If there’s one certainty in life, it’s death.

It’s sad but true – and because all good things come to an end, we’re all going to experience the painful and oftentimes confusing process of grief at some point in our lives.

Grief is messy, it’s complicated, and it’s wholly unpredictable – that’s why we generally give those around us plenty of grace when they’ve suffered a loss.

But grief doesn’t excuse bad behavior – and as the woman in this story has found out, grief can turn the people we thought we knew into a whole different version of themselves.

Read on to find out what happened here.

AITA for not being “sad enough” about my grandma’s partner passing?

My grandma has always been into men that are a significantly older than her.

My grandpa was about twice her age when they met, and though he lived into his early nineties, he died thirteen years ago leaving her as a widow in her early seventies.

She then reconnected with someone from her youth and after he was also widowed they became a couple in 2017.

Her partner, who I will call Bill, was a great person – kind, friendly… and fourteen years older than grandma, but he was the one that got away, so we all shut up.

Then, things changed for this family.

COVID hit, and they went mole mode even after the pandemic. You were not even allowed to visit if you had as much as a sniffle.

Bill died mid December at the ripe age of 98 from something that is normal to die from at that very old age.

Honestly, I did not have a close relationship with Bill. I liked him, but he was not family to me because we hardly ever met since 2020 – and when I’ve been over, he has not been in conversations for about three years, he just sat there and listened or took a nap.

My grandma is reasonably sad, and we try to be here for her. Unfortunately she is the type of person who lashes out when sad.

Read on to find out how her grief is affecting her family.

I visited her the other day and chatted and all, and somehow she asked me why I did not seem to be grieving at all and told me how terrible I am since he was sort of a grandfather to me.

I tried to change the topic and talk about how I am generally not the person to display big feelings in public, but she nailed me down.

In the end I had to admit that it is a pity he died, but 98 is very old age, his health was declining for months and while I liked him, he did not feel like a grandfather to me.

I tried to be as kind and careful as you can be with such a statement. But I have seen him maybe ten times since 2020, and he has never integrated into our family.

And that did not go down well with Grandma.

That is when she exploded in my face, calling me all sorts of terrible things and asking me how I could be so cruel because I even call my maternal grandma’s partner grandpa.

I tried to explain the difference: I never knew my maternal grandpa, he has been with grandma for 25 years – so most of my life, he is at every family event.

My maternal grandma’s partner really FEELS like my grandpa, so I asked years ago if I could call him grandpa since he felt like it, and he happily agreed.

Even though I explained this, she was having none of it.

Yikes! Read on to find out how she’s feeling about this now.

Generally I am not one to lie about this stuff. I think feelings should be communicated clearly, and honestly and I would also never claim to be close to Bill as a grandchild when he has real grandchildren (who grandma does not like).

I am sure he did not consider me his granddaughter, so it would not have been stretching the truth or anything, it would have been a lie.

But in the last days I have been thinking if I should have lied because she is grieving and I have been feeling terrible for upsetting her further.

Was I wrong for telling her kindly but truthfully that I am not as sad because I did not consider him a grandparental figure?

AITA?

Grief is a personal thing, and it was absolutely wrong for this woman’s grandmother to tell her that she’s doing it wrong.

It’s completely unfair to expect another person to grieve in a certain way – grief is not for public display, it’s a natural process that everyone does differently.

And to try to amend their relationship in retrospect is completely unfair. If she’d wanted Bill to be closer to her grandchildren, she needed to facilitate that while he was still alive.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person thought that the grandmother was entirely in the wrong.

But others thought the granddaughter could have handled things better.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that Grandma had an ulterior motive.

It’s really sad that her grandmother has lost her second partner, and it’s understandable that she’s experiencing complicated emotions while she grieves.

But acting this way toward her grandchild – who was visiting her selflessly – is not the way forward.

She should never have pushed her granddaughter this way, it’s very unfair, and she’s responsible for the regrettable consequences.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.