Losing a spouse is one of the most difficult times in a person’s life, especially when the people around you are giving you a hard time. A poster on the popular AITA subreddit recently shared his experience with entitled members of his own family after the loss of his wife.
ProudFormal8139 asked if he was in the wrong for refusing to give his deceased wife’s clothes to his sister, in a situation that escalated to the point of including other members of his family. The man writes that his wife had been a corporate mediator, and had a lot of nice clothing that she unfortunately left behind after she died of ovarian cancer.
“She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and was gone in two years. The last six months of her life were hell,” OP said.
According to the author of the Reddit post, his sister couldn’t even wait for his wife to be put in the ground before she started asking for the deceased woman’s belongings.
“At my wife’s wake, she started asking about my wife’s clothes, and I brushed her off. She wanted to pick out a few pieces to “remember my wife by,” and I ignored her,” OP wrote.
Unfortunately, the author’s attempt at ignoring his sister’s insensitively timed request wasn’t successful. The next time he saw his sister was at their mother’s birthday party about six months following his wife’s passing. It was there that she cornered OP and began asking about his late wife’s clothes. He tried to shutdown the request by telling his sister that his wife wanted her clothes to go to a local women’s shelter that she’d frequently helped with. She wanted the women at the shelter to be able to find jobs, and her clothes would help them with those endeavors as well as for court appointments and other necessary events. OP’s sister didn’t like his answer and insulted his deceased wife, claiming that she was “selfish even in death.”
“I told my sister I would rather see my wife’s clothes lit on fire than on her back. My sister started crying,” the author wrote.
Unfortunately this encounter took place at their mother’s birthday party, and it attracted the attention of their mother — who unfortunately sided with the man’s entitled sister. This prompted the author of the AITA story to take back his mother’s birthday gift before leaving the party. Now he’s wondering if he’s gone too far, but he also feels “emotionally blackmailed” by his loved ones in a time of mourning the loss of his wife.
Reality check
There are life events that can bring the worst out of some people, and the death of a loved one is one of them. In the case of OP’s post, his own family members have shown to be incredibly predatory in the way they’re handling the passing of his wife. Instead of showing grace and offering emotional support during his period of grief, they are demanding handouts and freebies. It’s despicable that his sister had the nerve to approach him at his dead wife’s wake to begin asking for the woman’s belongings, and it shows that OP is surrounded by people with close to no empathy in his life. Not only is he not in the wrong for refusing his sister’s entitled demands, but he’d be better off going low to no contact with the woman, and possibly his mother (though to a lesser extent).
What would you do if you were in OP’s shoes?
Chelsea Hoffman is a true crime writer with over a decade of professional writing experience. She is best known for her coverage of missing people including the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann as well as the heartbreaking cases of Dylan Redwine, Heather Elvis and many others.
