My aunt just died and I feel nothing.

[yagami]

This is the first time a close family member has died for me. I grew up going over to my aunts house and I visited her often as an adult as well. Since listening to Steph I view family very differently now then I did before and I cant seem to bring any emotion out of me about this.

 

I feel pretty empty about all this and I dont know why. I was treated well by her and she was always giving me advice (biblical mostly). She was the kindest old lady you would ever meet but I stopped seeing her recently.

 

Apparently my mother and her had a falling out around January about finances. I didn't know that my mom was paying for her home and other expenses because she couldn't afford it. My aunt ran up a bunch of credit cards and had to refinance the house to pay off the debt and my mom was on the hook for that.

 

I advised my mother to stop allowing my aunt to guilt her into feeling like she owed her for basically being the primary care giver for her growing up. My grandmother is just a terrible person in general so my aunt basically took care of my mom.

 

After my mom stopped talking to my aunt I stopped as well. I didnt want to be involved in that drama and I felt like I would have to avoid the topic of what happened between them which I've never had to do before. I was always able to say anything to her.

 

I feel like I should feel something about her death and I dont feel like the events that transpired are enough to completely erase any emotion I would have about her death. I dont know this is people dying thing is really new to me maybe it just hasn't hit me yet but I really feel like it will never hit.

 

Have any of you experienced a lack of emotion like this around death?

[J. D. Stembal]

It is very important to note that your aunt was religious and bilking your mother for money she didn't have. Also, more importantly, you weren't told about it. I would ask your mother why that is.

 

This is a fact in the story that bothers me because there was a multitude of events that occurred in my family that I didn't find out about until months or even years later. When you feel like you are always the last person to know, it means that deceit exists under the surface of your family relationships.

[DFPercush]

I had an uncle I was very attached to as a child, who died when I was about 10. I was surprised at myself, actually, at how stoically I took it when I heard. I made it through the visitation, funeral, and those days in general without any reaction at all. But then, suddenly, riding in the procession on the way to bury his body, I just lost it. I guess the reality of it hit me then. Let me give you a quote from an anime I'm watching called Planetes:  (spoilers)

"When you lose someone you love, there's no sadness. And there's no grief. You just don't feel anything. Nothing at all. You really don't think about it. It isn't good to think about it too much anyway. And you eventually have to say goodbye to everybody. And you don't know if that time will come sooner or later. ... If you don't think about it that way, it hurts, too much."

Episode 10 "A Sky of Stardust" roughly 10 minutes in

[yagami]

That's very true when I found out that my all this stuff had been happening under the surface I did feel like everyone had been lying to me about the true nature of the relationship. I felt like she was a very different person after I found that out. I bet if I never knew any of that stuff I would be much more sad. I've spoken to my sister and mother about it and we all feel the same way about her death and everyone mentioned the drama during the conversation. So I think that probably does play a key role here.

[Blackfish64]

Sometimes the financial funk works the other way around.  My Aunt Betty and Uncle Neil were wealthy, happy old folks.  They had no children, so they doted on their brothers and sisters children.  Spoiled them rotten, matter of fact.  Those kids were rotten to them.  They borrowed money and never paid it back, stole things from their wealthy home, etc.  And when in their dotage, they had enough saved for themselves to be cared for in a nursing home and made the mistake of giving power of attorney to the most treacherous little rat of them all, their niece, Mary Ann.  She robbed them blind of what was left of their fortune, even walking into the nursing home and stealing their wedding rings off their fingers, telling them it was for safekeeping, so the nurses in the nursing home wouldn't steal them.  She sold them and spent the money.  They died alone, broken hearted, and ruined, and separated from each other.

 

That same little rat was also keeping a family secret from her oldest brother, my Uncle Tom.  She found out many years before Grandma had died, from Grandma, herself (another treacherous rat) that his father wasn't really his father.  Grandma had boinked another guy while she was married to Grandpa and got herself preggers.  She never told Grandpa that Tom was not his son.  Mary Ann told Tom who his real father was and it crushed him to pieces.  He was a car salesman who loved his work, but was in a bad way because of a bad economy, struggling to take care of his family, etc.  Three days after he learned the news, he suddenly died of a massive heart attack. 

 

Now, the little rat who stole all their money and ruined them is pretty much in the same shoes as they were long ago.  She has lied to and stolen from everyone under the sun and no one trusts her or wants her around anymore.  She tried to commit suicide one day by driving her car out on some thin ice, only the ice didn't break through.  She got out of the car and was trying to slide herself under it, obviously trying to get feel-sorry-for-me attention from the onlookers, they later said.  Anyway, that old wretch will die alone in a heap somewhere, and no one will care.  The last time I saw her, one of the first things that came out of her mouth was to ask to borrow ten thousand dollars.  I laughed in her face and left her where I found her. 

 

I'd have no problem paying for a sweet old auntie who told me stories and loved me.  I don't care if she's broke at all.  She could move in with me anytime.  But my old auntie, well, she's on her own.    

 

Sorry to hear about your aunt.  Sounds like she was a sweet lady.   Poor thing.  Sounds like you will miss her.  

[Bilderberg CEO]

Sometimes it doesn't hit you until you go to the funeral. I was very close to my grandmother, and didn't really react until I saw her in the casket. But everyone is different.

[J. D. Stembal]

They had no children, so they doted on their brothers and sisters children.  Spoiled them rotten, matter of fact.  Those kids were rotten to them. 

 

I have trouble wrapping my brain around this. Children that are raised in a loving home don't go feral and start biting the hand that feeds them. If the aunt and uncle were often spending time with their nieces and nephews, where were the parents? Was it a "hot potato" arrangement where the parents are offloading all their kids on the childless couple?

[Blackfish64]

LOl. Yes, they were all "feral". That's courteous, generous, a nice way of putting it.

 

Betty and Neil sold my Dad one of their businesses at a huge discount to help him get started on his own. it was a small corner grocery. It always made a profit and operated in the black. Dad got hold of it and quickly destroyed it and lost it with his drinking and gambling and screwing other men's wives. Mom would take the bag of money out of the safe from the week's earnings and make the deposit slip and give it all to dad to deposit in the bank. He wouldn't be seen again for days sometimes. And when he showed up again, he was flat broke, angry, and had to beat up mom. And, of course, dad blamed Neil and Betty for selling him a crappy business.

 

"Feral". I like that.