I posted about a week ago about my dear uncle, who passed away in the night at the hospital after his cancer took a sharp turn for the worst. Everything happened very quickly, just three short weeks ago he was diagnosed, and he’s been gone a week and a day. Our family has been stunned, sad, stressed, relieved, and sad some more for these past few hectic weeks, as one can probably imagine.
Two weeks ago, shortly after my uncle was diagnosed with cancer, a strange “friend” of his appeared on the scene. None of us had ever met her before, but she was very pushy, very bossy. She came in and tried to “take charge” of everything, going to his apartment while he was in the hospital and taking his cellphone and wallet (what?), and trying to be the big… hell, I don’t know what she wanted to be, exactly. It was all a little confusing, but we figured, well, she must be a friend who wants to do something for him, and if she’s willing to help out, that’s not a crime.
However, a day later, things got truly bizarre, as she called up my grandmother (my uncle’s mother) and started saying nasty things to her, telling her that my uncle didn’t feel loved by his family, and always felt he was a “black sheep” in the family, and that she didn’t do enough for him (this woman claimed to have cleaned up my uncle’s apartment for him, claiming it was a “huge mess”, the day *after * my mother and grandmother had brought him some homemade food and cleaned the whole place top to bottom for him). This upset and depressed my poor grandmother, who had no idea that her son felt that way, and here he was dying. She called my mother in tears, telling her what this woman said to her. Now, my mother is very close to her family, including her brother (my uncle), and was shocked to hear this. Hell, so was I. All of us were. We were always close, and took care of each other. My uncle had some hard times, and we always took him in for holidays and celebrations, sometimes going out of our way to include him, because he was all alone (never married, lived alone). So my mother told my uncle what this woman had said to my grandmother.
My uncle got very angry at this woman, and he asked to borrow my mother’s cellphone. He called her up in front of mom, and he told her to bring him his wallet and his cellphone right now. When she arrived, he took his stuff back from her and handed them over to my mother. Then he told her he was very upset with her for saying such awful things to his mother, who never did anything wrong and didn’t deserve to be spoken to that way. She mumbled some apology, but mom said she looked angry. My unce demanded that she not speak tohis family in this disrespectful way ever again, and to get out. She left, and he apologised to my mother, saying she wasn’t really a friend at all, she was just someone he’d worked with for a year and she sort of pushed her way into his life. He just couldn’t get rid of her.
We figure that yes, maybe he did say something at some time to her, when he was feeling down (he was often depressed), and maybe sometimes he did feel like the black sheep of the family. We all have complaints about our families once in a while, and sometimes we say things we don’t truly mean, sometimes to people we shouldn’t have vented to. Either way, he obviously did not mean those things, whether he said them or not, and *if * he had confided any such thing to her, he had obviously expected her to keep that confidence.
So she disappears for a very short while. My uncle was surrounded by wonderful family and friends, people who were kind to him, people who loved him, and he appreciated everyone being there. One fellow told him he was going to buy him a pizza and they would have a pizza party the way they used to - and he did! He brought my uncle pizza, and though he could only eat a little bit, he was so thankful for friends like that - the ones who said they would do something, and then actually did it. On the day of my uncle’s funeral, one old friend was supposed to get married that day, but instead cancelled the wedding to attend the funeral (and his future wife is an absolute sweetheart about it). Through all of this, not hide nor hair of this woman “friend” of his was to be seen.
The day after the funeral, she calls my mother. Why? To complain about the obituary the family had written up about my uncle. Apparently, one of my uncles who had written up the obituary had gotten his previous job title wrong, and, according to her, “the people at the company are very upset about this!”
Well, you know something? The company that was written up incorrectly in the obituary *fired him * when he asked if he could take a couple of weeks off because he was sick (before he was diagnosed with cancer, he was having a hard time walking around, his hips were giving him a lot of trouble, so he had to go to the hospital for lots of tests). Why is the family supposed to care about them?
My mother, saint that she is, dealt with her politely and respectfully, but this woman kept her on the phone for an hour, telling my mother she knew my uncle well, that they were so close, that she knew that he was close to my mother… okay. Then she asked if she could have a picture of him. My mother said sure, and asked for her e-mail address. The funeral was quite expensive, so a few prints of a very lovely photo of him were blown up and given to his immediate family, and the rest of us were sent the same picture via e-mail so we could do what we liked with it. It’s expensive to have those pictures done up professionally and framed, so my father made up a few for my grandmother and my uncle’s brothers.
But this was not good enough for this woman. She wanted a print, too. She said she didn’t have a printer.
My dear mother is in mourning, and this woman keeps harrassing her over the pettiest things. She calls up other family members to, apparently, brag about how well she knew him, probably better than the rest of us. This is quite tiring.
And now, today, I check my e-mail…
There’s a silly little photo sharing service type dealie that an old friend from back home sent me so we could share photos and current contact information. I signed up, just to keep in touch with this friend. I didn’t put my information up, but I posted a few pictures, so as not to be a spoilsport.
Apparently, this woman is on this service, too. And in my e-mail, there are several requests, through this service, for my contact information from her. The requests look automated, not written by her, and all the emails are the same. It’s like she’s sending them every hour, spamming me with requests for my contact information.
What the hell?
I have never met this woman in my entire life. I wouldn’t know her if I saw her on the street. Does she want to be my newest bestest buddy? Does she want to bitch me out for not being able to see my uncle before he died, which is hard enough on me as it is? (I’m not yet allowed to leave the country, though I have asked for permission, it hasn’t been processed yet - nobody knew he was going to die so soon, and I had been hoping to see him before Christmas.) I’m thinking, given her short history with my family so far, that this is what she wants to do.
My husband, who has been supportive and loving to my whole family during this whole thing (having lost his own mother to breast cancer when he was only 12), has of course, been hearing about this woman and the hard time she’s been giving my mother and grandmother since the beginning. The moment he heard she was e-mailing me, he got very angry. He’s ready to bite this woman’s head off, and give her a speech on being respectful to my family, and to leave his wife the hell alone.
What kind of person does this? We are in mourning. We don’t know her. And quite frankly, we don’t want to know her.
What the hell does she want from us?
