agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Amy: My father passed away recently, and I was responsible for planning the funeral, during COVID.

In order to minimize everyone’s risk, we chose to hold a church service and a graveside service.

Due to a mix-up with the time for the graveside service, several people who did not feel comfortable going into the church — including our adult child — missed the graveside service.

Our adult child is blaming us and will not return calls, emails, texts, etc.

I’m at a loss about what to do.

I am grieving my father and also the loss of a relationship with our adult child and their family.

We just want to have communication, and to be allowed to see our preteen grandchildren and our adult child.

Please help.

– Grieving

Dear Grieving: If there are things you wish you had done differently regarding the arrangements you made, you should take responsibility, apologize, and affirm your child’s disappointment and hurt over this mix-up.

You should also do some deep personal searching to see if there are additional incidents, episodes, or slings and arrows that might be lurking beneath the surface.

After you do your own personal inventory, you may conclude that your adult child’s current behavior is extreme and disproportionate.

That’s when you should soften. Every time you nudge and push, another brick goes into the wall.

They must work through their own feelings. Punishing you does not help them, but they don’t seem to know that, yet.

Assume that you do not know the half of what your child has been experiencing during this pandemic year (nor do they know or understand the enormity of what you’ve been through).

Make sure they know that you are willing to communicate about this. And then let it lie. Don’t give up on this relationship but do be very patient.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/askamy/s-2494710?fs

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Clearly Amy has her doubts about the timeline of events here. It may be the case that LW's child cut them off over a simple misunderstanding, especially given the context, but I agree that it's not the most likely scenario - or that if it was, then LW would probably know already that's what this person is like.

This is a pretty good answer: it acknowledges that there may be Missing Reasons on the LW's side, but there may not. It points out that this has been a hellish year for everyone, and both LW and Adult Child have been suffering in ways opaque to each other. It knows that LW -- aside from interrogating and making amends for any potential Missing Reasons, and being forgiving of Adult Child -- has remarkably little control over how Adult Child reacts to grief after this hell year.

Oh man, this is such a difficult one. I lost my father rather suddenly back in July so I definitely understand how much harder these decisions are - I almost stopped talking to my mom and one of my siblings because I had concerns about the number of people being invited to the burial (especially because two of my sisters couldn't attend because they live out of state) and I was berated for being "selfish."

There could be missing reasons, there may not be. It could be something as simple as the LW's son/daughter thinking "How could you let is start when I wasn't there yet?!" when the LW was too caught up in the grief-fog of the day to really notice anything, but it could also be that Words Were Said prior to the funeral, or that this was just the most recent event in a lifetime of neglect and ended up being the proverbial final straw.

I feel like this was really the best answer Amy could have given, considering the complications of the situation. Jeez.

Unless LW was directly responsible for the mix-up in the time for the graveyard service, she has nothing to apologize for. Your adult child is grieving, but so is she.

All of the blame here is being put on LW. I don't think that's right.