What is the most insensitive thing someone has said to you about your loss?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by gigicarol on March 20, 2011 at 7:52pm

A few weeks after I returned to work a friend asked me if I got angry when I watched older couples holding hands and growing old together, knowing that I wouldn't have that with Grady.   I remember shaking my head and thinking "did I really hear her right?"  

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by carolinagirl on March 20, 2011 at 10:04pm

Wow, Carol...I got that exact same thing.  Hope it wasn't the same person. I guess people just don't know what to say and they want to say something. That's what I chalk up the crazy remarks to anyway.  I just take it as someone who cares, but doesn't know what to say. I think a lot of our friends who still have their honeys watch us closely to see what happens to us and whether we will survive or just stop in our tracks. I think many of them wonder if our battle is their future and it scares them so they watch to see what happens to us when we have to go on alone. I take it  as a challenge to show them that we are strong women and we will go on like our honeys would want us to do.  Not fun....Not easy....but we have to do it so we  do....just like we did all that we had to do in the journey that brought us to this place being there through the long illnesses that our honeys had to endure.  Goodness, girl, we have to get together for supper soon..We have so much to share with each other.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Krista Westervelt (whoknows) on March 21, 2011 at 11:37pm

Two weeks after my husband died, a woman told me, "You're young. You can get a new husband."

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by WidowDiva on March 22, 2011 at 8:11pm

I had somebody say, "Well, just think of it this way. If you had divorced him, you would have only gotten half the house."

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Mary0830 on March 22, 2011 at 8:13pm

This is not so much insensitive - as made me laugh.  I called up the Wall Street Journal to cancel, explaining i had purchased it for my husband, but he had passed away......  The person on the line responded with "is this permanent or temporary."  I have to think when she hung up, she probably banged her head on a table or wall...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by postal widow on March 22, 2011 at 8:33pm

its almost as great as the american heart association calling up and asking for him by name, and then asking what he died of, cardiac arrest, and she replied, well that is just the reason we need a donation then. I hung up.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Mefree48 on March 23, 2011 at 7:22pm

There were so many comments. But the two that hurt the most were from my mother and a co-worker. My mother liked to make a point by saying,"You'll never have it as good as you did!" My co-worker kept telling me,"At least he died loving you and didn't dump you for someone else." I feel like I was spending a long time trying not to get mad at the people that should have been comforting me.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by postal widow on March 23, 2011 at 11:15pm

I would not blame you a bit for all of that! sometimes I feel there should be a signed card to hand out, please if you have nothing nice to say to a widowed person, say nothing at all!!!!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Deb on March 23, 2011 at 8:51pm

I think I had all the normal stupid replies... "he'll always be young", "it was fate", "when your time is up, your time is up", "you'll just get another man", "friends coming on to me - like I needed THAT", "aren't you over it"...  Most people have been great, compassionate, empathetic - then there are the ones who simply don't have a clue...  I lost a 20 year friendship with a person, who just couldn't understand that my world just fell apart, that I'm on a journey with no map and no clue to where I'm going, nor who I am .  I just gently explained to her that I just don't have the strength nor the energy to help her through this and left it with I'll call you when "I'm better" - which is right after I get to the drug store and buy that new product "grief be gone"... 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jill on March 24, 2011 at 10:12pm

I was pretty impressed with how people responded after my husband's death, but I was really irritated by one of my neighbors when my husband was undergoing cancer treatment. Everytime I walked by her house with my little kids she would ALWAYS have to stop me and ask in grave tones how my husband was. I really didn't want to constantly discuss it with her. One time in the grocery store she actually asked: What's his prognosis? Ugh. We aren't even good friends. Now, she was a young cancer survivor herself, so I think she got a little overly involved. Eventually, I actually told her I didn't always want to talk about cancer, that I actually liked talking about all kinds of things still. I think she didn't like that. But I really felt like I had to do it for myself because I knew she wasn't going to stop.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Wendy on March 25, 2011 at 9:54am

At my husband's visitation, a girl who had gone to high school with us told me about how my husband picked on her when they rode the same bus together.  Okay....so are you here to support me or to make sure your nemesis is actually dead?  I just muttered, "I'm sorry...?" I had no idea what she wanted me to say to that.  Sorry for what my husband did 20 years ago when he was an adolescent.  Thanks for sharing that wonderful memory.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Skylark on March 26, 2011 at 5:11pm

A couple of weeks after Philip died, one of my sisters, who had been very supportive up until then, suddenly fell apart on the telephone one day, and started bawling her eyes out about what she was going to do when HER husband died. How she would be all alone, with no one to take care of her, because he is so much older than her (nearly 20 years), and she would end up in a nursing home staring at the walls all day when she was old, because SHE didn't have children to take care of HER.

  I was stunned. Hello, Jen, your husband is still alive! MY husband is the one who died here.

 

 You can add to that my inlaws meeting me outside my dying husband's hospital room, greeting me with the announcement that I could expect no financial help whatsoever from them (I hadn't asked), because they had been "more than generous" with us in the past (they sent us a check once for a couple thousand dollars as a surprise, which we used toward new kitchen cabinets.)

   Then my multi-millionaire father-in-law added that, of course, if I needed money, I could always borrow from Philip's IRA, which is the second worst piece of financial advice he ever gave us. The worst was when he told Philip he didn't need to bother with a will, and could save himself a couple hundred bucks by not having one made out. We already knew, by the way, that Philip had cancer, and both of these men were lawyers.

  So, Philip saved himself "a couple hundred bucks," and it has cost me over $10,000, which I can't spare, because Daddio also told Philip three months before we found the tumor to cancel one of his life insurance policies because $500,000 was more than enough since the kids were grown.

   I am supposedly supposed to inherit Philip's share of my father-in-law's estate. I have seen the will. I am not holding my breath. I am sure the will was changed as soon as my husband's ashes were placed in the columbarium.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• …
• 91
• Next ›
• Page