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DEAR ABBY: Our dear mother recently passed away after an extended illness. We all knew it was inevitable, but it didn't make our loss any easier. My siblings and I were devastated, and we still are. The day of her funeral was especially hard.
One of our older daughters brought her children, our granddaughters (13 and 19 years old), to the funeral. While everyone else was dressed appropriately, one of our granddaughters wore tattered jeans with a loose top that exposed her belly. When one of her uncles mentioned her attire, she snapped that we had better things to think about. I was very upset and wanted to yell at her to leave, but my grief overcame my anger.
The whole time this granddaughter was there, she made sure everyone knew she was. I burst into tears, but that didn't seem to bother her. Rather than allow the family to grieve, it was more important to her that nobody was going to tell her what to do.
I want to tell her how we all felt about her attire and her attitude. I don't want to ruin my relationship with her, but honestly, if another family member passes, none of us wants to deal with her attitude while we are grieving. How do I tell her how disrespectful she was and that the time was not for her -- it was for us as a family to grieve? -- STILL SAD IN THE EAST
DEAR STILL SAD: Your granddaughter's behavior at her great-grandmother's funeral was atrocious. It was worse than her attire. The people who should "explain" proper attire and funeral etiquette to her are her parents, not you. Discuss this with them when you can do it calmly, since you and your siblings still are in pain, and your emotions are raw.
https://www.uexpress.com/life/dearabby/2022/06/28
One of our older daughters brought her children, our granddaughters (13 and 19 years old), to the funeral. While everyone else was dressed appropriately, one of our granddaughters wore tattered jeans with a loose top that exposed her belly. When one of her uncles mentioned her attire, she snapped that we had better things to think about. I was very upset and wanted to yell at her to leave, but my grief overcame my anger.
The whole time this granddaughter was there, she made sure everyone knew she was. I burst into tears, but that didn't seem to bother her. Rather than allow the family to grieve, it was more important to her that nobody was going to tell her what to do.
I want to tell her how we all felt about her attire and her attitude. I don't want to ruin my relationship with her, but honestly, if another family member passes, none of us wants to deal with her attitude while we are grieving. How do I tell her how disrespectful she was and that the time was not for her -- it was for us as a family to grieve? -- STILL SAD IN THE EAST
DEAR STILL SAD: Your granddaughter's behavior at her great-grandmother's funeral was atrocious. It was worse than her attire. The people who should "explain" proper attire and funeral etiquette to her are her parents, not you. Discuss this with them when you can do it calmly, since you and your siblings still are in pain, and your emotions are raw.
https://www.uexpress.com/life/dearabby/2022/06/28
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Okay, so first of all, there's actually a big difference between 13 and 19, and shame on LW for mentioning both granddaughters and not making it clear which one was dressed inappropriately.
But secondly... while I agree that whichever kid it is should have worn more appropriate, conventional clothing to the funeral, everything else about this situation is on the adults. (Or the older adults, as the case may be.)
Granddaughter did not make everybody pay attention to her, they chose to do that rather than to focus on the deceased and their own grief. And it's a bit hypocritical that they got mad at her for saying that they had more important things to focus on than her apparel, given that they apparently all agree with that sentiment.
I will go so far as to say that while Granddaughter's dialog is probably accurate as reported, I really doubt that she did anything else to call attention to herself or even have much of what a reasonable person would consider "an attitude". They all could and should have decided to ignore her sartorial choices. If she was trying to get attention she would have failed, if she didn't have other clothing or if somehow she thought she was appropriately dressed... well, she probably felt bad enough about that already when she realized her clothes were out of place.
But people at funerals can really hyperfocus on the wrong things. It happens. LW will hopefully let it go soon.
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There is something missing in LW's account, and that's the granddaughter's parents. Where are they? Did they tell her this was appropriate? Are they still around? Is granddaughter properly provided for and does she have appropriate clothes?
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(For that matter, *I* don't have a lot that's funeral-appropriate; I'd be wearing my black work trousers and a dark buttoned shirt, and that'd have to be enough.)
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I have no idea what this means, except that I am certain that if the LW jad any other examples of bad behaviour, they would have quoted them.
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and the only option she had made available to her other than jeans was a dress.
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(LW is well past "bitch eating crackers" and into "she was EXISTING at me! offensively!" and I am disinclined to believe that the kid actually did anything egregious, given that the worst LW can come up with is snapping about her clothes being criticized.)
Rather than allow the family to grieve
the time was not for her -- it was for us as a family to grieve
Also, WTF is this. She's not part of the family that's grieving? You decided she doesn't meet the dress code so you mentally disown her and treat her as an outsider? Someone's sure behaving badly at the funeral, but not who you think it is.
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Yeah, this. LW is an asshole, and is absolutely acting like her own grandchild is not part of the family.
Literally the only inappropriate thing the kid does in this entire letter is not wear formal clothing, and honestly, LW is such a nightmare that I don't know if tattered jeans with a loose top that exposed her belly is actually super-inappropriate casualwear, or if it's just, like, the kid's dressy jeans that have a slightly raggedy hem, and her dressy blouse that's a little too party-dressy not funeral-dressy.
Also we're not even told if the grandaughter had a relationship with her great grandmother, if she's grieving, herself.
LW clearly has prior issues with these grandchildren. Are they adopted, and LW is one of those assholes that doesn't think adopted grandchildren are real? Do they have a different religion or politics from LW? Does LW hate their other parent? (ETA: or stepdaughters? or they have two moms and the other mom was the bio mom? or surrogate? something to make LW feel like them coming to the funeral at all was inappropriate, which LW clearly did?)
But also, seriously, fire Dear Abby. What a fucking awful answer.
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Something else I noticed, re-reading:
When one of her uncles mentioned her attire, she snapped that we had better things to think about.
Somehow LW thinks an adult man commenting disapprovingly on a teenage girl's clothing is normal, unremarkable funeral conduct? But the teenage girl being understandably irritated by this unsolicited public criticism is OMG SO RUDE.
I'm getting this mental image of LW and the uncle and whoever else is included in "none of us wants to deal with her attitude" spending the funeral STARING at this poor girl's belly, making her exposed skin the center of attention at her great-grandma's funeral and then blaming her for being crabby about it. Uuuuugh.
(For the record, I think it's a good idea to dress in full-coverage dark clothing for a funeral if possible, but also other people's clothes should be waaaaay down on the list of things to give a shit about at said funeral.)
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Yeah, I mean, cultural and personal differences exist, obviously -- the particular Jewish minhag I was raised in avoids black, for example, and I've been to one funeral where we were specifically asked to wear bright and fun things -- but modest dark clothing seems reliably safe in most non-Hindu settings, I'm pretty sure. If you'd wear it to a trial where you're a defendant, you're probably safe.
But that being said:
yeah, I could not tell you what a single person was wearing at my dad's funeral, ffs. I could barely breathe.
(Also, not for nothing, but if your family doesn't attend religious services, there's reasonable odds that a teenager or young woman doesn't have funeral appropriate clothes, especially a growing kid during a pandemic. Lots of people that age have party clothes and casual clothes and that's it -- and during covid, why would a parent have spent money on a formal outfit that's likely to be outgrown before it has a chance to be worn?)
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Relatedly, I remember this coming up in the context of school dress codes a few years back and I don't know if styles have changed any, but I remember the point being made that schools with "no bared midriff" rules were absolutely failing to take into account that clothing manufacturers were pretty much not making any buttondown shirts/blouses in the women's/girls' section that were long enough to avoid baring the midriff if you did anything besides basically stand still with your hands at your sides--- they were just not making shirts for female-presenting people that were long enough to cover the midriff reliably if you so much as moved normally. So "midriff-baring" is a relative term.
And also, see: pandemic, the granddaughter may just not have gotten new clothes in a while, so what looks like "kids these days with their nasty disrespectful ripped jeans and short tops" could be that the jeans are old and that the top is close-to-outgrown (the latter is especially likely if it's the 13-year-old).
And to your point about color, it's possible that those were the only somber-colored things in the granddaughter's wardrobe--- if her taste runs to neons/pastels/bold colors/prints/something-else-I'm-not-thinking-of, she and/or her parents might have decided that "wearing the only things you own that don't look like a rainbow had a nervous breakdown" was more important than the newness of the jeans or the shortness of the shirt. I mean, would LW like it better if granddaughter had been wearing a neon floral muumuu or something?
Something I haven't seen anyone else mention here that I'm not sure if LW didn't highlight because LW takes it for granted, or if I'm off-base, but LW mentions that her mother's death was, as she puts it, "inevitable" and "after an extended illness", so something I'm hearing is that maybe LW took it for granted that of course everyone in the family would make it a priority in their budgets to make sure that they had appropriately funereal garments on hand, whereas LW's daughter, the granddaughters' mother, might have had other priorities (things that come to mind are food, shelter, medical care, and education-during-pandemic, you know?).
In any case, the best thing I can say about LW is that they're inappropriately displacing their grief onto granddaughter and at worst, you're absolutely right that LW on some level does not view this particular grandchild as a full member of the family who has just as much right to be at LW's mother's funeral (and even, gasp! to be noticed at said funeral) as any other member of the family.
(And, sorry, it's possible that this should have been a top-level comment; I was just piggybacking so much on your assessments of the sartorial issues that it felt right to put my own response into context with yours.)
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obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
Oh my good gravy, LW, get over yourself. There's a lot worse that could have happened at your mother's funeral, up to and including the priest[insert officiant of choice] accidentally knocking over the casket and setting it on fire with the thurible (true story, saw it happen, would like to never have to see it again, it was A THING, holy crap), so your grandchild showing up in jeans and a crop top is like, bottom of the scale.
AND PLUS PLUS ALSO you could have NOT HAD THE FUNERAL AT ALL, did you think about that? IT IS STILL A PANDEMIC GOING ON.
Ugh.
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
In Episcopal services, there's a fabric cover (called a pall) over the casket and it's usually got a fair amount of synthetic materials used as decorations. If you jostle the casket wrong and someone didn't lock the bier, it will knock itself over. Then the priest gets really freaked and drops the thurible which is full of charcoal and incense on the synthetic pall and it's such a bad time all around.
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
Twenty years later it is one of those events that you can look back at and compare to letters written to advice columnists and that's about the only laughter you get.
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
what. the. fuck.
oh my god you saw what.
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
I was, for a ridiculously long time, the only available acolyte for funerals (mostly because my mother saw nothing wrong with checking me out of school and as long as my grades were good it was seen as community service) and the things that happen at funerals, I swear.
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
WOW.
Re: obviously I have OPINIONS about funerals and pissy people, imagine that
there are way worse things to worry about and this LW isn't even close.
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Yes, LW, you did. Perhaps you could have focused on those things?
I’m seconding the commentary on the difficulty of finding funeral-appropriate dress clothes for kids, especially on short notice.
Hell, I had trouble finding something appropriate for ME on short notice when my ex-husband (still a close friend) passed away unexpectedly — I had to fly from TX to WI in January, I didn’t have a lot of WI-freezing-winter clothes because TX has much milder winters, and even though I’M A GOTH, FFS, that didn’t mean that I had a lot of dressy but MODEST black clothing.
(Most of my tops are low-cut, I’m an H cup and have cleavage in EVERYTHING, and all my black dresses showed more skin than I wanted for a Catholic funeral. I wound up wearing a scarf tucked into the neckline of a black wrap dress, with leggings and boots because of the snow, and I’m lucky that I still had a black wool coat from the years I’d lived in a cooler climate.)
My daughter is a size 20-22, we had a heck of a time finding her decent-quality suiting separates for *job interviews*, much less a funeral outfit on zero notice — she wore a black top, dark floral skirt, and purple coat, because it’s WHAT WE HAD AVAILABLE.
I admit, the grandchild’s attire doesn’t sound terribly appropriate, but the LW’s level of butthurt is extremely disproportionate to the offense.
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But that's an "if this is so important" case. And I don't think it was that important. I think that the letter writer allowed themself to be distracted from the funeral by staring at the "inappropriate" clothing. Gently, I would ask LW to let go of the preoccupation with appearances.
If there were behavioral issues with the teenager (I'm assuming it was 13, not 19, but who knows), tell the parents that the behavior was hurtful and disrespectful and in the future exclude children from funerals. If it was 19, speak to her directly. But it's on the beholder not to take notice of clothing, and with so little context or knowledge of what really went on, the letter is mostly pearl-clutching about Kids These Days.
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Beyond that, LW, as someone who has been crying at the slightest provocation lately, consider, perhaps, that your granddaughters apparel was just a tangential reason. You were crying out of grief! Which is fine, but is absolutely, 100% the wrong time to tell someone else they're the reason you're crying.
Just let this go until your equilibrium is better.
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(Also, I'm intrigued by the people upthread taking about their struggles to find black clothes for a funeral; none of the funerals I've been at in the past ten years have mandated black. It's usually sober and at least reasonably non-casual, but not particularly monochrome or even particularly dark - I have a timelessly boring black dress that's easy to modify for various things with tights/sweaters/accessories/etc so I usually just wear that, but sometimes I feel like I'm standing out by being *too* black and formal.
(except for the two most recent the Catholic one I went to last year for a very proper and crochety old lady who wanted bright colors at her funeral so I wore hot pink, and my uncle, who never wore anything but jeans after he retired and none of his brothers did either, half the people were in jeans and t-shirts at that one, do I just have a weirdly informal milieu?
Like people would still probably have griped at a crop top, but anything that passed the average high school's dress code wouldn't have been a second glance.)
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Several other people have said good things about teenagers and the lack of formal events the last two years.
LW is maybe focusing on the wrong things in her grief. May I suggest some therapy?
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"I want to tell her how we all felt..."
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