Grief has a way of showing people exactly who they can count on — and exactly who they can’t.

When a woman and her husband made a frantic 15-hour drive to say goodbye to his ill mother, a longtime family friend volunteered to come along and help with the driving.

But what they didn’t know was this friend was about to add 48 hours of complaints, poor planning, and added stress that the couple never asked for.

Keep reading for the full story.

Aita for telling my friend she shouldn’t have come on a trip

We got a call last Thursday afternoon that my mother-in-law had about 48 hours until she passed. She’d been sick a couple of months, but this was unexpected.

She lives 15 hours away and we couldn’t get a flight, so we drove.

So the couple called in a favor.

As I packed, my husband called a mutual friend who lives close to us. She’s known our families for 20 years.

She asked if she could come and said she’d help drive down there. We said yes.

But soon it became clear no one was on the same page.

I don’t know what she was thinking. She acted like this was a regular vacation.

She got upset that we didn’t want to joke around or stop multiple times on the drive down. She drove about 3 hours and complained the entire time.

We got to the hospital Friday afternoon. Only my husband and brother-in-law could go in to see her due to restrictions.

That’s when the friend’s complaining started to get even more annoying.

I was disappointed but was kind of expecting it. My friend and I sat in the parking lot and she complained the entire time about it.

She passed Friday evening.

A lot of things happened the next day and a half. Due to word count I can’t go into all of it, but it was a disaster.

then things went from bad to worse.

Sunday evening my friend told us she had to be at work at 8am Tuesday or she would be fired. She never checked with her employer about time off or anything.

I went off and told her that she should have checked before volunteering to come, and explained that she had put us in a very tough spot.

She just kept saying she can’t lose her job, and so on.

So the couple was forced to leave early against their will.

We left Monday afternoon because the services couldn’t be held immediately. My husband and I talked and said we would fly down for the service.

She asked if she could come. I told her she could, but it was her responsibility to get her own tickets and get time off work.

She said she wasn’t able to afford tickets and I told her that wasn’t our problem.

The whole thing started looking like a huge mistake.

I also said she should have stayed home because she just added more stress on us.

She did make it to work on time but has barely spoken to us since.

Some friends say I was too hard on her because she is also grieving, but the way I see it is she just caused more drama for my husband.

AITA?

This “favor” turned out to be a lot more trouble than it was worth.

What did Reddit think?

Attention-seeking people like this should be avoided at all costs.

This friend really didn’t belong on this trip at all.

A family’s passing is the worst time to make a situation about yourself.

This friend did nothing but make things harder on everyone.

Maybe the best thing this friend could have done would have been to just stay home.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.