Jesus, you were surrounded by socially clueless people on all sides on that one. Sorry to hear that they all made a very bad situation that much worse for you.
As bad of timing as that was can you put yourself in his place? Having just heard that he’s going to die he’s probably not even able to think straight. He’s not thinking “oh, she’s at dinner, I’m going to wait”, he’s thinking “OMG I"M GOING TO DIE . . . FREAK FREAK FREAK”.
I don’t think her issue is with her dad, but the reactions of everyone else.
I misunderstood., sorry. I shouldn’t SD and talk on the phone at the same time.
My issue is mostly with everyone else. My dad’s timing kind of sucked, but finding out you have cancer is such a huge thing. On the other hand, he’d known for weeks at that point, and he could have chosen to call me earlier in the day when he was more likely to be sober. On the other other hand, maybe he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it unless he’d been drinking. Liquid courage and all.
I just don’t understand how he and the rest of my family could seriously think all I’d say is “That’s too bad” and then hang up. Am I a horrible person and just completely oblivious about it? My friends and my relatives on my mom’s side of the family assure me I’m not, but sometimes I wonder.
I do have a story that fits the thread better. Way back in undergrad, my boyfriend and I went to the Grand Canyon and Sedona as a kind of “Yay, we’re graduating!” trip. The second to last day we’re there, while we’re in church waiting for the service to start, he tells me he doesn’t want us to be together anymore after we get home. So what, I was supposed to pretend like everything’s fine for the next day-and-a-half? We’d had such an amazing, romantic, beautiful vacation up to that point. I guess it was his last hurrah with me. Thank goodness our room had two beds. What a douchebag. I really need to stop dating douchebags.
When my (second) baby was about five months old, a friend told me a long story about how one of her coworkers. She’d been infertile and gone through IVF like we did to have a baby, and then returned to work. On her son’s very first day in daycare, he died of SIDS during a nap. They tried to call her, but couldn’t get through, so she drove to daycare to pick him up and found an ambulance parked and them trying unsuccessfully to revive him.
I had nightmares for months. My baby had been in daycare for a couple of months at that point, but who thinks this is an appropriate anecdote for a new mother? Especially when it starts with, “Oh, yeah, you did IVF, didn’t you? You know, I had this co-worker who did that, and…” I’m just glad I didn’t know her when my first was an infant and I was a much more anxious mother.
After reading several of these anecdotes, I have to share mine from the guest perspective. Three years ago, I attended the wedding of some very close friends. Just as I was about to leave my hotel for one of the pre-wedding events (a brunch, IIRC), I got a phone call from my mom that my grandfather had passed away. I attended the wedding the next day as planned, but then cut my post-wedding participation short and went home to catch a plane to where the funeral was. Somewhere between checking out of the hotel and getting on the plane – about 24 hours – I discovered that my one-and-only travel credit card had been defrauded and was frozen. I used another card, reported the fraud with my credit card company, and went on my merry way.
Now. My dog sitters were also at the wedding, so when I saw them at the pre-wedding brunch, I pulled them aside, told them what happened and asked if they would be home in time for me to drop off my dogs with them before I went off to the airport. Aside from making sure they could do that (giving myself time to make other arrangements if necessary), I never once mentioned to the bride and groom that A) my credit card had been defrauded and B) my enjoyment of their festivities was tamed quite a bit by the grief over my grandfather. In fact, I have never mentioned either one to the happy couple. Why should I? They retain positive happy memories of that day and telling them would only accomplish making them feel badly for a second, that I went through some icky stuff while they were going through their happy day. My opinion is that telling them – if there isn’t any thing they could do about either case – would be serving no other purpose than to make them feel badly and I am not that kind of manipulative. Why would I want to make them feel badly on my account, just for attention? I see no need, so I’ve never brought it up.
Now, although these two are part of Generation Snowflake™, they aren’t delicate little flowers, and telling them wouldn’t have ruined their day (unless I’d made a big dramatic tearful scene about it at the reception or something) exactly. I wasn’t trying to “protect” them from anything. I just didn’t see the need to bring my own personal downer to a celebratory event. Aside from my dogsitters, my grandfather’s death affected no one present but myself. As far as I was concerned, that and the credit card fraud were none of anyone else’s business.
And, no, I did not throw a pouty party after the fact to lament that my newly married friends didn’t bother to A) hear about it and B) make some sort of condolence to me. It wasn’t their family; it didn’t happen to them. And I could keep my shit together for a few hours, long enough to celebrate their marriage with them, and still make my travel arrangements to get to the funeral with a working credit card.