You're family member dies and you don't hear from certain people
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I think you're right. We rarely hang out except for family gatherings on holidays, so this is probably his way of saying something. Still, if he doesn't know what to say, it's really easy to copy and paste the "sorry for your loss" or similar that the 10 other people wrote on my status update. There's really no excuse for not mentioning it.
You might consider going then, to see if that's the first thing your cuz says to you. Chris will be there so you have a little backup for your emotional turmoil. If Stan does not acknowledge your brother's death then just excuse yourself saying that due to your brother's death you don't feel like continuing on watching the game.
I somehow stumbled upon this thread while searching for a totally unrelated keyword.
However I can't help but add my 2cents, which is that the only heart that I think should be examined is yours.
You say your father moved to FL ten years ago or so. I'm sorry but friendships that initiate and develop when you're already 60ish, 70ish or older, generally aren't going to be as strong as ones that have lasted a lifetime from childhood or young adulthood. Also, let's be real, social acquantices may not always be true friends. Retired men who are passing the time together by playing golf, cards, or fill-in-the-blank activities may spend hours together, but it doesn't mean there is a strong deep bond of true friendship. By the time men get to be that old, they have so much of their own emotional baggage, heartbreaks, regrets, not to mention physical problems, that forming a new deep friendship may simply not be possible, regardless of how much time was spent in each others company.
A person is lucky, very lucky, if at the end of his life he has 1 or 2 really true friends, and those usually are people that have 30-40-50 years of relationships. I think you have overestimated the depth of these "friendships" your dad had. And I think it is utterly silly to judge them based on whether you got a Hallmark card in the mail.
Did you have a funeral or memorial service in town? Did these whom you are talking about attend? If yes to both then I don't know what you are talking about.
If you had a memorial service and they did not attend and did not express anything to the survivors then sure consider them unthoughtful, but I also think it exposes the fact that these "weekend friendships" among 70-80 year-olds aren't true friendships, and it's no surprise that the people you have heard from are his long-time friends from NY.
Let it go, it is what it is, nothing good will come from an uncomfortable conversation as to why someone hasn't come to hug and coddle you in the wake of your dad's death. The fact is, that is what family is for, everyone else, sadly, just moves on.
I agree with the above but have a similar situation.
My 102 year old Mom who lived in the same house for 60 years had neighbors(man and wife) who came over to help her, and talked to her almost every day. When Mom had an accident in the house, they took her to the hospital and called me at 3 AM. They gave her Christmas gifts and then, when she passed, they did not attend the wake or funeral or send a card or anything. I was truly surprised but in my own mind, I put it away, thinking they just must have their own problems and that was that. Never heard another word from them.
Some people stay away because they feel they don't know what to say.
Sometimes just showing up is enough.
When I brought my wife home for funeral and burial last month, some of the friends /relatives had a lot to say ( we had been out of that area for a year and half)
A former neighbor of us ( that I always talked with a lot) was there with his wife.
He shook my hand firmly and simply said my name as he nodded his head.
That gesture was understood by me and about as sincere as one can get.
Hi. I lost my 17 year old daughter a number of years ago. I gave her eulogy and in it I told everyone that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather. I shared this because her mental instability was directly related to this abuse. My mother never acknowledged this crime although it was reported to the police. Well--let's go forward. NONE of my family came to my daughter's wake. My sisters NEVER called or sent a card during the ensuing years. I just got the guts tell them how much I am hurt and dismayed by their lack of empathy. But I digress. I am writing this to you to tell you DON'T WAIT to tell these "friends" that they HURT you with their silence. I had one sister tell me "I just couldn't handle it". This is just plain SELFISH and shows a lack of empathy. Go right ahead and tell them how you feel. Everyone who dies deserves respectful remembrance by those who cared about them. ElizabethAnne
But what does that have to do with not having the common courtesy of calling the family or sending a card and saying you're sorry to hear that your loved one has passed?????
I'll be the first to admit, I'm probably wrong here but, I have had 3 aunts die in the last two years. In each of those cases, there was no funeral, no memorial, nothing. They were here one day and gone the next. I understand people not wanting a public viewing of the body etc. but when someone dies, family and friends need to grieve. Even if it's just an informal memorial service in which people gather to speak, there needs to be closure. In my aunts cases, I did not send a card or anything else. My deceased aunts have several living siblings who are all in their 80s and 90s, dealing with their own mortality and they lost someone very close to them who didn't allow for any type of collective mourning. In my opinion, it is cruel to do to a family. It's not as if the deceased has to show up!
I'll be the first to admit, I'm probably wrong here but, I have had 3 aunts die in the last two years. In each of those cases, there was no funeral, no memorial, nothing. They were here one day and gone the next. I understand people not wanting a public viewing of the body etc. but when someone dies, family and friends need to grieve. Even if it's just an informal memorial service in which people gather to speak, there needs to be closure. In my aunts cases, I did not send a card or anything else. My deceased aunts have several living siblings who are all in their 80s and 90s, dealing with their own mortality and they lost someone very close to them who didn't allow for any type of collective mourning. In my opinion, it is cruel to do to a family. It's not as if the deceased has to show up!
I'd like to provide a different perspective to this. A couple of years ago, my husband was horrified to learn how much funerals cost these days -- I guess he hadn't been paying much attention to this topic but when an acquaintance passed away we somehow learned the cost of his funeral, and that led to learning the average cost of funerals. My husband said at that time that when he died he wanted to be cremated and he did not want me to have a funeral for him because he thought that funeral homes were a big rip-off and he didn't want me to spend a lot of money on that. He felt very strongly about it.
So when he passed away two months ago, I was very aware of his wishes on the subject. Add to that a couple of other facts: I was with him when he died, so I didn't need any further "closure." And we had recently moved to a new location where we knew few people. All our old friends and most of our family were hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.
I spoke to his two grown children (who live over a thousand miles away) and asked them what they thought I should do about a funeral. They said whatever I decided would be OK with them.
So I arranged with a local funeral home to have my husband cremated, and I had no funeral for him. When it came right down to it, knowing my husband's wishes, I didn't want to spend over $10,000 so far-flung family and friends could spend more money flying here for a funeral (or feeling guilty about NOT flying here for a funeral). Some more distant relatives were not happy with my decision, but it was just too expensive, and it's not what my husband wanted anyway. I'm at peace with it.
I would agree that in your case circumstances were different. However, I don't think anybody should feel obligated to shell out thousands of dollars for a funeral. But one can ask their church for use of a multipurpose room or church hall for an hour to allow family and friends to gather and share memories, without paying much if any money. In my family's case, everyone lived within 20 miles of one another. So imagine being 87, losing 3 sisters that you have been close to your entire life within 6 months and not having any memorial. Simply a phone call, "by the way Ruth died today, she's being cremated, there won't be any service". I guess I just don't understand why the family wouldn't want to come together in some way. We celebrate births, marriages, and deaths I always thought, we celebrated that person's life and mourned our loss. Not sure why folks don't think it's important?
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Lack of response from family
