How to Deal with Family Drama When a Loved One Dies

I never lost anyone really close to me ever until 2 days ago.  Only people that I knew that I seen sparatically or neighborhood associates, but nobody who was close to my heart.  My grandfather passed away and that is when all the drama began.

My family is distant and a lot of families are.  We rarely have family reunions, for the most part everyone stays close to their immediate family such as children and sisters and brothers, but don’t go beyond that. The only time people get “together” is when someone needs something.  My grandfather was a hard working and dedicated man and everyone in the distant family knew that.  So those relatives who decided to let their life just pass them by always had their hand out. He was always sick but he never showed it, he never complained, he just still pressed on and took care of his family no matter how close you were to him. But when he got ill unto the point where he couldn’t take it anymore and he began to suffer, very few people came to visit him or even ask how he was. I wonder if that’s because they knew he could not loan him $20.00 at the time. When he finally passed everyone posted Facebook status updates about him not suffering anymore and they were extremely sad, I sat back like “really”? Then people had the nerve to be upset about the way that they found out about him passing. Some felt as if my grandmother should have contacted them personally and tell the whole story about how and exactly when it happened.  They acted as if they did not know he was sick in the first place and that now someone is acting funny.  What happened to common consideration. People act is if they are grieving, but I guess I can understand because who will you run to now to ask for money now that he is no longer with us? The family was already distant and now it definitely won’t be any better.

I personally am trying not to become very angry and post rude remarks to peoples status updates, but it is a very hard thing to have self-control when you are grieving and people are just being plain ignorant.  So I ask myself “what do I do”? How do I stop myself from flipping out on everyone and just plain loosing it?

I must admit that I am no saint I hadn’t seen my grandfather in months, because I was embarassed about my personal situation. When I did go see him he passed away about 12 hours after I left him.  I had alone time with him and he held my hand so tight and he squeezed it.  I told him “granddad I’m here with you” and he had a far away look in his eyes.  I say this to say that we all have our memories of him and some may have guilt, but we must not undermine why someone has reacted they way they did at the time of someones death. It may be hard for everyone to just all of a sudden become buddy-buddy, but let’s have common consideration of each other just as humans. Let’s not judge others and what they are doing and how they are doing it, just accept them for what they are and go on.  Most importantly honor the person who is no longer here because they are in heaven looking down, shaking their head at all the chaos that doesn’t even matter in the end.

Toi J.