Late add:
Or I’ve totally screwed up and ASSuMEd the OP is a man and she’s not. In which case …
[Emily LaTella]
Neverrr miiiind!
[/Emily LaTella]
:smack:
OP?
You partner’s mother is being a doofus re sheltering 16 year old and a 19 year old from a funeral. That age is more than old enough to deal with the fact that people die.
Having said this I really think you need to respect her wishes in this unless the kids were real close to her dead boyfriend (and you say they were not) you kinda, sorta need to respect her wishes in this. Just on a manners basis what the kids want in this specific context should not trump her wishes re her dead boyfriend. This isn’t an experience expanding field trip opportunity for the kids, real world it’s the funeral of someone they barely knew. Mother may be being silly but her wishes in this should be honored.
LSLGuy, I’m female. My partner and I are not married, which is why I say partner, but then saying MIL does confuse things. Sorry about that.
I think she would notice if we came, even if we came in quietly.
Yes, they do think of him like a grandfather. I think I might try this, and see what she says. If she still doesn’t want them, I think we will have to respect that. It’s not something I want to get into an argument about.
I just don’t really understand. Most people appreciate some extra support. My partner asked if there was anything he could do for her. Nope. Should he come down and see her. Nope. It feels so weird to me.
Agree, although I would not refer to her as “the old woman” to her face.
My mother’s grandparents (who raised her) died when I was very young (of “old age” two weeks apart). The only memories I have of either of them are horrid images of them at their funerals. I do not attend funerals, although I send a card/flowers/donation.
I didn’t attend many funerals as a kid, but they didn’t bother me. One could consider them an educational experience.
My first funeral, I was just about eight years old. It was my great-grandmother, whom I’d met but was not close with, because sh had dementia by the time I was old enough to get out with the folks. The thing I learned there was the grownups cry too, not just kids. I saw my grandmother, the deceased’s daughter, crying, and I was surprised.
My fault. In US parlance, “partner” is almost always code for “same-sex partner”. That’s becoming less true as gay marriage takes hold and gay folks are openly using “husband” and “wife”. We mostly use other words for hetero non-married relationships.
After my post I had second thoughts, checked your profile, and saw “Sydney”. I then realized that you using “partner” was the only clue for your sex. And I knew that in Oz “partner” is used as a much more generic term for all sorts of life arrangements, equally hetero and homo.
Hence my second post. :smack:
Dumb on me.
I’m a heterosexual male in a long-term relationship with a woman I’m not married to. There aren’t any good terms for us to use when referring to each other. I sometimes use girlfriend, but I’m 58 and it sounds funny. Significant other, partner, mate, blah.
Lately I’ve been introducing her as my wife, but I hate to lie.
People really need to reintroduce and reclaim the term “concubine”.
Well, “concubine” only works in polygamous situations. I don’t have multiple wives; I don’t even want one!
Round here, ‘partner’, implies business relationship before personal one I think.
The word you’re looking for is ‘spouse’, I believe. It’s accurate and does NOT necessarily indicate matrimony!
(32 yr relationship without the paper work!)
Funerals are for the living, but they are not the property of any one of the living; they’re not by invitation. Your eldest has the right to attend, for him it is part of the process of mourning, and if he’ll prefer to have you there that is also his right.
I would have said that, at 16 and 19, the children were old enough to speak to grandma on their own initiative, to tell her if they wanted to go, and then to see if she was still adamant. But since the funeral was back in February, that would be pointless!
??
The OP was two days ago and the man died 2 days before that, 4 days ago as I write this.
Did you get fooled by the US date format here on the SDMB? “12/02/2016” is Dec 2nd, not Feb 12th.
All the funerals I’ve been to have been crowded with people, from all sorts of tenuous connections with the deceased. Long lost cousins and old school friends who haven’t seen them in decades will often make the effort to be there if they can. It seems to me the right and common thing to do.
I’m not sure what I’d do in your situation. The kids are old enough to make their own decision, despite what MIL says, so I think if you plan to go, take them too, and the SO can stay behind if he wants. Funerals are personal, and shouldn’t be a social drama.
I have discovered the funerals are one of those weird family things that when you get partnered, you need to adapt your familial expectations onto the family of your partner.
For my family, a funeral involves a wake and a service (usually Catholic). EVERYONE goes to the wake, second cousins and babes in arms and neighbors - some of my mothers friends from high school who saw the obit showed up for my grandfather’s funeral- they hadn’t seen each other since high school, but they stopped by for ten minutes to tell my mother that they remembered her warm hearted father. You learn early about death (a wake isn’t a morbid occasion), you learn how to give someone a hug or a pat on the back and say “we will really miss Bob, I remember when he dropped everything to fix my snowblower - what a generous man.” Younger kids might skip the service - and only close family might go to the graveside. But the pattern and ritual are all there. And, there is an element of family reunion to these things.
I learned from my first husbands family that this is not universal. When his grandmother died, it was “morbid.” When my brother in law died, my mother in law didn’t see why people she didn’t know well, or who didn’t know her son well, might want to come to a wake - for her - a funeral was the close family and friends so close that they might as well be family. He died young - there were at least 200 people at his wake.
I’d respect her wishes and explain to your kids that families have different reactions. Then I’d take your kids out to the backyard and ritualize the planting of a rosebush or something.
I don’t care to go to funerals or weddings, so ANY excuse to get out of going is fine with me.
(Don’t go!)