 2017, so more like 8 years. And considering the comments about how they’ve been since Covid, there might have only been 2, maybe 3 years where they would have properly and regularly spent time together.
NTA when someone creates their own issue by picking a fight with you and refusing to drop it, if they feel sad about the result that is on them. You tried to evade her because you’re not a liar, did the best you could, and then when she pushed the issue even further you told her the truth “I barely knew the man and he died at an incredibly old age. I’m sorry he died but I’m not crushingly sad because there’s no reason for me to be”
Absolutely NTA. Your grandmother may be dealing with her own grief by lashing out at you, but you are/were in no way obligated to feel any remorse whatsoever. As you say, you had little to no connection or relationship. You were being polite and gracious to your grandmother, but you can’t feel what you don’t feel.
A similar thing happened to my mother after my father passed away. She ended up in a relationship with friend they had known for 40 years—the husband of a couple who my parents played cards with when we were kids.
When he passed away, we barely acknowledged it. And my mother understood. It was never an issue.
NTA. You don’t have to create feelings that don’t exist. It seems strange to have to mourn someone that you don’t feel close with. Additionally, the older people are (98 is a nice old age!!) the more it is truly a celebration rather than a mourning. You can mourn for your grandmother’s loss, because it is sad, however, he lived a long life, and while a loss is a loss, you weren’t close. It is okay to not falsify feelings. Additionally, if you were an adult when they started dating, or even mid-late teens, you wouldn’t really have thought of him like a grandparent.
NTA – and dealing with old (belligerent mean cruel) people you care about is VERY difficult. They can back you into a corner like no one else! BUT just because they are old doesn’t give them a right to be cruel, just because they are old doesn’t mean they don’t know EXACTLY what they are doing, just because they are old does not mean you shouldn’t be able to advocate for yourself & set boundaries!!! My grandma is lovely (90% of the time) and I love her dearly, as does my father, but my father has always been the first to say to me, ‘she will eat you alive if she can, the more you do, the more you help, the more you visit, she will only expect more & be belligerent when you don’t, they have little to focus on and want others to be totally engulfed in their life!’
NTA, and also, a huge part of grief is not just how much a person means to you, but how much the loss upends your life/routine, and how involved you are as the person is declining/nearing the end. If you’ve only seen him a handful of times in the last few years, then both of these are close to zero, so it makes sense you would feel a bit of sadness but not intense grief.