Funerals

What if OP loses her job and they need the money to pay the bills?

She'd take her employer to court for unfair dismissal.

How about her career? Doesnt it also matter

Why would taking a day off work, to attend her mother in law's funeral, impact on her career? She is entitled to annual leave. She can use that if necessary.

What if the daughter has an important exam/milestone in school? How does it impact her grades?

Razzle hasn't mentioned how old her daughter is but, here in the UK, there are no important exams until the summer term. Why would taking one day off school affect a term's grades? Its one day not a week, get a grip!

Grief is in fact a factor here but it cannot dictate the family decisions. He should go to gp, therapist, etc and address it

Maybe he will, once he's sorted out all the practical events that legally have to be completed before a funeral can take place.

I know I am assuming a lot of information

Yes you are.

Perhaps she should have told him the date in advance or gone with them. He might not have been thinking clearly.

If you have a position of responsibility and an important meeting involving a lot of other people you can’t just take a day off unless for instance you have covid or are confined to the loo. I know that only too well, having had to arrange my mother’s funeral to fit in with the conclusion of a very important project I was working on which quite literally would have fallen apart and been incapable of being resurrected had I not put my responsibilities first. It’s said that no one is irreplaceable but in some situations that’s the case. Some posters don’t understand that kind of pressure or they wouldn’t talk of not putting work first or taking a day off sick. I fully understand OP’s situation and consider her husband is being extremely unreasonable in refusing to change the date of the funeral. I hope she can get him to change his intransigent stance.

If OP loses her job? You can’t be serious.

He should have just rearranged the date when it first became apparent you couldn't attend because of your work meeting. I understand he's lost his Mother and you don't necessarily act rationally but it would have been easier for him to reorganise the date sooner rather than later

Paddyanne and a few more following. Thank goodness for you I thought I’d lost the plot with what I was reading……. A mother dies and her son who is organising her funeral is castigated by his wife at the date that is inconvenient for her!!!!!
I hope my children and their partners won’t ever feel like this.

I still don’t understand why the date cannot be changed. It’s the obvious solution.

How about the financial impact?

What if OP loses her job and they need the money to pay the bills?
How about her career? Doesnt it also matter?

What if the daughter has an important exam/milestone in school?
How does it impact her grades?

I know I am assuming a lot of information

It is just an example of looking at a very short term event ignoring the whole picture - especially when compromised is refused and it does exist

Grief is in fact a factor here but it cannot dictate the family decisions.
He should go to gp, therapist, etc and address it

Family funerals do not make daily life and commitments disappear

Precisely peasblossom

When parents died we both went to report the death. We could then decide funeral dates together. There is such a lot to get done in a short time. Difficult given the circumstances, and a little support and kindness goes a long way.

He didn’t know the day when he booked it.

The OP hadn’t let him know. Personally, I would have made accessing my calendar and informing him a priority, not have waited for him to initiate a “discussion”.

Razzy

I didn’t know the exact date when he asked me, I didn’t have my calendar with me, so we agreed to discuss dates. Never happened!

I agree with everything Allegretto says, especially as OP has said her husband did not in fact have that particular date in from of him as being inconvenient. .
Then again - an inconvenient date at work is hardly as significant as arranging the funeral of one’s own mother is it?
And I won’t even go into the thing about birthday drinks with girlfriends.

surely if her husband had wanted her support, he wouldn't have booked it on that day

Alternatively, her husband could have been struggling with the enormity of what he was having to sort out in the aftermath of his mother's death and maybe he wasn't thinking straight. Anyone who has been bereaved knows just how much there is to do, just at the time you're in a state of shock and trying to hold it all together - even if their loved one's death was expected. Just a thought.....

Peasblossom

The dead don’t know, but the living do.

They know when the the person they looked to for love and support wasn’t there for them.

?

then the living shouldn't make it impossible for someone to attend the funeral if they want them there!

Think in that case most woukd take a days annual leave

Forsythia

My MiL has just died. We didn’t have a particularly close relationship over the years but I will go to her funeral to support my DH, her son. It would not occur to me to miss it. All companies give compassionate leave for a family funeral in this day and age. Grandchildren, unless very young, can go to understand what happens. If the OPs daughter doesn’t want to go then she should not be forced to do so. There’s a lack of communication here but also a man is in distress because his mother has died, he is organising her funeral which, as we all know, is a complex thing at the best of times. Nights out with friends are unimportant in the context and circumstances and can be rearranged surely?

all companies DO NOT automatically give leave to attend funerals, it depends on the T's and C's of the employment contract

nandad

Razzy, you ANBU to have expected your husband to discuss the date with you before he booked the funeral and told other people before he told you.
Suggestions of not attending, sending a donation or flowers - this is your husband’s mother, not a distant relative. You attend funerals not just out of respect for the deceased but to support the bereaved. We are attending a funeral with a 4 hour round trip to support our friend, who has a large family, at her mother’s funeral. We only met her mum 4 times. I guess it depends on how much you love your husband.
Can’t you explain the situation to your employer and ask if you can attend the meeting over Teams or Zoom? You won’t be there for the whole meeting or for the whole funeral but it’s a compromise. I also can’t see an employer refusing your request.

surely if her husband had wanted her support, he wouldn't have booked it on that day?

You don't HAVE to go to the funeral and neither does your daughter. Your husband is not the boss and cannot MAKE you go. Did you ask your husband why he set it for the one day you couldn't be there?

As a matter if interest, I did not attend my mother in law's funeral and my (now late) husband didn't attend my mother's funeral. We have dogs and no one to leave them with aso one of us stayed at home and the other one went. Both mothers knew us well and would have completely understood. If its so important to your husband that you should be there, it was up to him to arrange the day so that you could be.

Razzy, you ANBU to have expected your husband to discuss the date with you before he booked the funeral and told other people before he told you.
Suggestions of not attending, sending a donation or flowers - this is your husband’s mother, not a distant relative. You attend funerals not just out of respect for the deceased but to support the bereaved. We are attending a funeral with a 4 hour round trip to support our friend, who has a large family, at her mother’s funeral. We only met her mum 4 times. I guess it depends on how much you love your husband.
Can’t you explain the situation to your employer and ask if you can attend the meeting over Teams or Zoom? You won’t be there for the whole meeting or for the whole funeral but it’s a compromise. I also can’t see an employer refusing your request.

Sorry, I think you are being insensitive.

I don’t understand why the date can’t be changed. It’s the obvious solution.

So if her dh wasnt aware the date was a problem, why does he refuse to change it?

How do posters justify his lack of willingness to make it work with OP?

Your husband was organising a funeral and may have been offered a limited number of dates and times, or maybe only one. He was probably agreeing to a time during his discussion with the funeral director and your work commitments were probably not something he was thinking about. I think that’s perfectly understandable, given the circumstances. Or perhaps he didn’t realise how important the one date (which he didn’t know?) was to you or thought that work would have to manage if you were ill, which would be the case. I think his actions were understandable. I do think that I would have expected him to try to rearrange the date, but maybe he had told too many people for that to happen. It would be my absolute priority to attend my MIL’s funeral and to support my husband on a difficult day - a day he will remember and relive many times.

Of course he should have got back to you to see if that date was OK.

I think it likely though that in the months ahead he will do some other very trying things because that’s the effect grieving has on a lot of people. I think my husband and children had to be very understanding after my mother died. I wasn’t on the ball at all.

Bereavement can be tough for everybody. It’s only love that sees us through?

It's strange that in all the time he was telling other people it never crossed his mind to let you know first.