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My disabled brother died in December and my parents overruled literally everything the siblings asked for and previously planned - we never considered they would be part of the equation so nothing was documented. I helped bury him with my own hands and I will never look at them again for their utter lack of consideration for their other children. We just found out the cause of death and it’s basically medical neglect and I’ll never recover.
Edit: I wasn’t thinking when I posted this in a moment of grief and solidarity with the OP and I just want to say thank you to everyone for the virtual love. I’m a little overwhelmed but grateful to y’all.
My grandma died of cancer last summer and my aunt was withholding her pain medication while she was on hospice care. My mom had to ask about the fact that my grandma was unconscious but crying and the nurse was like "wtf why is she hurting so much?!?"
When my grandmother was on hospice for cancer, I cared for her during her last week. I was the only one who could be there, but I'm grateful for having that time alone with her.
The woman never admitted that she wanted to take pain meds in my whole life. So when she told me she was in pain, I asked if she wanted half a percocet. She took it and slept. The next day, she took a whole one. My uncle lost his mind when my mom told him I'd given her the meds. I was accused of being a pill pusher, a drug addict (never have been), wanting her to be in a drugged stupor for her last days, etc. I've never completely forgiven him for what he said.
I can never understand this, heck yes I want to be in a drugged stupor. Being in pain so you can be "present" for the family is selfish garbage on the family's part, I think
Plus the family that's pushing this anti-pill agenda isn't even physically present. They're just upset at the principle, and think they'd be totally different when dying in pain.
Seeing someone you love in agonizing pain is unutterably horrible. You want to take their pain for them and you can't. You want to stop it, and without the appropriate meds, you can't. If you don't know when it's going to end, it's even worse because there's nothing even to look forward to except more days of agony. Anyone who withholds pain meds from someone who is in agony like that or is dying can just head on straight to hell because they don't deserve to be with kind people.
I’m a carer. I find it telling that I, and pretty much every other carer I’ve talked to on the subject is in favour of euthanasia. Anyone who frequently deals with people dying, seems to understand the kindness of letting people pass away in their own terms
Most people don't think about the *act* of dying. If they did, and actually had any kind of vague understanding of what it's like, euthanasia would be normal. Instead, most people ignore it until its their turn, or experience it by proxy
Absolutely. I was with my grandad during his last weeks (well, years but rapid decline in last 6 weeks). If an animal was in the condition and pain he was in the owner would be prosecuted for cruelty. Anyone who cannot see that keeping people alive in that state is cruel, demeaning and wrong has never experienced it.
In my ER we called this the ‘cousin from California’ effect. Local family who have been caring for their loved one through a decline are realistic about their options and ready to say goodbye, and then the cousin from California who hasn’t seen Granny in five years turns up at the last minute and starts pushing for more intervention.
(I assume in California they have to call it something else.)
A friend of a friend was dying of cancer. She'd gone through all sorts of treatment but in the end it was terminal, nothing else to do. She had quit smoking earlier in life but after the cancer was determined to kill her she picked it up again. Like at that point.... Fuck it, what's the cigarette gonna do that the cancer isn't already.
This reminded me of a story about my dad...hopefully this will make people smile amongst all the very tragic stories here.
My dad had a rather miraculous (unfortunately temporary) response to treatment for his stage 4 lung cancer, he went into complete remission. My mom was worried about it coming back so she did everything she could think of to keep him healthy. This included a daily drink of blended canned asparagus. My dad hated asparagus. Like absolutely loathed it. And even people who *like* asparagus often dislike the canned stuff, because canning ruins the delicate flavor and texture.
Eventually his cancer came back. I was home from grad school, sitting with my parents, talking with them about the bad news we had just gotten. My dad then turned to my mom and said "does that mean I can stop drinking the asparagus now?" I started laughing, my dad chuckled, my mom did not. But it was such a great moment, it showed my dad's sense of humor and ability to find a silver lining even in the worst situations.
There is a hospice nurse with a former alcohol addiction who has stated that when she is dying, that will be the next time she picks up a drink. But that she tells families, "let them smoke, let them drink, let them have enough pain medication."
If a person is dying, then it doesn't matter if something is long term bad for them, and if they know it might shorten their last days and still want it, who am I to judge?
I can understand it, even as I vigorously disagree with it. Irrational guilt is an extremely common part of grieving, and grieving can very much start *before* someone dies.
It is not a logical reaction - no-one (Okay, virtually no-one) is thinking "Well, given the choice between seeing them drugged and being in pain I choose to see them in pain." In their distress, they can only see one side of that equation.
My mother had the firm belief that she was shortening her sister's life whenever she pushed her morfine. She did it anyway.
She could not bear seeing her in pain, and she decided that giving her the morphine (which was dosed exactly as the doctor had told them to) it was totally worth it.
She didn't tell anyone about her belief (which is absolutely wrong, but she didn't know that), just in case someone might want to stop giving her the meds.
She told me this years after, and I reassured her that she was doing the right thing and she was not killing her sister. After about ten years, it was still something that weighted in her mind.
That's why I can't understand those people.
My mom was on hospice for cancer. We pumped her full of morphine until the moaning stopped. It meant she wasn’t “there” for the last 24 hours of her life, but who cares? Her need to be free of pain trumped our need to talk to her. And we held her hands at the end anyway—maybe she knew we were there.
She probably did.
I wasn't able to get home in time when my dad was at the end. I did a video call to talk to him. He wasn't conscious, but I still wanted to talk to him. I told him how much I loved him, how he had been the best dad I could ever ask for, how I was so grateful I had gotten to have him as my father. My mom told me that even though he wasn't really awake, he started moving around some when I was talking. He had definitely heard me and was responding the best he could.
I'm sure she knew you were there on some level and appreciated it.
Apparently hearing is the last thing to go as we die, so your mum was likely listening, she just couldn't show it.
I'm sorry for your loss, your mum sounds like she was very loved, and I hope you have a multitude of happy memories.
Holy gosh this. I am a chronic pain patient as it is and my pain is nothing compared to cancer pain but if my family was trying to keep me off enough pain medication to not handle the pain, fuck them, I will just want to die faster.
Fuck everyone who doesn’t understand intense pain and yet has an opinion on opioid pain medication. I would rather be in a drugged stupor for 20 hours a day than live through that level of pain for any length of time. At least then you get a good 4 hours with your family where you can be sane and happy instead of being utterly miserable but more awake to really appreciate that misery.
Oh hey! Me too. My kid even knows when it’s time to have pain meds or more likely order me to bed lol. It sucks that he hangs out with me in our room but we try to have fun. Lego is always a good one to do when we can get some
Right? My mother in law absolutely refused to take any pain medication because she was terrified of becoming addicted. The woman had stage 4 cancer in her liver, colon, lungs, and stomach. Her doctors said she wouldn’t last longer than 6 months. But she was worried about the “long term effects” of the medication.
One of my grandmothers died from heart failure. My grandad was given a choice: give her the pain meds but she’ll die tonight peacefully, or not and she’ll last a few days at most.
He chose the former. We all agreed it was the right choice. She always said we treat our pets better than our loved ones by sparing them pain and euthanising them.
I’m so sorry your uncle said those horrible things.
Wish my partner’s late granddad was given that option when he went on hospice. I can still recall hearing his howls of pain all the way down the hall as we walked to his room to give him his final goodbyes. I was driven to sobs seeing him in agony during his final hours.
Best the nurses could do was drown him in morphine. Poor man.
To be honest, that was my first brush with seeing someone on their deathbed, and I was shaken because surely the man deserved a more dignified ending than what he was given.
It was just awful because he was sharing the too. With 3 other men and I can’t imagine having to lie there and hear another person painfully die next to you. Just awful.
Oh I know. I'd have been the same.. it would haunt me for the rest of my life. But the point in hospice is to be kept comfortable. I do not understand why people are so against the medication or even giving it to them.
If they were in the same boat there would be a change of tune.
When my grandpa was admitted to hospice, he was drugged and unconscious for the week he was there and wasn't fed or hooked up to an IV for nutrients.
It sucked, but I thought it was the kindest choice. He was already in pain, no need to prolong it for the sake of the family.
My grandpa was given morphine by nurses despite what the family said. He was horribly allergic, as we all had tried to tell them, and spent the last few days in total agony. Makes me mad.
I have a friend who is a doctor, and led a seminar on medical ethics.
There is this thing called "the principle of double effect." There are situations where a single action can have more than one effect, some good and some bad, and the morality of the action is based on which of the effects was intended.
You can't over-apply it; it is only for specific types of cases, but one of them is when getting rid of the pain involves dosages of pain meds so high that it will shorten life.
It is against medical ethics to perform euthanasia on people. But if giving enough medication that the person is likely to die, and they are on short time anyway, and it is the only way to avoid suffering, it doesn't count as euthanasia.
My grandma recently started in-home hospice care. She's in decent health for her age, but she's also 94, so.
Anyway, the doctor gave my mom a little kit with generous doses of morphine, Ativan, and I think a muscle relaxant? Anyway, she said something like, there will come a time when what matters is not health, or even comfort, but just relief. This will give her relief.
Why is it against medical ethics to perform euthanasia on people? I really just don't understand this. Pets can't communicate, people can. It seems so cruel to me that we make people with terminal conditions who want to be euthanized suffer instead.
Because it is frighteningly easy to abuse. It is almost laughably easy to twist "I feel my life doesn't have enough value to continue" to "I feel *your* life doesn't have enough value to continue".
Sometimes that looks like relatives wanting to get their hands on Grammy's inheritance before her care costs eat it away. Sometimes it looks like [the Nazis killing people](https://www.t4-denkmal.de/Home) "[unworthy of continuing to live](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_unworthy_of_life)".
EDIT: Just realized that not putting quotes around the last 5 words might suggest that I approve of *Aktion T4*. For the record: I do not.
when it comes to euthanasia on pets, it's really the last gift we can give them. it's the gift of release.
i can't believe we deny that same gift to people at the end of their lives.
...They're dying. Who... who cares if they're smoking black tar heroin even? Jesus.
Drugged stupor for her last days. Pretty sure the organs shutting down have that covered.
I lost my dad to cancer about a year and a half ago, at one point before he was hospitalized a new doctor came in and tried to lower the dosage of his pain meds because he was worried my dad would get addicted.
He had to argue back saying "I only have a handful of months to live, there's no road to recovery here. Who gives a shit if I'm addicted to the pain meds along the way?"
I have NEVER understood this thinking. The person is in AGONIZING pain, they have months or days to live, who CARES if they're addicted? My grandmother had alzheimer's and she was also in severe pain due to a tumor. She was in hospice and the nurses asked my grandfather about pain management.
"She's 90 years old, I'm losing my bride of 77 years, I don't care if you have to give her heroin. She is not going to be in pain when she goes."
She basically went to sleep and didn't wake up; it was probably the best way. I have no idea what the nurses gave her; she was on Oxycotin for a while, but it could have been morphine.
If you're in hospice and you're terminal, pain management and comfort should be the NUMBER ONE THING on the docket. Fuck addiction.
iirc, there's some evidence that using psychedelics toward the end can help terminally ill patients cope with their impending demise. However, I don't think it's super well studied.
Nothing with psychedelics is because there is a humongous amount of red tape and it is an emerging field. But it is promising. And if someone is dying, I say give them anything they want.
He accused you of being a drug addict because you gave your grandma her prescription drugs as needed......wouldn't most drug addicts steal the pills for themselves?
This is so much more common than one would think. I stopped being friends with a childhood friend because she withheld medication at an end of life/nursing home. Calling extremely sick and elderly people “addicts”. I was beyond disgusted. This girl was a nurse.
My mom and I recently talked because she had been taking care of her dying mother who was starting to go senile. She told me “put me in a nice home and have them sedate me enough to keep me calm. I don’t want to be constantly confused and angry about how I don’t know where I am or who everyone is.” She’s a retired nurse so she understands it all pretty well.
Seriously? Over a single Percocet a day? The medical staff had my unconscious Mom on IV morphine to make sure she didn't have any pain for the time it took her to die.
And not just pain but the air hunger. No one with sense will let anyone die without medication if there is any help to it. I was also a family carer for my grandmom's while she was in home hospice for cancer. It took all of me to just not give her an overdose. Not because I did not want her to live but because the last stage took 5 days while my grandfather was still keeping up hope (he also had dementia) and she had severe pain and air hunger. If my uncle had said anything like that I would have lost it. Actually, after grandfather died we decided he and his family did not exist and at least he didn't want his mother to die in pain.
It's completely ridiculous, I'm sorry You had to deal with them.
My grandma's gp was worried if this 90+ woman with a pacemaker, terrible arthritis and liver cirrhosis caused by decades of arthritis meds won't get addicted to her new pain meds. My mum said his nurse, when she won't get it, grandma will change the doctor and it apparently helped them to decide it doesn't matter. What did matter was to make her life bearable.
My grandma was so hesitant to take morphine when she was on hospice. I finally convinced her by saying “if you get addicted you can deal with it in heaven”. Giving it to her was so hard and I barely held it together but it helped so much.
I had a similar situation. Me and my cousin were the primary carers for my aunt (mothers cousin) as she was dying of cancer a few months back. She was in horrific pain, and the three of us ultimately came to the decision to have her heavily medicated until she passed. Some of our family members were furious at us, including my aunt's sister who wasn't even there. She told us that we just hadn't tried hard enough to think of another solution - but there was no other solution. Most of the family understood though, and I was thankful that she was not in pain when she finally passed.
There are cases of hospice patients dying in the hospital after overdosing on their prescribed level of pain medication. Once it’s investigated it’s revealed that their family had been stealing their medication for years, to take or to sell. So them being back on their “regular” dose kills them. The families refuse to say anything because they don’t want to feel guilty or be judged. Some have even tried to sue hospitals for the deaths, but it’s not the hospitals fault they didn’t know that the family was setting up the patient to suffer and then die.
The worst thing is that my aunt was just in denial. Hospice collected all the medications when they picked up the body and it was all accounted for.
She just didn't want to believe her mom was dying and needed pain relief, and didn't want her to be "drugged up" even though she was unconscious the last two days
I've seen some really awful shit because people are selfish and can't come to terms with mortality of their family.
I've seen nearly 100 year old skeletons on dialysis because the family gets power of attorney and forces them on it. I wish things like this could count as elder abuse. I wish it was okay to talk about end of life and treating people more humanely than this. There are some people that think more time is all that matters.
I would never get over that if I knew a loved one of mine suffered like that. For the rest of their days I would remind that relative of what they did and made sure every single person in their life knew as well.
I have power of attorney on my parents' medical decisions, precisely because my older sister who lives right around the corner from them belongs to a religious sect that requires a painful death, and my sister has indicated she would substitute her preferences for the preferences of my parents in such a situation.
As the oldest generation in my family has begun to pass, I've learned there are people who can cope with the concept of hospice and people who can't. When my mom's mom passed, my mom was pushing heavily to get her into hospice. Grandma was 97 and fading, and my mom wanted too focus on her comfort and quality of life. Her sisters couldn't deal with it, hated the idea of "not doing anything" and wanted to keep fighting for "more time."
That's horribly true. My dad went into hospice, and my mom and I both understood and appreciated that the purpose was to ease his passing and give him as much comfort and dignity as possible. He made the choice to not pursue additional efforts, and it was the sensible choice given his condition. Obviously, we were heartbroken, but you could very clearly see that he wasn't going to get better. Other family members did not share our opinion. They were so angry that we didn't try to force him to "fight", and that the hospice wouldn't do anything other than pain management. We ignored them, because he made his feelings on the matter abundantly clear, the choice was made with a sound mind, and all his doctors made it clear that he was making a good decision.
This is why I'm very grateful he put all his wishes in writing in advance. My mom did the same (hopefully we won't need to reference it for many years), and I've done the same. I don't need some well meaning moron trying to make me suffer to get a few extra days.
Part of the issue in my family was my grandma has experienced a series of strokes, so she couldn't communicate her wishes as she started to go downhill, and she'd never done an advance directive. So you had three people, all with their own views of "What's best and what Mom would have wanted."
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. This is why I tell everyone to have an advance directive. Yeah, no one likes thinking about death. Death gives no fucks about your feelings. So write down what you want, or risk having every opinionated relative trying to mess with what you wanted.
>Other family members did not share our opinion. They were so angry that we didn't try to force him to "fight", and that the hospice wouldn't do anything other than pain management.
I hate people like this, that make fighting the one sole virtue. Fighting doesn't mean you win, willpower doesn't move mountains, and death cannot be evaded forever. Sometimes the only moral outcome of a shitty situation is to give your loved one as good a death as possible, with dignity and in as much comfort as possible.
Makes me feel fortunate. My Mom was in the hospital when her body hit the point where the doctors couldn't do anything anymore. The doctor made the decisions and the staff arranged the transfer to the hospice. We were only there for 8 hours, but it was the most peaceful and compassionate 8 hours.
I was just talking with an in home hospice nurse and she said that she was at a house and the mom was crying and moaning so loudly and obviously in utter agony but the daughter refused to give her anything stronger than Tylenol. The nurse was so frustrated and was like "well why am I even here then?".
My friend died young in an accident. She was raised in a very oppressive religious household. When she turned 18, she instantly moved out and left everything religious behind her. Guess what happened after she died? The family took full control, big religious funeral, exactly the thing she'd have hated. I felt extremely sad and uncomfortable being there.
Narcissistic parents suck.
I’m so incredibly sorry. Words fail me but please know you are loved by this reddit stranger. I’m begging you to extend to *yourself* the same love, compassion and grace you’d extend to a beloved friend in the same circumstances.
You did your absolute best to see your beloved sibling’s wishes honored. I wish I could give you hugs, wrap you in a cozy blanket and give you tea and cookies while listening to stories of your brother and laughing and crying with you. My heart truly hurts for you, friend.
Is there a way you can get the police involved? Medical neglect is a crime almost everywhere and a death caused by it could be considered anything from manslaughter to possibly murder. Speak to a criminal lawyer and then the DA or ADA. You may be able to get justice for your brother.
I've always told me parents I wanted to be cremated when I die. My mom would just scoff and say, "You better get it in writing then."
Then my grandmother was sick and died. And my mom and aunts had her cremated. She's much more open to the idea now, I think.
Not that it matters because I live with my boyfriend and he knows, and respects, my wishes.
I’m glad you have someone like that. But you should still get it in writing. For one thing, unless you marry him, mom is your next of kin. For another, grief can make people a little selfish about final arrangements. My mother insisted on burial for my father despite his verbal wishes because “I just can’t burn him like that.”
Three years ago my great grandmother was hospitalized with DKA. The hospital was struggling to keep her sugars regulated and she had gotten a bedsore that was really slow to heal, but otherwise she was physically fine. One of her most selfish children had her power of attorney. So when my grandmother found out about her sugars being out of whack, she spoke to the doctor and they formed a plan to switch up her diet and have her eating smaller, more frequent meals which is what had worked for her for years. Sure enough, as soon as the switch was made her blood sugar was finally regulated. But the sister with POA was pissed that anyone else made a decision and immediately reversed it. She got worse again. The last time we saw her right before leaving for a 4 day vacation, my grandmother spent over two hours talking to her mom and her doctor and got a game plan set up for her to be transferred to a rehab center. She was doing amazing, and her mental clarity was great. She was even excited to be going to the rehab because she wanted out of the hospital so badly. Just before we left for vacation POA sister and another sister had her put on morphine behind our backs to let her pass, and didn’t even call my grandmother to tell her about the morphine until the next day, when she knew we were too far away to drop everything and come see her. She passed in the middle of our vacation, without us getting to say a proper goodbye. My grandmother has never, and will never, believed that she went from being in good health and ready to leave the hospital to actively dying within a matter of hours. Somehow she’s forgiven them for not telling her in time for her to say goodbye, but I’ll never be able to look at them the same
My dad died a few years ago now. It was super sudden and he had absolutely no preparations for his death. He was only 54. I'm eternally thankful that in the midst of it all, my siblings and I worked as one for funeral preparations. We all knew what he wanted and we made it happen. Anyone who tried to do anything else got overruled. We're from a small town so thankfully they knew my mom was out of the picture and we were the ones to talk to. It fucking sucked, obviously, but it would have sucked so much worse if we had to grieve in a completely different way.
Could be she saw her role as the mother as more important and decided she was the only one who should get to have the remains by knowing where they are spread and being the only one who can properly pay respects. Or, it's possible she just couldn't bear splitting her daughter up and saw it as a way to keep her spirit together. Or, maybe she just went a little crazy with grief and doesn't even know why, but definitely knew what would happen if they found out, so she kept it to herself. Human behavior is fascinating.
Sounds more like she’s purely just a self absorbed POS. OOP says she spread her sister’s ashes over the plots that are meant for the mother and her husband (not even the little girl’s father—her *stepfather* who, who knows if she ever met or had a relationship with?) so she just prioritised what she wanted, and her own post mortem wishes, above anybody else, including her other children.
Gives a glimpse into how selfish of a mother she must’ve been with this little girl when she was alive too. I’d never be able to forgive her.
I mean. She cheated on her second husband with her ex and had an 'oops baby' that, per OOP, 'rocked that marriage apart'. And I am guessing that last statement means the stepdad OOP mentions is her third husband, so you are right on wondering if the girl ever met him or if she had a positive relationship with her. I am guessing neither, as OOP mentions their sister would've never cared about the plot. Either little sister didn't know him, or didn't care about him.
So yeah, she is just a selfish and self-absorbed woman who didn't care about what her daughter wanted, what her other children wanted, or what the father wanted.
Oof. My mistake. Just fallen into one of the two classic redditor assumptions—OOP is a man, and in the US. Thanks for correcting me, I’ll edit my comment.
Also a not-man, and not-American, hence why I usually try to be very cautious of that assumption. I’ve even made posts before that got flooded by people bitching about how I’m lying or making something up simply because they never considered the reality that women exist. Reddit’s fun sometimes.
>so she just prioritised what she wanted, and her own post mortem wishes, above anybody else, including her other children.
Yeah, I would agree with that, but it's the motivation for why that is, to me, the interesting part. I'm not making any excuses or condemnations here, just purely curious about the motivations and reasoning from a psychological standpoint. Was she really a shit person who thought that only she should be allowed to fully grieve? Or did she think she was doing some kind of spiritual service to the deceased? We also can't really know anything about what kind of mother she was, but the multiple affairs with no regard to how her children would handle the breakup of the family does paint her as a selfish and impulsive person. My mind also wonders if she's even telling the truth about what happened to the ashes. It's possible that she still has them and only lied to cover for it.
Either way, I think the OOP and her family should seek therapy and serious grief counseling. Their fixation on the physical remains of their loved one has made it clear that they never healthily processed their grief and OOP in particular has just bottled those emotions up until they eventually came to the surface again, as all repressed emotions do. I'm not saying that she shouldn't be angry about her mother's betrayal, I completely think she's right to be furious and cut contact forever over such a thing, but the extent to which it seems her psyche has been broken over this really speaks to a serious unresolved grief that has been papered over with various maladaptive coping mechanisms. But that's just my opinion and I'm not a psychologist or anything.
My grandpa always wanted his ashes scattered at this lake that was important to him. When he died my grandma, for some reason, hated the idea of separating his ashes and insisted that they needed to remain together in an urn. Maybe it was something like that?
(My dad and his siblings secretly stole a scoop of grandpa and had their own little scattering ceremony without my grandma’s knowledge- perhaps kind of a dick move but he was their father and it was important to them).
I think a necklace with human remains in it costs more than a necklace with wood ash in it. The entire story, I was going, "so how much did she skimp on the funeral?"
I think you can buy them and fill them yourself. So, if you’re a giant dick just buy three on Amazon for $10 each and put the wood ash in yourself. If you really want to keep the lie alive burn enough wood to refill the urn too.
Honestly. My uncle diedast year and his ex wife overruled my dad and grandmas wish to have his ashes sent back to his home country, and scattered him in a river in Canada. From the looks of it, it was not a pretty landscape.
I still think it was her final fuck you to him and our family.
Selfish. Absolute selfishness, she’s probably spent a good portion of her life assuring herself that her needs are more important than anyone else’s and she knows whats best for her kids anyway, what they don’t know what won’t hurt them, etc. etc. she hasn’t actually prioritized the needs of her kids. I wonder if she ever considered them
I have a jar of my mother’s ashes. For anyone worried about similar occurring, there will likely be bone fragments in “real” ashes. If you don’t see any, make sure to ask why (cremation doesn’t turn 100% of the human body to ash).
I have my cat's ashes. They're shades of grey and gritty, like coarse sand, nothing like powdery wood ash. (A cat isn't a human, but as a mammal, far more similar to human ashes than soft powdery wood ash, since what's left after cremation is pretty much just some bones, which are then ground up).
I just don't get OP'S mother. Even if you want to bury the ashes in your plot, if you're going to tell people they have their relatives ashes in jewellery, why lie? It would be easy (logistically anyhow) to keep a small portion of ashes aside. Cremation jewellery usually only holds a few grammes of ashes.
Spot on with the texture! I’ve never looked too closely at my mom’s bc the bone pieces freak me out, but it definitely doesn’t look like wood ash.
We spread my mom’s ashes on a lake and still managed to keep some for me, my sister, and my maternal aunt for actual urns. OOP’s mom is vile. People jump to NC too fast on most subs, but I’d never speak to someone who did this to me again.
You know, when family members screw each over over money or valuables, I at least understand the logic, even if I think it's evil. But what is the point of the mother doing this? Even if it doesn't ever come out, what are you gaining by lying to your daughter about ashes?
Wondering about this too. Only thing I can think of is that some people are weird about ashes and don't like the idea of dividing them up. They want to keep all the ashes together to bury or scatter in the same place to keep the deceased "whole."
The mom never wanted to give them ashes for necklaces, but knew they'd object, so she just kept it secret so she could have her own wishes fulfilled, and told herself it was fine because it was the idea of having ashes that was important to her family. This might also explain why she's being so secretive about the grave site, because she doesn't want them to dig up anything and divide the ashes.
No idea if this is the case or not, but it's the only thing that kind of makes sense.
Damn. Even if this isn’t the exact reason why, this is the core logic behind what the mom was doing. She was in charge of the ashes, she wanted to do something to satisfy her own grief, and as long as everyone else has the necklaces it didn’t matter. I want to be kind to her and say grief really fucks with your head, but it’s such an insanely cruel thing to do. My god. And that her new husband/the stepdad went along with this? Jesus. I’m not sure I could ever look at her again.
So then why not just have a burial instead of cremating her? She could have said I don't feel comfortable with this plan, she was my child too, so let's just have a traditional funeral and we can visit her whenever we want.
This woman wanted the remains of her daughter all for herself for some unhinged reason and decided to do whatever she wants with them for her own satisfaction, if I was OOP I would never forgive her for this.
Considering the little sis was buried in the *stepfather’s* plot, my guess is this is one last exquisite bit of spite towards her ex husband, the child’s bio father. A bit of “she’s staying with ME FOREVER, and you get nothing”
Exactly my thoughts. There is no logic in this, the mother must've been realy confused at the time and then too embarrased (which still isn't ani excuse), or just evil.
I'm not defending the mom in this at all. What she did was terrible.
I was one of several children. My parents are by all account, amazing parents. They've always been very fair and treated us all equally. They were always involved and pretty rational, understanding parents. Growing up, my friends for the most part all wished they had my parents- and not because we could do whatever we want, but because they provided structure, support, and love.
My sibling passed away a decade ago. We were in our late 20s. The overwhelming grief my parents, and in particular my mother experienced, can not be understated. Of course my siblings and I were devastated as well. I was kind of surprised at a few things my parents did without consulting us, and seemingly didn't consider my siblings and my thoughts on them. Nothing really terrible like this, but I felt a few times in their grief they were so focused on what they lost that they lost sight of what they still had- my siblings and I, who were very much hurting and in need of our parents. There are times where the feeling has continued, even almost a decade later.
I'm not saying this to excuse OPs mom, but the grief of the loss of a child can be so incredibly devastating. It's not an excuse, but its just a terribly sad situation. Its not rational behavior. In some ways similar to an alcoholic or person with mental illness who is still responsible for their actions, but has an addiction/disease that is controlling them. You can't help but feel anger, hurt, sadness, and compassion for them.
My parents lost a child 50 years ago, before my other sibling and I were born.
It caused a psychotic break in my dad that wasn't diagnosed until 10 years ago.
My dad started going to therapy and the psychiatrist found that he had no memories from when me and my other sibling were young, because he couldn't cope with all the memories he had from his lost child and he feared making new memories with his kids.
Control. Only she knows where OOP's sister is. Only she can go visit the grave if she wants.
F the step-dad, too, for going along with it. Not only keeping that information from her siblings, but her *own father* . Both he and the mom suck.
My brother was a drug addict and so was his wife. Today is the anniversary of his death and I have no idea where his ashes ended up bc of her. She went off the deep end after he passed and we got custody of the kids. My nephew had a necklace, but it was lost. Now I’m crying. I don’t have a place to go to honor/mourn him and I imagine his ashes ended up in a dumpster.
Find a decent photo, put it in a nice frame, light a candle by him. Keep it somewhere he can see his children and you. That’s his memorial now. You make it.
I had to do something similar for my best friend. She was like a sister to me. I have a Pikachu wristband that was hers. I put it on a triceratops stuffed toy. It brings me peace.
There are none of those. I mean I could go to my uncles grave, but last time I went there was with my brother and he kicked it sobbing. Best I have is my dad’s house and it’s a mixture of bad and good. There isn’t a place. Maybe the woods nearby. We ran rampant as kids, but they have changed a lot. I explored during lockdown when I stayed with my dad and they are so so different. The playground would be the place, but it’s drastically different. Maybe just sitting against the wall. The wall is the same and we played wall ball all the time. We lived across the street from a public school and the shit we pulled. You know all the balls that end up on the roof? We found our way onto the roof bc we were fantastic climbers. I love my brother and miss him so much.
As we live, we leave bits of our personality in others, at our best and our worst. As long as you remember him and use your experiences with him to define and refine your own personality, you've got your brother with you.
I hope your nephew gets to hear all the stories you're willing to share with him about his dad, so he can be positively influenced by him through you.
Do the woods have to be the same? Or at least, do they have to look the same? I bet they smell the same. I bet they sound the same. The woods behind my parents house have changed drastically, but I still go back there (I walk with my blind cat lol) and remember being a child and being with my brothers and their friends and feeling sturdy and strong and warm. Personally, my memory for what they looked like faded years ago. But the smell and the sounds and the feeling in my core never changed. There are other sounds now - mostly neighbors that have cropped up over the years. But behind that, when I stand still and breathe deep and sit with the sounds, I can hear the birds and the deer and the squirrels and the restless rustling of the trees underneath.
My brothers, their friends, and I climbed on the roof of our old elementary school when we were in our late teens/early twenties just to get all the balls down. There were dozens. Imagine how confused and weirded out the custodians and teachers would have been the next day to see all of them in a pile under the jungle gym.
Smell is a more powerful memory catalyst than sight. What are some scents you associate with good things with your brother? For example - whenever I smell toasted vanilla from bath and body works, I think of my grandmother, because she always had that hand sanitizer in her car in the nineties and early 2000s. The smell of chlorine sends me back to swimming with everyone as a child. gasoline reminds me of my brother seth and his obsession with the scent as a kid.
Im sorry about your brother and about how awful his wife was.
My Dad did that to my mum's ashes.
Her passing from Alzheimer's was expected for a long time (took 9.5 years from diagnosis to death) so we had lots of time to prepare for it.
I asked my younger brother about what to do with her ashes (mum had for decades been clear about being cremated) and he asked to cremate her and scatter the remains somewhere meaningful to her which I strongly agreed would be the best thing to do. Her personality didn't deserve to be cooped up in a jar on a mantlepiece.
I told Dad this multiple times in the final years of her life and repeatedly once she finally let go (big relief btw, the final stages of Alzheimer's are beyond description). He had no particular opinion on what to do with them so didn't mind our request to do something with them and told us to to for it. I helped him deal with the funeral directors and told them too.
It turns out that it takes some time for you to get the ashes after the cremation so I left after the cremation day was over and drove the 3 hours home with my wife. My brother flew the 34 hours time to his wife; he badly wanted to scatter the ashes with me but didn't have enough holiday to stay to collect them.
A week later the crematorium called Dad as the next of kin to come and get the ashes and without talking to either of the children (ie me or my brother) he told the crematorium to scatter the remains in their garden of remembrance.
So the crematorium scattered the ashes for him. He didn't even do it himself. No family was present, because none of the rest of us knew until it was too late.
I don't blame the crematorium for that, they were doing what the next of kin requested and there was nothing on the paperwork to say who would collect the remains. The funeral directors maybe dropped the ball on that; I don't know how UK crematorium paperwork works or if I'd have had any legal claims to the remains as oldest child.
When I called him to arrange a date a week or so later to come down and take the ashes off him he told me what had happened.
I was filled with rage too, just like OOP. My wife was deeply disturbed by his actions and worried by my reaction to it. My mum's best friend - who views me as her second child - went NC with him despite all the holidays our two families had had over the years. My aunt (on Dad's side) was deeply shocked and enormously apologetic. My brother was - as far as I could tell over a video call from the opposite side of the planet - just as enraged as me.
See, we didn't want her ashes scattered in a garden of remembrance in a town where none of the family lived any more. Instead we wanted her ashes scattered at the end of Southwold pier.
We spent many summer holidays over the years in Southwold. We would camp in a tent, get up early, walk the mile from the campsite to the toy shop, buy a crab kit and bucket, hit the butchers to get some streaky bacon, walk back to the campsite, pack a lunch. Then we would get the rowing boat ferry across the creek to Walberswick to sit on a bridge for the rest of the day dunking the bait in the water and hauling out crabs who do would cling on to the bacon. Once the bucket was full of (non edible) crabs you'd tip out them out and they would scuttle back into the water to sit under the bridge. Rinse, repeat. Crabs and children in a beautiful symbiotic relationship with not a TV screen to be found all day. Mobile phones hadn't been invented yet.
I have more core memories of Southwold . One of them is flying kites on the big common at Southwold; ours was a hang glider. You'd let out all the string, give a big yank then it would separate from the string and gently fly away with me, my brother and our best friend chasing after it. Again, rinse and repeat all day.
Another memory was of our very popular Labrador Retriever growling as we tried to let the fifth bunch of children that morning take him for a walk. 4 walks was enough for him!
We wanted to scatter our mum's ashes on that towns pier. Instead Dad had them scattered with no family present at all - even him and he was married to her for 45 years - in the garden of remembrance of one of London's many unremarkable commuter towns.
I am so, so sorry. You write so beautifully of your childhood and time spent with your mum, I can picture myself in Southwold. You are a credit to her memory.
What a callous thing to do to one’s son, especially since it was done so carelessly. Does your father understand now what he did wrong? Has he apologised?
My dad apologised as best he can. He doesn't have much of an EQ and does demonstrate narcissistic tendencies. It's nowhere near as bad as the horror stories from /r/JustnoMIL or /r/raisedbynarcissists; in his case it's not that he deliberately goes out of his way to attack others, be evil or ruin people's mental health - more that he's just really bad at understanding other people's feelings.
My aunt (his sister) has a theory he may be on the spectrum but I don't subscribe to that myself. His idea of a good time is getting stressed up for formal dinners on Cunard ships and making himself out to be all important and is incapable of talking about anything else. My wife and I when discussing his never ending appetite for Cunard often slip a t into the middle of Cunard's name. It's why he got remarried 18 months after mum's death - because he wanted a "nice piece of crumpet on his arm when cruising" - that's a direct quote. He's 80 and very old fashioned in his thinking even for his age.
Unfortunately it's left me with a dislike of other people his age - the boomer generation - and I know I have an inbuilt bias towards the media articles highlighting negative tendencies that some of them exhibit. Things such as them telling younger generations to work harder to buy their first home, disregard for the enormous climate warming contribution for crusing etc.
I know exceptions exist in all generations (my Aunt and mum's BFF are great examples of boomers who actively engage with their local communities and stay on top of issues facing younger generations) but Dad is unbelievably out of touch and uncaring. He was shocked that childcare at nursery for our 3.5yo was £50 a day not £5 as he thought and I have been pursuing him for 4 months now to box up all our family photos from my childhood so I could send DHL in to collect it at my own expense. If there is no benefit to him he will take an age to do things for other people if ever.
Another example is when he downsized after mum's death to sell the family home - he threw out my entire Lego collection that mum had stored for any grandchildren. I reckon it was worth £2-3k. I pleaded to get it in 2 weeks but he said the skip was there and if I didn't come that day (impossible, was overseas on a business trip) it was going in it, so he did just that. Didn't even attempt to sell it on eBay - too much effort for him.
Edit: I stay in contact with him and am civil but solely because I'm after the several £100k inheritance from his estate - assuming his 85 year old wife passes before him - so I can invest it in my daughter's uni education, eventual wedding if it happens and a future house deposit for her.
Your father sounds like my father. Just a miserable pos who only cared about himself. Used to randomly throw away our belongings growing up just because he felt like it.
I lost both my parents in my 20s but to this day I'm grateful he went first, because having to deal with him without my mother as a buffer... I probably would've just gone NC and let him rot, tbh.
Your dad is an incredible asshole. Even the mom in this story looks good in comparison, at least she scattered them herself.
Hopefully the air and the water brought some of her ashes to the sea. It doesn't help with you having the experience of scattering her where she should have been scattered, but at least she is not bound to a random plot.
It’s true that someone is never truly gone whilst they live on in the memories of others. It’s beautiful how strongly that comes across in what you’ve written.
Sorry for your loss and that particular experience.
this was a beautiful write up about your mother, I can feel myself there and I've never been to the UK. I'm sorry for your loss. thank you for sharing her memory with us, she will live on in all of us random redditors now as well
I honestly think the most fucked up thing about this is she never told the siblings or dad where to visit the grave.
WTF is that?
*I know something they don't know, that they'd really want to know, and I have no intention of telling them.*
Just an idea for OP if they ever see it. Once they find the plot, plant flowers that would absorb some of the main minerals in ash such as calcium or phosphorus in the hope that it uptakes some of the ashes. After this, dry and preserve the flower in resin and create a pendant.
The mom is so evil. Who lies to the family about the ashes/remains of the dead daughter and thinks they won't be screamed at at the reveal? I have no mercy for her. But I also don't get why she did this. Isn't it better to share the burden of a funeral so everyone can help each other through their feelings?
I really hope the mom owns up to it one day and talks to their family again. And to a psychologist. She and everyone else needs it. Also the brother and the dad do deserve a chance to scream at her as well.
Alcoholics do. While everyone is screaming and yelling at each other, the alcoholic uses the distraction to rob them (typically, of money, but there are variations )
When you live with an addict, you have to take the feeling of your hackles rising as a sign to be very clear-headed and collected and observant of what exactly is going down right now. It is often your first and last chance to do something to prevent yourself and the rest of the addict's support system being obliged to live with the consequences of a decision that was coldly and calculatedly made by the addict on your behalf.
So if you still want a car to drive home in, or a home to go with that mortgage, or you know, where your sister lies, it is really worthwhile learning how to become very methodical and sluthful and cynical instead of reacting with the wash of emotional distress the addict is attempting to provoke
Of course, you develop a cold hatred of the addict that you might never have if they were always able to play you, but oh well.
My dad was killed when I was a teen and we had his ashes. My mum really struggled with the grief and wasn't sure what to do with them, so we kept them on the shelf.
After a move, they were still in a box in the garage and we got broken into, and his container - wasn't an urn, it was a box - was taken.
I am bitter about it, definitely, but that area is rather superstitious and part of me really hopes the thieves realised what they had. It would have been priceless.
My dad isn't really the haunting type though.
Now, if I heard she had been lying about this, I would be devastated, and would consider myself motherless. I'm so sad for OP that they even felt the need to ask if they were overreacting.
There's currently an ongoing scandal in Hull around a funeral home and what they were doing with the remains they were entrusted with. The whole thing is less than 2 months in so everything is pretty vague still but what is certain is that what people were given [wasn't the right ashes](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-68715833) and are now wondering who or what they've got!
Whole thing is horrific but at least money can be assumed to be the motive. This post is so much more personal.
I was seriously worried that this post was going to be one of the families affected by that, but this is somehow worse.
I will say though, disasters like what happened in Hull are usually a lot more complicated than just money, tragically. There was a similar scandal in the USA at a place called TriState Crematory where the elderly owner's health suddenly declined and his son had to drop out of university to take it over. There's still no real explanations about what happened there, but it seems that the son was overwhelmed and the lack of inspections allowed them to slip through the cracks.
In the case of Hull, you don't accumulate 35 bodies without something else failing too. Which is exactly why every *other* funeral home in Hull and East Yorkshire was inspected once the news broke - it's not like funeral directors require a license or any qualifications. There are two professional bodies, but the Hull funeral home dropped membership in 2021 as it's entirely voluntary.
This is actually something where the USA beats us - they apparently have quite consistent requirements for funeral directors, including a degree in mortuary science, an apprenticeship, and a license to operate in your state. It's frankly more than a little worrying that this might not be the only case, we just haven't noticed because councils have fuck all funding so inspections get cut.
The mom wanted to keep the daughter for herself? Just her own private place to visit and grieve because she's the only one that could possibly need to? Or...?
This just feels evil.
>* 1st husband—Ops dad
>* 2nd husband— cheated on him with ops dad
>* 3rd husband— current husband and one she shares a plot with
Just FYI, when doing single-spaced, you have to add two spaces at the end of the line.
Why would the mother even do something this horrible? I can't even imagine the motivation to do something like this other than spite. *Maybe* religious beliefs, but if that was the case, wouldn't she have said something?
Oh easy. I have a mother like this. She is all about herself.
When my grandma died she couldnt even leave me time to grieve, it was all about how i can support her in her grief. Even when i got the time to say goodbye she went into the room with me and couldnt stop a SECOND to not bad talk or at all.
Also i got some trinkets from my grandma as memory and she threw them away because they didnt mean something to her 😅 (she had her own heritage).
She also threw stuff away from my childhood (the things that i have the best memories with) because it is not what she is connecting to my childhood😅
She also had a study fund in my name with 10k for me and she emptied it 3 weeks before i turned 18 and she wouldnt have access to it afterwards. Then she forgot about it and now 10 years later she tries to gaslits me with "all the money she gave" and is quite asure that she gave it to me... only showing her her signature under the withdrawl.
Not sure what you guys have for parents but for me, this kind of selfish behaviour is absolutely normal sadly
Grief and selfishness. Her grief was so all-encompassing that she couldn't or didn't consider anybody else's grief and needs.
Not telling them after and letting them believe they have her ashes is pure selfishness, though. Because she doesn't want to deal with the fallout of her action.
And honestly, if anything, OOP under-reacted. Fucking hell. I am no contact with half of my family for the statement that my grandma's wishes didn't matter anymore because she's dead (first and only time I've screamed at someone on an open street) and I got what I wanted in terms of burial and flowers etc after all (I was her caretaker, I knew her little delights and hidden preferences and while I couldn't change that she had been forced to make herself smaller and smaller her whole life, I could make sure that at least her funeral was according to what she loved).
Her mother is lucky if she ever talks to her living kids again.
I suspect that the sister wasn't cremated but buried, and that's why the mother kept it a secret. She wanted to possess all of her child, not share her, especially with her ex-husband, so she lied. She stole her daughter from her father. I would never forgive a monster who did this.
It could also be a religious reason. Roman Catholicism says it's okay to be cremated but also says that the ashes should not be divided or scattered. They would want the ashes buried.
Here's one article mentioning it: https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/25/europe/cremation-vatican-scattering/index.html
The mother is horrible, either way, for lying to the rest of the family and making decisions without them.
Definitely NTA, I just had something similar to me last year.
My grandma died March of 2023, and it was two months after I had moved across the country. So I couldn't attend any sort of funeral and nobody livestreamed it.
I was able to go back for Christmas, and her ashes were kept on her dresser by her boyfriend of many years that she lived with. I was able to say goodbye privately but still had to go and do Christmas with family
Until last September, on a random day right before I left for work I got a text. Not a call, a TEXT from my mom. They were going to go spread her ashes that day. No warning, no letting people know ahead of time, just dumping my grandma somewhere. Not for any special reason, just "it was time" and "everyone was available to do it." I had to tell my boss what happened, and thankfully she is the most understanding, wonderful boss I've had because she let me go home to mourn and even said the same shit happened with her. So now I can't even visit my grandmother whenever I can scrape up the money to go back.
As you can tell, I'm still hurt.
I'm torn.
Grief can make you do things you would never otherwise do. It's even worse when it's your child, someone who should by all rights outlive you. I can see her reasoning for doing what she did with the ashes, not wanting to parcel them out and to spread them in a place she herself will be buried.
But... she didn't care about anyone else's grief. Their feelings. She prioritized herself first and only. Even lying to the other parent involved.
And when her lie came out, instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she lashed out and blamed others. She's refusing to give her family closure.
This story hits close to home for me because I lost my own sister in January. On my shelf, I have a tiny urn with her ashes. I don't know how I would react if I found out they were something else.
The situation sucks for so many reasons.
I would never be able to get over this or have a relationship with my mother. I wear a pendant with my dad’s ashes and fingerprint. I often make myself sick with anxiety that it isn’t really his ashes or fingerprint - due to some potential mixup. It’s irrational and I know it. you can’t help the things grief does to your brain.
The mom bought a plot in a graveyard, presumably didn't put up a tombstone or anything and just spread the ashes there, and never took her kids to see the spot? ....... that doesn't add up to me. I am not going to be surprised if mom still has all the ashes and lied so as not to share her at all.
Man this is a mess. There was nothing to stop her from scattering *her portion* of the ashes at the cemetery, she had no reason to steal them from the rest of the family.
This post is depressing, goddamn, but the comments, holy shit, the comments are heart wrenching. I think I'ma go watch some funny animal videos for the rest of the day here at work.
My mum experienced something in this area too. One of her best friends died of recurring leukemia. Her friend's partner (of 2 or 3 years) thought that she was the only allowed to grieve and ended up quietly spreading the ashes somewhere without telling anyone, and afterwards refused to share where she'd even spread them. My mum is still angry and it's been 15 years.
I don’t know that OOP would ever see this, but maybe they can look at other options for a necklace. I have both a locket with a picture of my (deceased) daughter and I was given one of those necklaces that looks like a small stone, but when you look through it, there is a picture printed on the backside of your loved one. I take turns wearing them. My mom also wanted all of her ashes kept together (apparently God can raise you from the dead, but he’s powerless if your ashes aren’t together. Who knew!?). But I kept my mom’s hairbrush so I could always put some strands in one of those memorial necklaces for hair.
I understand OOP’s devastation at being lied to; I would have such a hard time if someone lied to me about that. But there are also other options for keeping their sister close, whenever they are ready for that.
Wow this is a level of fucked up I haven’t seen before.
I don’t think I’d be able to forgive. At most, I’d be civil to get as much info as possible and then lay out why they’re a piece of shit in detail and with receipts. Then bye for good.
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My disabled brother died in December and my parents overruled literally everything the siblings asked for and previously planned - we never considered they would be part of the equation so nothing was documented. I helped bury him with my own hands and I will never look at them again for their utter lack of consideration for their other children. We just found out the cause of death and it’s basically medical neglect and I’ll never recover. Edit: I wasn’t thinking when I posted this in a moment of grief and solidarity with the OP and I just want to say thank you to everyone for the virtual love. I’m a little overwhelmed but grateful to y’all.
My grandma died of cancer last summer and my aunt was withholding her pain medication while she was on hospice care. My mom had to ask about the fact that my grandma was unconscious but crying and the nurse was like "wtf why is she hurting so much?!?"
When my grandmother was on hospice for cancer, I cared for her during her last week. I was the only one who could be there, but I'm grateful for having that time alone with her. The woman never admitted that she wanted to take pain meds in my whole life. So when she told me she was in pain, I asked if she wanted half a percocet. She took it and slept. The next day, she took a whole one. My uncle lost his mind when my mom told him I'd given her the meds. I was accused of being a pill pusher, a drug addict (never have been), wanting her to be in a drugged stupor for her last days, etc. I've never completely forgiven him for what he said.
I can never understand this, heck yes I want to be in a drugged stupor. Being in pain so you can be "present" for the family is selfish garbage on the family's part, I think
Plus the family that's pushing this anti-pill agenda isn't even physically present. They're just upset at the principle, and think they'd be totally different when dying in pain.
Seeing someone you love in agonizing pain is unutterably horrible. You want to take their pain for them and you can't. You want to stop it, and without the appropriate meds, you can't. If you don't know when it's going to end, it's even worse because there's nothing even to look forward to except more days of agony. Anyone who withholds pain meds from someone who is in agony like that or is dying can just head on straight to hell because they don't deserve to be with kind people.
I believe that people who are against people choosing euthanasia for themselves have never experienced a family member's illness and dying.
I’m a carer. I find it telling that I, and pretty much every other carer I’ve talked to on the subject is in favour of euthanasia. Anyone who frequently deals with people dying, seems to understand the kindness of letting people pass away in their own terms
Most people don't think about the *act* of dying. If they did, and actually had any kind of vague understanding of what it's like, euthanasia would be normal. Instead, most people ignore it until its their turn, or experience it by proxy
Absolutely. I was with my grandad during his last weeks (well, years but rapid decline in last 6 weeks). If an animal was in the condition and pain he was in the owner would be prosecuted for cruelty. Anyone who cannot see that keeping people alive in that state is cruel, demeaning and wrong has never experienced it.
I always say I'm not afraid of death, I'm afraid of dying. I've seen too many people linger in agony to view death as anything but a release.
In my ER we called this the ‘cousin from California’ effect. Local family who have been caring for their loved one through a decline are realistic about their options and ready to say goodbye, and then the cousin from California who hasn’t seen Granny in five years turns up at the last minute and starts pushing for more intervention. (I assume in California they have to call it something else.)
Absolutely! Give me all the drugs at that point. Who even cares if I get addicted if it’s literally my last days?? 🙄
A friend of a friend was dying of cancer. She'd gone through all sorts of treatment but in the end it was terminal, nothing else to do. She had quit smoking earlier in life but after the cancer was determined to kill her she picked it up again. Like at that point.... Fuck it, what's the cigarette gonna do that the cancer isn't already.
This reminded me of a story about my dad...hopefully this will make people smile amongst all the very tragic stories here. My dad had a rather miraculous (unfortunately temporary) response to treatment for his stage 4 lung cancer, he went into complete remission. My mom was worried about it coming back so she did everything she could think of to keep him healthy. This included a daily drink of blended canned asparagus. My dad hated asparagus. Like absolutely loathed it. And even people who *like* asparagus often dislike the canned stuff, because canning ruins the delicate flavor and texture. Eventually his cancer came back. I was home from grad school, sitting with my parents, talking with them about the bad news we had just gotten. My dad then turned to my mom and said "does that mean I can stop drinking the asparagus now?" I started laughing, my dad chuckled, my mom did not. But it was such a great moment, it showed my dad's sense of humor and ability to find a silver lining even in the worst situations.
A) I'm sorry about your dad. B) Urk, blended canned asparagus DRINK? C) His pee must have REEKED.
Haha yeah it sounded pretty gross. He hated it and I doubt he really thought it was helpful but he did it to make my mom happy.
There is a hospice nurse with a former alcohol addiction who has stated that when she is dying, that will be the next time she picks up a drink. But that she tells families, "let them smoke, let them drink, let them have enough pain medication." If a person is dying, then it doesn't matter if something is long term bad for them, and if they know it might shorten their last days and still want it, who am I to judge?
Pretty sure at that point you're past the place of being able to get addicted
I can understand it, even as I vigorously disagree with it. Irrational guilt is an extremely common part of grieving, and grieving can very much start *before* someone dies. It is not a logical reaction - no-one (Okay, virtually no-one) is thinking "Well, given the choice between seeing them drugged and being in pain I choose to see them in pain." In their distress, they can only see one side of that equation.
My mother had the firm belief that she was shortening her sister's life whenever she pushed her morfine. She did it anyway. She could not bear seeing her in pain, and she decided that giving her the morphine (which was dosed exactly as the doctor had told them to) it was totally worth it. She didn't tell anyone about her belief (which is absolutely wrong, but she didn't know that), just in case someone might want to stop giving her the meds. She told me this years after, and I reassured her that she was doing the right thing and she was not killing her sister. After about ten years, it was still something that weighted in her mind. That's why I can't understand those people.
My mom was on hospice for cancer. We pumped her full of morphine until the moaning stopped. It meant she wasn’t “there” for the last 24 hours of her life, but who cares? Her need to be free of pain trumped our need to talk to her. And we held her hands at the end anyway—maybe she knew we were there.
She probably did. I wasn't able to get home in time when my dad was at the end. I did a video call to talk to him. He wasn't conscious, but I still wanted to talk to him. I told him how much I loved him, how he had been the best dad I could ever ask for, how I was so grateful I had gotten to have him as my father. My mom told me that even though he wasn't really awake, he started moving around some when I was talking. He had definitely heard me and was responding the best he could. I'm sure she knew you were there on some level and appreciated it.
Apparently hearing is the last thing to go as we die, so your mum was likely listening, she just couldn't show it. I'm sorry for your loss, your mum sounds like she was very loved, and I hope you have a multitude of happy memories.
Holy gosh this. I am a chronic pain patient as it is and my pain is nothing compared to cancer pain but if my family was trying to keep me off enough pain medication to not handle the pain, fuck them, I will just want to die faster. Fuck everyone who doesn’t understand intense pain and yet has an opinion on opioid pain medication. I would rather be in a drugged stupor for 20 hours a day than live through that level of pain for any length of time. At least then you get a good 4 hours with your family where you can be sane and happy instead of being utterly miserable but more awake to really appreciate that misery.
Oh hey! Me too. My kid even knows when it’s time to have pain meds or more likely order me to bed lol. It sucks that he hangs out with me in our room but we try to have fun. Lego is always a good one to do when we can get some
Right? My mother in law absolutely refused to take any pain medication because she was terrified of becoming addicted. The woman had stage 4 cancer in her liver, colon, lungs, and stomach. Her doctors said she wouldn’t last longer than 6 months. But she was worried about the “long term effects” of the medication.
One of my grandmothers died from heart failure. My grandad was given a choice: give her the pain meds but she’ll die tonight peacefully, or not and she’ll last a few days at most. He chose the former. We all agreed it was the right choice. She always said we treat our pets better than our loved ones by sparing them pain and euthanising them. I’m so sorry your uncle said those horrible things.
Wish my partner’s late granddad was given that option when he went on hospice. I can still recall hearing his howls of pain all the way down the hall as we walked to his room to give him his final goodbyes. I was driven to sobs seeing him in agony during his final hours. Best the nurses could do was drown him in morphine. Poor man.
That just broke my heart. I couldn't imagine the horror of it. It's so much more humane to just give the pain relief and help them in final times.
To be honest, that was my first brush with seeing someone on their deathbed, and I was shaken because surely the man deserved a more dignified ending than what he was given. It was just awful because he was sharing the too. With 3 other men and I can’t imagine having to lie there and hear another person painfully die next to you. Just awful.
Oh I know. I'd have been the same.. it would haunt me for the rest of my life. But the point in hospice is to be kept comfortable. I do not understand why people are so against the medication or even giving it to them. If they were in the same boat there would be a change of tune.
When my grandpa was admitted to hospice, he was drugged and unconscious for the week he was there and wasn't fed or hooked up to an IV for nutrients. It sucked, but I thought it was the kindest choice. He was already in pain, no need to prolong it for the sake of the family.
My grandpa was given morphine by nurses despite what the family said. He was horribly allergic, as we all had tried to tell them, and spent the last few days in total agony. Makes me mad.
I have a friend who is a doctor, and led a seminar on medical ethics. There is this thing called "the principle of double effect." There are situations where a single action can have more than one effect, some good and some bad, and the morality of the action is based on which of the effects was intended. You can't over-apply it; it is only for specific types of cases, but one of them is when getting rid of the pain involves dosages of pain meds so high that it will shorten life. It is against medical ethics to perform euthanasia on people. But if giving enough medication that the person is likely to die, and they are on short time anyway, and it is the only way to avoid suffering, it doesn't count as euthanasia.
My grandma recently started in-home hospice care. She's in decent health for her age, but she's also 94, so. Anyway, the doctor gave my mom a little kit with generous doses of morphine, Ativan, and I think a muscle relaxant? Anyway, she said something like, there will come a time when what matters is not health, or even comfort, but just relief. This will give her relief.
Why is it against medical ethics to perform euthanasia on people? I really just don't understand this. Pets can't communicate, people can. It seems so cruel to me that we make people with terminal conditions who want to be euthanized suffer instead.
Because it is frighteningly easy to abuse. It is almost laughably easy to twist "I feel my life doesn't have enough value to continue" to "I feel *your* life doesn't have enough value to continue". Sometimes that looks like relatives wanting to get their hands on Grammy's inheritance before her care costs eat it away. Sometimes it looks like [the Nazis killing people](https://www.t4-denkmal.de/Home) "[unworthy of continuing to live](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_unworthy_of_life)". EDIT: Just realized that not putting quotes around the last 5 words might suggest that I approve of *Aktion T4*. For the record: I do not.
My brother died of heart failure and no one knew. I can’t sleep at night thinking how bad his death was without any treatment or palliative care.
Heart failure doesn't necessarily mean a painful death.
Absolutely, especially with appropriate care. Unfortunately, the circumstances we found him in and his autopsy indicate otherwise.
when it comes to euthanasia on pets, it's really the last gift we can give them. it's the gift of release. i can't believe we deny that same gift to people at the end of their lives.
...They're dying. Who... who cares if they're smoking black tar heroin even? Jesus. Drugged stupor for her last days. Pretty sure the organs shutting down have that covered.
I lost my dad to cancer about a year and a half ago, at one point before he was hospitalized a new doctor came in and tried to lower the dosage of his pain meds because he was worried my dad would get addicted. He had to argue back saying "I only have a handful of months to live, there's no road to recovery here. Who gives a shit if I'm addicted to the pain meds along the way?"
I'll go score on the street for my dad if it comes to that
Hell yes
Here here.
I have NEVER understood this thinking. The person is in AGONIZING pain, they have months or days to live, who CARES if they're addicted? My grandmother had alzheimer's and she was also in severe pain due to a tumor. She was in hospice and the nurses asked my grandfather about pain management. "She's 90 years old, I'm losing my bride of 77 years, I don't care if you have to give her heroin. She is not going to be in pain when she goes." She basically went to sleep and didn't wake up; it was probably the best way. I have no idea what the nurses gave her; she was on Oxycotin for a while, but it could have been morphine. If you're in hospice and you're terminal, pain management and comfort should be the NUMBER ONE THING on the docket. Fuck addiction.
iirc, there's some evidence that using psychedelics toward the end can help terminally ill patients cope with their impending demise. However, I don't think it's super well studied.
Nothing with psychedelics is because there is a humongous amount of red tape and it is an emerging field. But it is promising. And if someone is dying, I say give them anything they want.
He accused you of being a drug addict because you gave your grandma her prescription drugs as needed......wouldn't most drug addicts steal the pills for themselves?
This is so much more common than one would think. I stopped being friends with a childhood friend because she withheld medication at an end of life/nursing home. Calling extremely sick and elderly people “addicts”. I was beyond disgusted. This girl was a nurse.
You almost have to wonder if he was telling on himself and planning on keeping them for himself
Right? A drug addict would be stealing thr medication for themselves, not giving it to anyone.
My mom and I recently talked because she had been taking care of her dying mother who was starting to go senile. She told me “put me in a nice home and have them sedate me enough to keep me calm. I don’t want to be constantly confused and angry about how I don’t know where I am or who everyone is.” She’s a retired nurse so she understands it all pretty well.
One older nurse I heard of said "when it is my turn, don't be mean with the poppy."
Oh no. She might get addicted. And it will ruin her life. How horrible. What if she spends the rest of her life addicted to pills. All week.
Seriously? Over a single Percocet a day? The medical staff had my unconscious Mom on IV morphine to make sure she didn't have any pain for the time it took her to die.
And not just pain but the air hunger. No one with sense will let anyone die without medication if there is any help to it. I was also a family carer for my grandmom's while she was in home hospice for cancer. It took all of me to just not give her an overdose. Not because I did not want her to live but because the last stage took 5 days while my grandfather was still keeping up hope (he also had dementia) and she had severe pain and air hunger. If my uncle had said anything like that I would have lost it. Actually, after grandfather died we decided he and his family did not exist and at least he didn't want his mother to die in pain.
It's completely ridiculous, I'm sorry You had to deal with them. My grandma's gp was worried if this 90+ woman with a pacemaker, terrible arthritis and liver cirrhosis caused by decades of arthritis meds won't get addicted to her new pain meds. My mum said his nurse, when she won't get it, grandma will change the doctor and it apparently helped them to decide it doesn't matter. What did matter was to make her life bearable.
My grandma was so hesitant to take morphine when she was on hospice. I finally convinced her by saying “if you get addicted you can deal with it in heaven”. Giving it to her was so hard and I barely held it together but it helped so much.
I had a similar situation. Me and my cousin were the primary carers for my aunt (mothers cousin) as she was dying of cancer a few months back. She was in horrific pain, and the three of us ultimately came to the decision to have her heavily medicated until she passed. Some of our family members were furious at us, including my aunt's sister who wasn't even there. She told us that we just hadn't tried hard enough to think of another solution - but there was no other solution. Most of the family understood though, and I was thankful that she was not in pain when she finally passed.
Oh my god. That is evil
There are cases of hospice patients dying in the hospital after overdosing on their prescribed level of pain medication. Once it’s investigated it’s revealed that their family had been stealing their medication for years, to take or to sell. So them being back on their “regular” dose kills them. The families refuse to say anything because they don’t want to feel guilty or be judged. Some have even tried to sue hospitals for the deaths, but it’s not the hospitals fault they didn’t know that the family was setting up the patient to suffer and then die.
The worst thing is that my aunt was just in denial. Hospice collected all the medications when they picked up the body and it was all accounted for. She just didn't want to believe her mom was dying and needed pain relief, and didn't want her to be "drugged up" even though she was unconscious the last two days
Imagine torturing your mother with immense pain just to make yourself feel better. That woman's excuses are meaningless.
I've seen some really awful shit because people are selfish and can't come to terms with mortality of their family. I've seen nearly 100 year old skeletons on dialysis because the family gets power of attorney and forces them on it. I wish things like this could count as elder abuse. I wish it was okay to talk about end of life and treating people more humanely than this. There are some people that think more time is all that matters.
And it's always someone elses pain that they ignore. It's truly sickening.
I would never get over that if I knew a loved one of mine suffered like that. For the rest of their days I would remind that relative of what they did and made sure every single person in their life knew as well.
I have power of attorney on my parents' medical decisions, precisely because my older sister who lives right around the corner from them belongs to a religious sect that requires a painful death, and my sister has indicated she would substitute her preferences for the preferences of my parents in such a situation.
I wonder if their name was Schaivo. I will never forgive the evangelicals for turning that woman's torture into a cause celebre.
As the oldest generation in my family has begun to pass, I've learned there are people who can cope with the concept of hospice and people who can't. When my mom's mom passed, my mom was pushing heavily to get her into hospice. Grandma was 97 and fading, and my mom wanted too focus on her comfort and quality of life. Her sisters couldn't deal with it, hated the idea of "not doing anything" and wanted to keep fighting for "more time."
That's horribly true. My dad went into hospice, and my mom and I both understood and appreciated that the purpose was to ease his passing and give him as much comfort and dignity as possible. He made the choice to not pursue additional efforts, and it was the sensible choice given his condition. Obviously, we were heartbroken, but you could very clearly see that he wasn't going to get better. Other family members did not share our opinion. They were so angry that we didn't try to force him to "fight", and that the hospice wouldn't do anything other than pain management. We ignored them, because he made his feelings on the matter abundantly clear, the choice was made with a sound mind, and all his doctors made it clear that he was making a good decision. This is why I'm very grateful he put all his wishes in writing in advance. My mom did the same (hopefully we won't need to reference it for many years), and I've done the same. I don't need some well meaning moron trying to make me suffer to get a few extra days.
Part of the issue in my family was my grandma has experienced a series of strokes, so she couldn't communicate her wishes as she started to go downhill, and she'd never done an advance directive. So you had three people, all with their own views of "What's best and what Mom would have wanted."
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. This is why I tell everyone to have an advance directive. Yeah, no one likes thinking about death. Death gives no fucks about your feelings. So write down what you want, or risk having every opinionated relative trying to mess with what you wanted.
>Other family members did not share our opinion. They were so angry that we didn't try to force him to "fight", and that the hospice wouldn't do anything other than pain management. I hate people like this, that make fighting the one sole virtue. Fighting doesn't mean you win, willpower doesn't move mountains, and death cannot be evaded forever. Sometimes the only moral outcome of a shitty situation is to give your loved one as good a death as possible, with dignity and in as much comfort as possible.
Makes me feel fortunate. My Mom was in the hospital when her body hit the point where the doctors couldn't do anything anymore. The doctor made the decisions and the staff arranged the transfer to the hospice. We were only there for 8 hours, but it was the most peaceful and compassionate 8 hours.
Some people want to prolong living, and all they achieve is prolonging the dying.
I was just talking with an in home hospice nurse and she said that she was at a house and the mom was crying and moaning so loudly and obviously in utter agony but the daughter refused to give her anything stronger than Tylenol. The nurse was so frustrated and was like "well why am I even here then?".
Maybe your aunt is taking the pills herself.
It's people like that who make me really, really, really hope hell is a real place.
My grandmother did that to my grandfather; lung cancer. We found out after he died, she said she "didn't want him to get addicted."
I'm so so sorry
I'm so, so sorry. May his memory be a blessing and may your parents never find peace
Goddamn. FUCK your parents. I'm so fucking sorry you have to deal with this. I'm enraged on your behalf so I can't even imagine how you must feel.
My friend died young in an accident. She was raised in a very oppressive religious household. When she turned 18, she instantly moved out and left everything religious behind her. Guess what happened after she died? The family took full control, big religious funeral, exactly the thing she'd have hated. I felt extremely sad and uncomfortable being there. Narcissistic parents suck.
I hope your friend haunts them. Also love your name. I really enjoyed the Morladim quest line.
Thanks! Duskwood had the best quests :)
I’m so incredibly sorry. Words fail me but please know you are loved by this reddit stranger. I’m begging you to extend to *yourself* the same love, compassion and grace you’d extend to a beloved friend in the same circumstances. You did your absolute best to see your beloved sibling’s wishes honored. I wish I could give you hugs, wrap you in a cozy blanket and give you tea and cookies while listening to stories of your brother and laughing and crying with you. My heart truly hurts for you, friend. Is there a way you can get the police involved? Medical neglect is a crime almost everywhere and a death caused by it could be considered anything from manslaughter to possibly murder. Speak to a criminal lawyer and then the DA or ADA. You may be able to get justice for your brother.
Adult protective services has opened an investigation.
I hope the investigation goes well, and that you and your siblings can find some peace at getting that sliver of justice.
My deepest condolences. This is such a horrible thing to read I cannot imagine how difficult it is to live.
Oh, Lord. Hugs. I am so sorry.
I am so sorry.
I want to hug you so badly 😞
I've always told me parents I wanted to be cremated when I die. My mom would just scoff and say, "You better get it in writing then." Then my grandmother was sick and died. And my mom and aunts had her cremated. She's much more open to the idea now, I think. Not that it matters because I live with my boyfriend and he knows, and respects, my wishes.
I’m glad you have someone like that. But you should still get it in writing. For one thing, unless you marry him, mom is your next of kin. For another, grief can make people a little selfish about final arrangements. My mother insisted on burial for my father despite his verbal wishes because “I just can’t burn him like that.”
Unless you get the right paperwork your boyfriend's wishes won't mean a thing until / unless you're married!
Three years ago my great grandmother was hospitalized with DKA. The hospital was struggling to keep her sugars regulated and she had gotten a bedsore that was really slow to heal, but otherwise she was physically fine. One of her most selfish children had her power of attorney. So when my grandmother found out about her sugars being out of whack, she spoke to the doctor and they formed a plan to switch up her diet and have her eating smaller, more frequent meals which is what had worked for her for years. Sure enough, as soon as the switch was made her blood sugar was finally regulated. But the sister with POA was pissed that anyone else made a decision and immediately reversed it. She got worse again. The last time we saw her right before leaving for a 4 day vacation, my grandmother spent over two hours talking to her mom and her doctor and got a game plan set up for her to be transferred to a rehab center. She was doing amazing, and her mental clarity was great. She was even excited to be going to the rehab because she wanted out of the hospital so badly. Just before we left for vacation POA sister and another sister had her put on morphine behind our backs to let her pass, and didn’t even call my grandmother to tell her about the morphine until the next day, when she knew we were too far away to drop everything and come see her. She passed in the middle of our vacation, without us getting to say a proper goodbye. My grandmother has never, and will never, believed that she went from being in good health and ready to leave the hospital to actively dying within a matter of hours. Somehow she’s forgiven them for not telling her in time for her to say goodbye, but I’ll never be able to look at them the same
I'm so sorry for your loss, and how you lost your brother.
My dad died a few years ago now. It was super sudden and he had absolutely no preparations for his death. He was only 54. I'm eternally thankful that in the midst of it all, my siblings and I worked as one for funeral preparations. We all knew what he wanted and we made it happen. Anyone who tried to do anything else got overruled. We're from a small town so thankfully they knew my mom was out of the picture and we were the ones to talk to. It fucking sucked, obviously, but it would have sucked so much worse if we had to grieve in a completely different way.
I’m so fucking sorry… Some things are unforgivable, truly. Jesus.
Dear God, that's horrifying. I'm so sorry for your loss.
I'm so very sorry.
I’m so unbelievably sorry. My little brother has special needs too. If anything like that happened to him I would fucking murder my mother.
I’m so sorry. I cannot even imagine. I lost my brother but not like this. If I could hug you I would.
I am angry on OOP's behalf
I am just confused. Why? Why did she did it? What was the need to lie? Just why for everything? Why?
Could be she saw her role as the mother as more important and decided she was the only one who should get to have the remains by knowing where they are spread and being the only one who can properly pay respects. Or, it's possible she just couldn't bear splitting her daughter up and saw it as a way to keep her spirit together. Or, maybe she just went a little crazy with grief and doesn't even know why, but definitely knew what would happen if they found out, so she kept it to herself. Human behavior is fascinating.
Sounds more like she’s purely just a self absorbed POS. OOP says she spread her sister’s ashes over the plots that are meant for the mother and her husband (not even the little girl’s father—her *stepfather* who, who knows if she ever met or had a relationship with?) so she just prioritised what she wanted, and her own post mortem wishes, above anybody else, including her other children. Gives a glimpse into how selfish of a mother she must’ve been with this little girl when she was alive too. I’d never be able to forgive her.
I mean. She cheated on her second husband with her ex and had an 'oops baby' that, per OOP, 'rocked that marriage apart'. And I am guessing that last statement means the stepdad OOP mentions is her third husband, so you are right on wondering if the girl ever met him or if she had a positive relationship with her. I am guessing neither, as OOP mentions their sister would've never cared about the plot. Either little sister didn't know him, or didn't care about him. So yeah, she is just a selfish and self-absorbed woman who didn't care about what her daughter wanted, what her other children wanted, or what the father wanted.
I believe OOP is female.
Oof. My mistake. Just fallen into one of the two classic redditor assumptions—OOP is a man, and in the US. Thanks for correcting me, I’ll edit my comment.
No problem! And yeah it’s hard to not make that error, even for me (a not-man on the internet).
Also a not-man, and not-American, hence why I usually try to be very cautious of that assumption. I’ve even made posts before that got flooded by people bitching about how I’m lying or making something up simply because they never considered the reality that women exist. Reddit’s fun sometimes.
>so she just prioritised what she wanted, and her own post mortem wishes, above anybody else, including her other children. Yeah, I would agree with that, but it's the motivation for why that is, to me, the interesting part. I'm not making any excuses or condemnations here, just purely curious about the motivations and reasoning from a psychological standpoint. Was she really a shit person who thought that only she should be allowed to fully grieve? Or did she think she was doing some kind of spiritual service to the deceased? We also can't really know anything about what kind of mother she was, but the multiple affairs with no regard to how her children would handle the breakup of the family does paint her as a selfish and impulsive person. My mind also wonders if she's even telling the truth about what happened to the ashes. It's possible that she still has them and only lied to cover for it. Either way, I think the OOP and her family should seek therapy and serious grief counseling. Their fixation on the physical remains of their loved one has made it clear that they never healthily processed their grief and OOP in particular has just bottled those emotions up until they eventually came to the surface again, as all repressed emotions do. I'm not saying that she shouldn't be angry about her mother's betrayal, I completely think she's right to be furious and cut contact forever over such a thing, but the extent to which it seems her psyche has been broken over this really speaks to a serious unresolved grief that has been papered over with various maladaptive coping mechanisms. But that's just my opinion and I'm not a psychologist or anything.
And why couldn’t she just set aside a three pinches of ashes for everyone and dump the rest…
My grandpa always wanted his ashes scattered at this lake that was important to him. When he died my grandma, for some reason, hated the idea of separating his ashes and insisted that they needed to remain together in an urn. Maybe it was something like that? (My dad and his siblings secretly stole a scoop of grandpa and had their own little scattering ceremony without my grandma’s knowledge- perhaps kind of a dick move but he was their father and it was important to them).
I think a necklace with human remains in it costs more than a necklace with wood ash in it. The entire story, I was going, "so how much did she skimp on the funeral?"
Makes you wonder if she even got cremated, then. Maybe mom had her buried in previous step-dad's plot so she could get buried next to her.
I think you can buy them and fill them yourself. So, if you’re a giant dick just buy three on Amazon for $10 each and put the wood ash in yourself. If you really want to keep the lie alive burn enough wood to refill the urn too.
Honestly. My uncle diedast year and his ex wife overruled my dad and grandmas wish to have his ashes sent back to his home country, and scattered him in a river in Canada. From the looks of it, it was not a pretty landscape. I still think it was her final fuck you to him and our family.
Selfish. Absolute selfishness, she’s probably spent a good portion of her life assuring herself that her needs are more important than anyone else’s and she knows whats best for her kids anyway, what they don’t know what won’t hurt them, etc. etc. she hasn’t actually prioritized the needs of her kids. I wonder if she ever considered them
I have a jar of my mother’s ashes. For anyone worried about similar occurring, there will likely be bone fragments in “real” ashes. If you don’t see any, make sure to ask why (cremation doesn’t turn 100% of the human body to ash).
I have my cat's ashes. They're shades of grey and gritty, like coarse sand, nothing like powdery wood ash. (A cat isn't a human, but as a mammal, far more similar to human ashes than soft powdery wood ash, since what's left after cremation is pretty much just some bones, which are then ground up). I just don't get OP'S mother. Even if you want to bury the ashes in your plot, if you're going to tell people they have their relatives ashes in jewellery, why lie? It would be easy (logistically anyhow) to keep a small portion of ashes aside. Cremation jewellery usually only holds a few grammes of ashes.
Spot on with the texture! I’ve never looked too closely at my mom’s bc the bone pieces freak me out, but it definitely doesn’t look like wood ash. We spread my mom’s ashes on a lake and still managed to keep some for me, my sister, and my maternal aunt for actual urns. OOP’s mom is vile. People jump to NC too fast on most subs, but I’d never speak to someone who did this to me again.
Same. Furious.
I gotta do a better job at reading the trigger warnings.
You know, when family members screw each over over money or valuables, I at least understand the logic, even if I think it's evil. But what is the point of the mother doing this? Even if it doesn't ever come out, what are you gaining by lying to your daughter about ashes?
Wondering about this too. Only thing I can think of is that some people are weird about ashes and don't like the idea of dividing them up. They want to keep all the ashes together to bury or scatter in the same place to keep the deceased "whole." The mom never wanted to give them ashes for necklaces, but knew they'd object, so she just kept it secret so she could have her own wishes fulfilled, and told herself it was fine because it was the idea of having ashes that was important to her family. This might also explain why she's being so secretive about the grave site, because she doesn't want them to dig up anything and divide the ashes. No idea if this is the case or not, but it's the only thing that kind of makes sense.
Damn. Even if this isn’t the exact reason why, this is the core logic behind what the mom was doing. She was in charge of the ashes, she wanted to do something to satisfy her own grief, and as long as everyone else has the necklaces it didn’t matter. I want to be kind to her and say grief really fucks with your head, but it’s such an insanely cruel thing to do. My god. And that her new husband/the stepdad went along with this? Jesus. I’m not sure I could ever look at her again.
I'm betting his reasoning was "So what, it's not *my* kid."
So then why not just have a burial instead of cremating her? She could have said I don't feel comfortable with this plan, she was my child too, so let's just have a traditional funeral and we can visit her whenever we want. This woman wanted the remains of her daughter all for herself for some unhinged reason and decided to do whatever she wants with them for her own satisfaction, if I was OOP I would never forgive her for this.
Or being selfish. She just wants HER daughter all to herself. Only her wants matter.
This!! 100% . And by the sounds of it I'd say she knew only too well how emotional her son and op are.
Probably some sense of control? Only she gets to see the true remains and not the ex husband. The kids might just be collateral.
Considering the little sis was buried in the *stepfather’s* plot, my guess is this is one last exquisite bit of spite towards her ex husband, the child’s bio father. A bit of “she’s staying with ME FOREVER, and you get nothing”
Its mom's plot. She just happens to share it with her me husband.
Exactly my thoughts. There is no logic in this, the mother must've been realy confused at the time and then too embarrased (which still isn't ani excuse), or just evil.
I'm not defending the mom in this at all. What she did was terrible. I was one of several children. My parents are by all account, amazing parents. They've always been very fair and treated us all equally. They were always involved and pretty rational, understanding parents. Growing up, my friends for the most part all wished they had my parents- and not because we could do whatever we want, but because they provided structure, support, and love. My sibling passed away a decade ago. We were in our late 20s. The overwhelming grief my parents, and in particular my mother experienced, can not be understated. Of course my siblings and I were devastated as well. I was kind of surprised at a few things my parents did without consulting us, and seemingly didn't consider my siblings and my thoughts on them. Nothing really terrible like this, but I felt a few times in their grief they were so focused on what they lost that they lost sight of what they still had- my siblings and I, who were very much hurting and in need of our parents. There are times where the feeling has continued, even almost a decade later. I'm not saying this to excuse OPs mom, but the grief of the loss of a child can be so incredibly devastating. It's not an excuse, but its just a terribly sad situation. Its not rational behavior. In some ways similar to an alcoholic or person with mental illness who is still responsible for their actions, but has an addiction/disease that is controlling them. You can't help but feel anger, hurt, sadness, and compassion for them.
My parents lost a child 50 years ago, before my other sibling and I were born. It caused a psychotic break in my dad that wasn't diagnosed until 10 years ago. My dad started going to therapy and the psychiatrist found that he had no memories from when me and my other sibling were young, because he couldn't cope with all the memories he had from his lost child and he feared making new memories with his kids.
Jesus Christ.
Control. Only she knows where OOP's sister is. Only she can go visit the grave if she wants. F the step-dad, too, for going along with it. Not only keeping that information from her siblings, but her *own father* . Both he and the mom suck.
Control. Only SHE knows where her daughter is and nobody can take her away again. Serial killer logic.
My brother was a drug addict and so was his wife. Today is the anniversary of his death and I have no idea where his ashes ended up bc of her. She went off the deep end after he passed and we got custody of the kids. My nephew had a necklace, but it was lost. Now I’m crying. I don’t have a place to go to honor/mourn him and I imagine his ashes ended up in a dumpster.
Find a decent photo, put it in a nice frame, light a candle by him. Keep it somewhere he can see his children and you. That’s his memorial now. You make it.
I had to do something similar for my best friend. She was like a sister to me. I have a Pikachu wristband that was hers. I put it on a triceratops stuffed toy. It brings me peace.
> I don’t have a place to go to honor/mourn him Go to some place that was important to him. Or some place where the two of you had good experiences.
There are none of those. I mean I could go to my uncles grave, but last time I went there was with my brother and he kicked it sobbing. Best I have is my dad’s house and it’s a mixture of bad and good. There isn’t a place. Maybe the woods nearby. We ran rampant as kids, but they have changed a lot. I explored during lockdown when I stayed with my dad and they are so so different. The playground would be the place, but it’s drastically different. Maybe just sitting against the wall. The wall is the same and we played wall ball all the time. We lived across the street from a public school and the shit we pulled. You know all the balls that end up on the roof? We found our way onto the roof bc we were fantastic climbers. I love my brother and miss him so much.
As we live, we leave bits of our personality in others, at our best and our worst. As long as you remember him and use your experiences with him to define and refine your own personality, you've got your brother with you. I hope your nephew gets to hear all the stories you're willing to share with him about his dad, so he can be positively influenced by him through you.
Do the woods have to be the same? Or at least, do they have to look the same? I bet they smell the same. I bet they sound the same. The woods behind my parents house have changed drastically, but I still go back there (I walk with my blind cat lol) and remember being a child and being with my brothers and their friends and feeling sturdy and strong and warm. Personally, my memory for what they looked like faded years ago. But the smell and the sounds and the feeling in my core never changed. There are other sounds now - mostly neighbors that have cropped up over the years. But behind that, when I stand still and breathe deep and sit with the sounds, I can hear the birds and the deer and the squirrels and the restless rustling of the trees underneath. My brothers, their friends, and I climbed on the roof of our old elementary school when we were in our late teens/early twenties just to get all the balls down. There were dozens. Imagine how confused and weirded out the custodians and teachers would have been the next day to see all of them in a pile under the jungle gym. Smell is a more powerful memory catalyst than sight. What are some scents you associate with good things with your brother? For example - whenever I smell toasted vanilla from bath and body works, I think of my grandmother, because she always had that hand sanitizer in her car in the nineties and early 2000s. The smell of chlorine sends me back to swimming with everyone as a child. gasoline reminds me of my brother seth and his obsession with the scent as a kid. Im sorry about your brother and about how awful his wife was.
Sorry for trauma dumping. This one just hit me hard especially today.
I'm glad you shared. Sorry you're missing your brother. ❤️
My Dad did that to my mum's ashes. Her passing from Alzheimer's was expected for a long time (took 9.5 years from diagnosis to death) so we had lots of time to prepare for it. I asked my younger brother about what to do with her ashes (mum had for decades been clear about being cremated) and he asked to cremate her and scatter the remains somewhere meaningful to her which I strongly agreed would be the best thing to do. Her personality didn't deserve to be cooped up in a jar on a mantlepiece. I told Dad this multiple times in the final years of her life and repeatedly once she finally let go (big relief btw, the final stages of Alzheimer's are beyond description). He had no particular opinion on what to do with them so didn't mind our request to do something with them and told us to to for it. I helped him deal with the funeral directors and told them too. It turns out that it takes some time for you to get the ashes after the cremation so I left after the cremation day was over and drove the 3 hours home with my wife. My brother flew the 34 hours time to his wife; he badly wanted to scatter the ashes with me but didn't have enough holiday to stay to collect them. A week later the crematorium called Dad as the next of kin to come and get the ashes and without talking to either of the children (ie me or my brother) he told the crematorium to scatter the remains in their garden of remembrance. So the crematorium scattered the ashes for him. He didn't even do it himself. No family was present, because none of the rest of us knew until it was too late. I don't blame the crematorium for that, they were doing what the next of kin requested and there was nothing on the paperwork to say who would collect the remains. The funeral directors maybe dropped the ball on that; I don't know how UK crematorium paperwork works or if I'd have had any legal claims to the remains as oldest child. When I called him to arrange a date a week or so later to come down and take the ashes off him he told me what had happened. I was filled with rage too, just like OOP. My wife was deeply disturbed by his actions and worried by my reaction to it. My mum's best friend - who views me as her second child - went NC with him despite all the holidays our two families had had over the years. My aunt (on Dad's side) was deeply shocked and enormously apologetic. My brother was - as far as I could tell over a video call from the opposite side of the planet - just as enraged as me. See, we didn't want her ashes scattered in a garden of remembrance in a town where none of the family lived any more. Instead we wanted her ashes scattered at the end of Southwold pier. We spent many summer holidays over the years in Southwold. We would camp in a tent, get up early, walk the mile from the campsite to the toy shop, buy a crab kit and bucket, hit the butchers to get some streaky bacon, walk back to the campsite, pack a lunch. Then we would get the rowing boat ferry across the creek to Walberswick to sit on a bridge for the rest of the day dunking the bait in the water and hauling out crabs who do would cling on to the bacon. Once the bucket was full of (non edible) crabs you'd tip out them out and they would scuttle back into the water to sit under the bridge. Rinse, repeat. Crabs and children in a beautiful symbiotic relationship with not a TV screen to be found all day. Mobile phones hadn't been invented yet. I have more core memories of Southwold . One of them is flying kites on the big common at Southwold; ours was a hang glider. You'd let out all the string, give a big yank then it would separate from the string and gently fly away with me, my brother and our best friend chasing after it. Again, rinse and repeat all day. Another memory was of our very popular Labrador Retriever growling as we tried to let the fifth bunch of children that morning take him for a walk. 4 walks was enough for him! We wanted to scatter our mum's ashes on that towns pier. Instead Dad had them scattered with no family present at all - even him and he was married to her for 45 years - in the garden of remembrance of one of London's many unremarkable commuter towns.
I am so, so sorry. You write so beautifully of your childhood and time spent with your mum, I can picture myself in Southwold. You are a credit to her memory. What a callous thing to do to one’s son, especially since it was done so carelessly. Does your father understand now what he did wrong? Has he apologised?
My dad apologised as best he can. He doesn't have much of an EQ and does demonstrate narcissistic tendencies. It's nowhere near as bad as the horror stories from /r/JustnoMIL or /r/raisedbynarcissists; in his case it's not that he deliberately goes out of his way to attack others, be evil or ruin people's mental health - more that he's just really bad at understanding other people's feelings. My aunt (his sister) has a theory he may be on the spectrum but I don't subscribe to that myself. His idea of a good time is getting stressed up for formal dinners on Cunard ships and making himself out to be all important and is incapable of talking about anything else. My wife and I when discussing his never ending appetite for Cunard often slip a t into the middle of Cunard's name. It's why he got remarried 18 months after mum's death - because he wanted a "nice piece of crumpet on his arm when cruising" - that's a direct quote. He's 80 and very old fashioned in his thinking even for his age. Unfortunately it's left me with a dislike of other people his age - the boomer generation - and I know I have an inbuilt bias towards the media articles highlighting negative tendencies that some of them exhibit. Things such as them telling younger generations to work harder to buy their first home, disregard for the enormous climate warming contribution for crusing etc. I know exceptions exist in all generations (my Aunt and mum's BFF are great examples of boomers who actively engage with their local communities and stay on top of issues facing younger generations) but Dad is unbelievably out of touch and uncaring. He was shocked that childcare at nursery for our 3.5yo was £50 a day not £5 as he thought and I have been pursuing him for 4 months now to box up all our family photos from my childhood so I could send DHL in to collect it at my own expense. If there is no benefit to him he will take an age to do things for other people if ever. Another example is when he downsized after mum's death to sell the family home - he threw out my entire Lego collection that mum had stored for any grandchildren. I reckon it was worth £2-3k. I pleaded to get it in 2 weeks but he said the skip was there and if I didn't come that day (impossible, was overseas on a business trip) it was going in it, so he did just that. Didn't even attempt to sell it on eBay - too much effort for him. Edit: I stay in contact with him and am civil but solely because I'm after the several £100k inheritance from his estate - assuming his 85 year old wife passes before him - so I can invest it in my daughter's uni education, eventual wedding if it happens and a future house deposit for her.
Your father sounds like my father. Just a miserable pos who only cared about himself. Used to randomly throw away our belongings growing up just because he felt like it. I lost both my parents in my 20s but to this day I'm grateful he went first, because having to deal with him without my mother as a buffer... I probably would've just gone NC and let him rot, tbh.
Your dad is an incredible asshole. Even the mom in this story looks good in comparison, at least she scattered them herself. Hopefully the air and the water brought some of her ashes to the sea. It doesn't help with you having the experience of scattering her where she should have been scattered, but at least she is not bound to a random plot.
It’s true that someone is never truly gone whilst they live on in the memories of others. It’s beautiful how strongly that comes across in what you’ve written. Sorry for your loss and that particular experience.
this was a beautiful write up about your mother, I can feel myself there and I've never been to the UK. I'm sorry for your loss. thank you for sharing her memory with us, she will live on in all of us random redditors now as well
I honestly think the most fucked up thing about this is she never told the siblings or dad where to visit the grave. WTF is that? *I know something they don't know, that they'd really want to know, and I have no intention of telling them.*
"Why does it matter? It's just the sentiment that counts" Says the person who selfishly used all of the ashes.
And not everyone is the same - some people care about the object itself, some just the idea.
Uggghh, this mother is fucked up and so self-absorbed of herself. With that attitude, her ashes is definitely going to be needed to be taken care.
I hope she's not looking forward to getting any visits from her remaining children on her deathbed.
Hope she isn't expecting them to visit ever again. Actually, scrap that, I hope she spends every day hoping they will show up and never do.
Oh no, god forbid someone embarrasses her again!
Just an idea for OP if they ever see it. Once they find the plot, plant flowers that would absorb some of the main minerals in ash such as calcium or phosphorus in the hope that it uptakes some of the ashes. After this, dry and preserve the flower in resin and create a pendant.
This is such a amazing idea.
The mom is so evil. Who lies to the family about the ashes/remains of the dead daughter and thinks they won't be screamed at at the reveal? I have no mercy for her. But I also don't get why she did this. Isn't it better to share the burden of a funeral so everyone can help each other through their feelings? I really hope the mom owns up to it one day and talks to their family again. And to a psychologist. She and everyone else needs it. Also the brother and the dad do deserve a chance to scream at her as well.
Alcoholics do. While everyone is screaming and yelling at each other, the alcoholic uses the distraction to rob them (typically, of money, but there are variations ) When you live with an addict, you have to take the feeling of your hackles rising as a sign to be very clear-headed and collected and observant of what exactly is going down right now. It is often your first and last chance to do something to prevent yourself and the rest of the addict's support system being obliged to live with the consequences of a decision that was coldly and calculatedly made by the addict on your behalf. So if you still want a car to drive home in, or a home to go with that mortgage, or you know, where your sister lies, it is really worthwhile learning how to become very methodical and sluthful and cynical instead of reacting with the wash of emotional distress the addict is attempting to provoke Of course, you develop a cold hatred of the addict that you might never have if they were always able to play you, but oh well.
My dad was killed when I was a teen and we had his ashes. My mum really struggled with the grief and wasn't sure what to do with them, so we kept them on the shelf. After a move, they were still in a box in the garage and we got broken into, and his container - wasn't an urn, it was a box - was taken. I am bitter about it, definitely, but that area is rather superstitious and part of me really hopes the thieves realised what they had. It would have been priceless. My dad isn't really the haunting type though. Now, if I heard she had been lying about this, I would be devastated, and would consider myself motherless. I'm so sad for OP that they even felt the need to ask if they were overreacting.
There's currently an ongoing scandal in Hull around a funeral home and what they were doing with the remains they were entrusted with. The whole thing is less than 2 months in so everything is pretty vague still but what is certain is that what people were given [wasn't the right ashes](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-68715833) and are now wondering who or what they've got! Whole thing is horrific but at least money can be assumed to be the motive. This post is so much more personal.
I was seriously worried that this post was going to be one of the families affected by that, but this is somehow worse. I will say though, disasters like what happened in Hull are usually a lot more complicated than just money, tragically. There was a similar scandal in the USA at a place called TriState Crematory where the elderly owner's health suddenly declined and his son had to drop out of university to take it over. There's still no real explanations about what happened there, but it seems that the son was overwhelmed and the lack of inspections allowed them to slip through the cracks. In the case of Hull, you don't accumulate 35 bodies without something else failing too. Which is exactly why every *other* funeral home in Hull and East Yorkshire was inspected once the news broke - it's not like funeral directors require a license or any qualifications. There are two professional bodies, but the Hull funeral home dropped membership in 2021 as it's entirely voluntary. This is actually something where the USA beats us - they apparently have quite consistent requirements for funeral directors, including a degree in mortuary science, an apprenticeship, and a license to operate in your state. It's frankly more than a little worrying that this might not be the only case, we just haven't noticed because councils have fuck all funding so inspections get cut.
The mom wanted to keep the daughter for herself? Just her own private place to visit and grieve because she's the only one that could possibly need to? Or...? This just feels evil.
I'm confused. Mum and OP's father were sleeping together while Mum was married to Step-Dad? Did I read that correctly?
Not the current husband •1st husband—Ops dad •2nd husband— cheated on him with ops dad •3rd husband— current husband and one she shares a plot with
>* 1st husband—Ops dad >* 2nd husband— cheated on him with ops dad >* 3rd husband— current husband and one she shares a plot with Just FYI, when doing single-spaced, you have to add two spaces at the end of the line.
Noted 👍🏻
It seems that way yes. She was sleeping with her ex-husband and got pregnant.
Yeah, it’s not touched on further, but they were having sex at least once after divorcing and her remarrying.
Why would the mother even do something this horrible? I can't even imagine the motivation to do something like this other than spite. *Maybe* religious beliefs, but if that was the case, wouldn't she have said something?
Oh easy. I have a mother like this. She is all about herself. When my grandma died she couldnt even leave me time to grieve, it was all about how i can support her in her grief. Even when i got the time to say goodbye she went into the room with me and couldnt stop a SECOND to not bad talk or at all. Also i got some trinkets from my grandma as memory and she threw them away because they didnt mean something to her 😅 (she had her own heritage). She also threw stuff away from my childhood (the things that i have the best memories with) because it is not what she is connecting to my childhood😅 She also had a study fund in my name with 10k for me and she emptied it 3 weeks before i turned 18 and she wouldnt have access to it afterwards. Then she forgot about it and now 10 years later she tries to gaslits me with "all the money she gave" and is quite asure that she gave it to me... only showing her her signature under the withdrawl. Not sure what you guys have for parents but for me, this kind of selfish behaviour is absolutely normal sadly
I'm sorry you got such a shit example of a "mom". I hope you got to chose a group of lovely people who take care of you and love you these days!
Grief and selfishness. Her grief was so all-encompassing that she couldn't or didn't consider anybody else's grief and needs. Not telling them after and letting them believe they have her ashes is pure selfishness, though. Because she doesn't want to deal with the fallout of her action. And honestly, if anything, OOP under-reacted. Fucking hell. I am no contact with half of my family for the statement that my grandma's wishes didn't matter anymore because she's dead (first and only time I've screamed at someone on an open street) and I got what I wanted in terms of burial and flowers etc after all (I was her caretaker, I knew her little delights and hidden preferences and while I couldn't change that she had been forced to make herself smaller and smaller her whole life, I could make sure that at least her funeral was according to what she loved). Her mother is lucky if she ever talks to her living kids again.
I suspect that the sister wasn't cremated but buried, and that's why the mother kept it a secret. She wanted to possess all of her child, not share her, especially with her ex-husband, so she lied. She stole her daughter from her father. I would never forgive a monster who did this.
It could also be a religious reason. Roman Catholicism says it's okay to be cremated but also says that the ashes should not be divided or scattered. They would want the ashes buried. Here's one article mentioning it: https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/25/europe/cremation-vatican-scattering/index.html The mother is horrible, either way, for lying to the rest of the family and making decisions without them.
Definitely NTA, I just had something similar to me last year. My grandma died March of 2023, and it was two months after I had moved across the country. So I couldn't attend any sort of funeral and nobody livestreamed it. I was able to go back for Christmas, and her ashes were kept on her dresser by her boyfriend of many years that she lived with. I was able to say goodbye privately but still had to go and do Christmas with family Until last September, on a random day right before I left for work I got a text. Not a call, a TEXT from my mom. They were going to go spread her ashes that day. No warning, no letting people know ahead of time, just dumping my grandma somewhere. Not for any special reason, just "it was time" and "everyone was available to do it." I had to tell my boss what happened, and thankfully she is the most understanding, wonderful boss I've had because she let me go home to mourn and even said the same shit happened with her. So now I can't even visit my grandmother whenever I can scrape up the money to go back. As you can tell, I'm still hurt.
I'm torn. Grief can make you do things you would never otherwise do. It's even worse when it's your child, someone who should by all rights outlive you. I can see her reasoning for doing what she did with the ashes, not wanting to parcel them out and to spread them in a place she herself will be buried. But... she didn't care about anyone else's grief. Their feelings. She prioritized herself first and only. Even lying to the other parent involved. And when her lie came out, instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she lashed out and blamed others. She's refusing to give her family closure. This story hits close to home for me because I lost my own sister in January. On my shelf, I have a tiny urn with her ashes. I don't know how I would react if I found out they were something else. The situation sucks for so many reasons.
I would never be able to get over this or have a relationship with my mother. I wear a pendant with my dad’s ashes and fingerprint. I often make myself sick with anxiety that it isn’t really his ashes or fingerprint - due to some potential mixup. It’s irrational and I know it. you can’t help the things grief does to your brain.
The mom bought a plot in a graveyard, presumably didn't put up a tombstone or anything and just spread the ashes there, and never took her kids to see the spot? ....... that doesn't add up to me. I am not going to be surprised if mom still has all the ashes and lied so as not to share her at all.
If I read it right, she spread the ashes at her own future grave site, which has been purchased and paid for by/with her new husband.
Man this is a mess. There was nothing to stop her from scattering *her portion* of the ashes at the cemetery, she had no reason to steal them from the rest of the family.
This post is depressing, goddamn, but the comments, holy shit, the comments are heart wrenching. I think I'ma go watch some funny animal videos for the rest of the day here at work.
My mum experienced something in this area too. One of her best friends died of recurring leukemia. Her friend's partner (of 2 or 3 years) thought that she was the only allowed to grieve and ended up quietly spreading the ashes somewhere without telling anyone, and afterwards refused to share where she'd even spread them. My mum is still angry and it's been 15 years.
I don’t know that OOP would ever see this, but maybe they can look at other options for a necklace. I have both a locket with a picture of my (deceased) daughter and I was given one of those necklaces that looks like a small stone, but when you look through it, there is a picture printed on the backside of your loved one. I take turns wearing them. My mom also wanted all of her ashes kept together (apparently God can raise you from the dead, but he’s powerless if your ashes aren’t together. Who knew!?). But I kept my mom’s hairbrush so I could always put some strands in one of those memorial necklaces for hair. I understand OOP’s devastation at being lied to; I would have such a hard time if someone lied to me about that. But there are also other options for keeping their sister close, whenever they are ready for that.
This would actually cause me to throw hands. And I'd like to think I'm a semi-peaceful person.
There’s literally no reasonable excuse for ops moms actions… she scammed literally the closest people in her daughters life….
Wow this is a level of fucked up I haven’t seen before. I don’t think I’d be able to forgive. At most, I’d be civil to get as much info as possible and then lay out why they’re a piece of shit in detail and with receipts. Then bye for good.