Is this normal?

duchy

I don't know if I can shed a little more light on things. My family is Eastern European and Jewish (one one side) and the attitude to funerals is very different . They are very quick usually the day after the death and it's pretty much a short service to respectfully bury the remains -coffins aren't carried by pall bearers but the coffin goes on what is essentially a handcart. My then husband was in complete shock at it all as it was totally alien to him. He understood better a year later when he attended the stone setting ceremony when the gravestone is set and there is another service. and he realised it was a time to remember and honour without the feeling of gut wrenching loss. My family is Jewish on one side and Catholic on the other so I see two very different ways of death. Neither is right or wrong-just different . Tradition aside -grieving is such a personal thing -and even as mentioned above -we sometimes react differently to losing different people even though we love them equally.

Good for you for coming and asking -and stepping out from the narrow thinking of your community and I hope everyone's contribution has helped you get your head around this and that yours and your daughter's friendships continue and flourish.

robpw2

I would say that your being a little strange in your behaviour , even if you don't understand how their greif works why would you not want your daughter to see her friend.

perhaps part of the reason she wants have your daughetr stay and vice versa is to allow the daughter to feel that she isn't going to be treated differently know her dad's died. Look how people react when they find out they treat the family differently some of them are really extreme and don't want their children playing with a girl who has lost her dad.

duchy

I think some people can be really hurtful when someone dies.
They avoid the family, stop calling or literally cross the road to avoid them -just because they don't know what to say or are afraid they might upset them. There's nothing worse than people behaving this way -ignoring what has happened is beyond hurtful. You don't need to make a big fuss-a quiet -I'm sorry for your loss-or a card -and then treating people as normal (as they are still normal-just dealing with an abnormal situation) is usually appreciated.

browneyedbazzi

When I was 9 my best friend's dad died after a fairly short battle with cancer. Her mom was also close friends with mine so we were all aware of his illness etc, but a lot of the other kids at school and their parents wouldn't have known anything about it. As a child that young you don't really understand what's going on and don't know how to talk about it so you don't. Her mom was coping with caring for her terminally ill husband and looking after two children and also would have found it really difficult to talk to with people she wasn't close too.

The day that my friends dad died she came to my house to play (her mom didn't want the kids at home when the hearse came to collect their dad) and we carried on as normal really. She grieved, we all did, but life didn't stop for the grief. I think that sometimes the best thing you can do is to carry on as normally as possible and not sink into the grief too much.

It's a bit odd that the mother didn't mention anything when they were at your house, but one of the stages of grief is denial and it's possible that she wasn't ready to talk about it yet because telling people would make it 'real'. Please try not to judge her. The death of a spouse is a really traumatic experience and everyone reacts a bit differently and people do behave in strange ways sometimes but that doesn't mean they're crazy.

All that being said, I don't see any reason why your daughter shouldn't be allowed to spend time with her friend. I'm still extremely close to the friend who lost her dad (she's more like a sister to me) and I think we really bonded through the experience and we've gone on to support each other through all sorts of things.

gingin_2

I think it could be all number of reasons.

If it's easier to talk by text, maybe the language barrier for her was too difficult to explain and she just wants your help with her daughter.

Maybe in her culture it's better to show strength rather than emotion. Maybe she's so alone that she is worried about alienating you if she burdens you with emotions.

Maybe she's in a fuzzy haze of grief and can't see or think straight.

We've lost two friends too early in the last 9 months and the difference in the way you grieve when a child is involved is huge - you have to be strong, there is no other option. I think it's really sad that there might be a very confused, lonely widow here who is trying to reach out for help and is not getting it. If it were me, I would be getting in my car (s*d the money) and getting her to the GP, or to her church, or to a meeting place of her cultural community and finding out what help she can get.

Gigervamp

Something that I wondered. Maybe the father was abusive, so his death would bring relief rather than sadness.

Just a thought.

Tiddlywinks

pinkclouds wrote: »

You expect people to react a certain way and it throws you a little bit when they don't follow the script. Also, I don't like surprises - they upset me and make me anxious.

But this isn't about you, is it?

Last time OP saw the family, the dad must have been dying in bed (creepy, morbid thought), which was glossed over, and now he's dead, again hidden news. It makes you feel a bit... mixed up. I suspect I'd also be discretely grilling daughter on whether she was told anything and paranoidly speculating to myself as to why the school asked *me* to check up on the death rumour. What was the text message thing? "Hi Jane, how's John?" "We cremated him last Thursday. Drop your kid off for a sleepover?" It's just... uh-huh.

What the heck? My mum died a few months ago, at home in her bed. We knew she was dying, her visitors knew she was dying BUT a casual visitor would NOT have been given access to her or details about her condition. Why? Well, death and dying are personal matters NOT creepy. The family has a right to choose how they handle matters. It's not a soap opera for outsiders to watch and just indulge in from time to time.

Stuff the sleepovers. I'd spend all my time wondering if the friend is going to cry all night or why the mother pretended nothing had happened and whether she'll snap/crumble unexpectedly. Whoever actually attended the funeral will be helping the family with their "loss", instead of people who were kept in the dark and will presumably be considered as intruding. If the OP is feeling a bit weirded out then seeing that family now will just be a case of foot-in-mouth. If there's nothing to explain bar the personal grief process then things will return to normal soon enough. Maybe the kids will chat to each other and daughter will reassure OP.

The mother didn't 'pretend nothing had happened', she CHOSE not to mention it, two very different things.

As to the crying - so what if the child cries during a sleepover - all you'd need to do is listen and hold her hand... is that so hard? Children cannot and should not be protected from death - unfortunately it is part of life.

I am completely amazed that you have written what you have written - read it back to yourself, does it all still sound right to you in the cold light of day? If so, then I'm glad you're not my friend as I don't think I'd like what you offered if I ever hit hard times.

londonsurrey

cazmcf wrote: »

I would've thought that if your oh was sick you would try to keep the noise down?

Depends on the individual. As life ebbs away, some might find it comforting to listen to their offspring playing happily and boisterously.

cazmcf wrote: »

She said she would get her friend to bring dd home. Personally there is no way this would happen, I don't know this friend.

Good for you. Excellent judgement.

cazmcf wrote: »

There was also no sympathy cards in the house that weekend (3 days after the cremation)

I couldn't stand the sympathy cards and flowers. I gave the flowers away and dumped the sympathy cards in a pile. It wasn't a gentle death - it was out of the blue, and I wasn't ready for the useless sympathy - there were no actual offers of help in them, just "Yeah, he's dead, 'in he?". The senders had come to terms with it, I'd barely processed trying to resuscitate him, covered in his blood.

cazmcf wrote: »

the mother, daughter and son all stayed at seperate friends houses. As a mother I would want my children close.

There could be all kinds of reasons. Maybe it finally was a chance, in the run up to and after her husband's death, for the mother to finally get a chance away from her children, to wail, to howl, to not have to put on a front for them.

When my husband died, my very good friend stayed with me or took me to her house for the next few days. A couple of days after he died, she had to vanish for a day - this was to help deal with another friend who had died suddenly. For all you know, the mother had to deal with another dungheap of business on another matter - just because she's had an awful tragedy, it doesn't mean that something else life shattering wasn't going to happen as well.


How you bring up your daughter is your choice. You know children, they're sponges that soak up everything, and see more than we are always comfortable with, ultimately our most ruthless judges and mirrors.

This is your chance to show her what values you would want her to have. This is not a casual acquaintance she's heard about, this is her best friend. Do you want her to learn that when the going deviates a bit from the prescribed "happy shiny life" (i.e. narrowminded conformist nothing really goes too far wrong la-la land), the way to deal with it is to shun the people who have been zapped by Fate? Never mind narrow minded people, it will also be an ever narrowing circle of people that she knows.

londonsurrey

PS on a selfish note, when individuals opt for this way of life, when they in turn get zapped by something like Alzheimers or a severely disabled child, they stand a good chance of getting a little help from their circle of friends.

After all, they've spent decades ensuring that their circle of friends are people who shun people who are zapped, or don't have a problem with people who shun friends who are zapped.

January20

cazmcf wrote: »

There was also no sympathy cards in the house that weekend (3 days after the cremation) and the mother, daughter and son all stayed at seperate friends houses. As a mother I would want my children close.

I do feel terrible sorry for the family but still feel there's something not quite right.

It's a very British things to have cards for birthdays, anniversaries, etc. and especially sympathy cards (!!!) spread around a house! Back home, we would get a card, read it and put it away! Just because they live in the UK doesn't mean they will follow the customs and you shouldn't assume anything or judge them because of it. I certainly wouldn't have sympathy cards around my living room!