Not been informed of a bereavement.

My children and I weren't told when their father died. I found out during my Epithany moment: waking up at 3:00 am last week compelled to search for his obituary notice.

The news was devastating but, even more devastating, was the fact that he had actually died four years earlier. He had taken his own life.

Unbelievably, his legal wife was also unaware of his passing. We had to break the news to her.

I'm still incredibly angry that my ex-husband's partner made no attempt to contact either myself, our children or his second wife.

No immediate family attended his cremation service.

I'm still incredibly angry. He was my first love at 16 and I'd known his wonderful family since I was 8 years old.

We had three beautiful children and he was a grandfather to one boy (6) and two girls (2 and 1).

Life can be so incredibly cruel. I'm still incredibly angry with him. Not surprising really.

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I agree Facebook is not the way to pass on such news. In the past when we've had to do this we made up a list of key people to contact and divide up the phoning. Of course there's still newspaper intimations too but I suppose young people won't be looking at them. ?

I would not use Facebook for family bereavements. Personally I don't think it is appropriate. In the past I have asked family members to contact others which seems acceptable. Facebook causes an awful lot of trouble when it comes to family events. Im also amazed at the personal stuff people put onto it.

I have not been informed of the sudden death of a friend. This was a long time ago, before mobiles but she knew my number off by heart and vice versa. We lived about 60 miles apart and when family were going through her address book I wasn't there, it was more acquantances and the plumber sort of thing. They were mortified about it but it wasn't a deliberate snub. They were grief-stricken and it was just one of those awful things.
I felt I hadn't said goodbye properly so I organised a picnic and a bottle of wine with another friend of hers in a favourite spot and we reminisced and laughed and cried and talked and laughed again until the sun went down. I really recommend doing this.

Thanks for the replies to my original post.
Zsarina - you have offered sound and sensible advice, thank you.
I shall now focus on the memories that we have of my brother in law, but still very sad about his passing.

Thanks for your blunt unhelpful post Kitty 1951. Do you think that I hadn't thought that? Question is why would they not want us there as there had been no falling out or disagreements.
We could have been told and also told that it would a committal for very close family members - wouldn't have had an issue with this.
Thanks also for making what has been a black depressing day for me even worse.

They don’t want you there obviously.

I thought that I had been meticulous in contacting everyone that I could when my dad died.
However, there was one dreadful omission - I asked a friend of my dad to inform another friend. The 2 friends were neighbours, and I didn't have a phone number for friend 2. I asked friend 1 for it and she said 'oh, I'll jut nip over to tell them'.
I was slightly surprised not to see friend 2 at the funeral, and mortified when they rang me that evening to say 'sorry they had missed the funeral, but only saw the notice in the paper that morning, so couldn't get time off from work'. I apologised profusely, and in my distress said that I had asked friend 1 to tell them (not nice to pass on blame). I should add that friend 1 was not elderly or ill, but was, apparently unreliable.
So difficult.

my best friend died 3 years ago i think and her hubby a few weeks after. i was never told till the christmas. then only her daughters had so many cards messages for christmas ,that they thought i suppose we better tell everyone. was so gobsmacked when i heard. i couldnt believe that my best friends daughters never told anyone......

My father died 3 weeks ago and I only got to know he was ill because my sister’s eldest son rang my eldest and told him my father had gone into a hospice.
We’d had a row on the phone about a year ago (I live over 200 miles away) and because I was always afraid of him I just didn’t ring him.
Just after he married my mum he was sent to India and by the time he came home I was 4 months old, it took him 4 days before he would even look at me, never mind hold me! My mum cried to my gran...is there something wrong with my baby, D won’t even look at her! And so after that I was the butt of his hand and foot, trying to kick my high chair over because I was banging my spoon on the ‘table’. I remember him throwing spiders in my face age 2, giving me a good hiding for eating his strawberries, at the age 8 dragging me out of bed for stealing his lemonade or his sweets when I protested he gave me another hiding for lying to him, it was my younger sister all along. She would just flutter her eyes and say ‘it wasn’t me daddy’! It didn’t matter what it was I always got ‘the punishment’. He even blamed me because mum wouldn’t have sex with him, when I asked her about it she said ‘no, I wouldn’t, after the way he treated you I didn’t want another child for him to abuse. Asking about my sister she said he’d got her drunk at an RAF do.
I tried to run away when I was about 11 because I thought I wasn’t his child but I made the mistake of telling my friend, who told her mother and she stopped me as I got to the end of the road!
I did go to see him in the hospice but by the time I got there he was pretty much unconscious. If my sisters son hadn’t had a bit of a conscience I wouldn’t have got to know about his dying and I’m disgusted that my sister couldn’t be bothered to let me know but I suspect she was under orders from my younger daughter whom I now call my ex-daughter, she fell out with me after I spent 2 years looking after her and her 2 babies and husband. She treated me worse than a slave and I got that I couldn’t take anymore from her. So I left my flat near her (She’s disabled) and moved up north.
Sometimes the slightest thing can stop someone from giving you the information you should have but I don’t accept that they have too much to do etc as the reason for not letting you know. My ex-daughter obviously took charge of the funeral because there was even a message from the son of an old (dead) friend of my father’s whom he hadn’t seen for about 30 years! Yet I wasn’t even asked to contribute, seems both my ex-daughter and my father have managed to poison the rest of the family against me and I have to just accept that I am NOT and never will be part of the family!
Black sheep springs to mind!

When my father passed away, I tried to contact as many people as I could (even managing to find a friend via Facebook although we didn't actually post anything about his passing on there) but at Christmas six months later there were two Christmas cards sent to him - one person I had tried to contact but couldn't get hold of as they had obviously changed address and phone number; the other one was a daughter of an old aunt who we hadn't contacted as she has a bit of dementia and wouldn't have known us - she also lives quite a way away and wouldn't have been able to attend, but I didn't have the other contact details until the card arrived. I did then contact them and apologised but luckily they understood. So it is not easy either way, although as to the original post it shouldn't have happened that way.

I’ve been directly involved with gynae cancer support groups and know that some cancer nurse specialists suggest using Facebook to announce the death, possibly thinking of sparing the immediate family from the pain of heartbreaking phone calls.

At the end of the day the newly bereaved should be able to communicate their news however they feel is best. Mainly a generational thing I would guess.

My MIL left a message on our answer machine when FIL died. The news wasn’t unexpected and luckily it was me who found the message. I knew she was distraught and not thinking straight but, having known him since I was 16, it was still a shock. Just glad it wasn’t my OH or one of the children who picked up the message.

Thankyou Tillybelle. Reading your situation, my heart went out to you. I know in my mind, dad would have been furious with my sisters. I have one of my daughters with an inoperable brain tumour and dad was so upset when I told him, he wanted to help her so much but we are a great distant. I live in Western Australia and my parents lived in NSW, so for me to get there is a major thing with the distance, but my daughters were so upset to read about their grandfather the way they did, they have broken contact with their cousins now. My father thought the world of his grandchildren and whenever we spoke n the phone he wanted all the info about them, he I was close to them. My daughter with the brain tumour feels her grandfather is beside her now and helps her get through the hard days. I believe he is too. Dad was never close to my nieces, he knew they thought only of him as an old man that had to be put into care, he was too old to live at home. Dad was 92 when he died, he looked after mum for years with dementia and he had all his marbles. I hope that one day it will all come back to haunt my sisters and their families

Facebook has taken over from the newspapers to some extent, in making it known about bereavements.

I too can sympathise from both sides. My aunt was never told about her brother's death or funeral. The family keep in touch with Christmas cards and there was never any animosity between them. She found out through another relative months after the funeral.

Also, I've dealt with my stepmother-in-law's death and funeral this year. We decided not to put it in the newspaper or Facebook as her house stood empty in a remote place! However, I did ring many from her contact book but then found I'd missed a distant 'friend'. She'd never mentioned this friend to me over the years but a relative told me at the funeral about this friend. I wrote and apologised and sent a copy of the eulogy.

Many older people including me do not use Facebook.
I think it is a dreadful way to inform people that somebody has died.
Many people seem to have a Christmas Card list and I have been informed by relatives of people who have died who have seen that I get a Christmas Card from that person.
Usually I get a telephone call.
I have an up to date address book with the names,addresses and phone numbers of the people who I would like to be told should I die.
The old address book with lots of crossings out ,address changes etc they can ignore.
Many ,possibly most ,elderly people have no interest in Facebook and have only just got used to the fact that nobody writes letters any more but just sends emails or text messages.
I was sorry to read your post Sue
It must have been a shock and you have my condolences.
You have

sorry not "posing" a message, but posting a message ...

jaylucy
It seems that nowadays social media is used for everything!

This is a very good point. Used to the distress of many as we see here.

May I use some of my background to look at the two types of communication, particularly in the context of passing on the news of a death?

The difference between posing a message on SocialMedia and telephoning or writing to pass on news is this:

Telephoning and writing involves the Bearer of the news thinking about the specific Recipient of the news. It is a personal interaction. It means making the effort to decide that they, specifically, need to be told the news, and that you wish to tell them the news. The Recipient is the person who is important in this type of communication and the Bearer of the news has selected them to be told and, one would hope, has their interests at heart. It is a personal interaction and underlines the personal and close nature of their relationship to each other and to the news being given.

On Social Media the importance is reversed. Nobody knows who the recipients will be. There is no consideration of who will read the news beyond those on the Bearer's pre-organised arrangement for all their Social Media. The person giving the news is all-important. They start to "own" the news. They have no thought for the people who will receive the news, their only thought being that they wish to be prominent as Bearer of this news. Others may respond and a display begins in which people demonstrate who is the most sensitive/ closest to the departed/ has the best memories or whatever the situation brings out. keffie gives us excellent examples of this.

Thus Social Media is about the person giving the news. They are the important one and they know this, by making an announcement they enhance their standing. Deciding who to phone or write to is the reverse. The recipients are uppermost in the concern of others.

Announcements in Newspapers are usually made by the family and are simply neutral and there for people who may have known or met the deceased but the family do not know them.

I learned of the death of my only Aunt through Facebook and at first I was so angry about the way it was announced and concerned for my Dad who did use Facebook even over 80 just to see what family was up to . I do the same myself. I accept that things move on very fast these days. I was gratified to learn that my Dad had been informed by phone but had been too upset to ring me immediately and then I saw the Facebook post. After my anger had subsided I realised that in some ways the message was a young persons way of showing respect and no offence was meant. Having a Facebook account doesn't mean you have to post but it does open up a wider world.

Oh keffie! I feel so sorry. You are very brave to tell us about it here.
You are so right too - FB is a wonderful tool. Used properly.
Lots of love, Elle x

Facebook is a wonderful tool. Like anything it can be also awful. However that is down to the way people use it. I found out about a person death through FB some years ago. It was awful.

Worse so last year when my late husband passed away unexpectedly a family member on my husband side splashed it all over FB within a couple of hours of his passing. I found out by a text.

I rung a family member to get the person to remove it as there were family members and friends who didnt know.

The person had tagged my husband name into the post so a frenzy had already started.

They did remove it and put it back up the next night. I only knew cos I had gone on to see any messages and I had 100s of notifications to my husband page about his passing

You know the type! RIP with his name tagged in saying stuff like "you were such a special man and friend and so on" I'm there thinking "WTF are you? So special yet I have never heard of you" from where my husband used to live.

Then the person in question was answering the posts on my husband page saying "thank you it means alot" I am sat there open mouthed crying my eyes out

Fortunately our eldest stepped in memorialised my husband page which stopped all the tags and removed all the postings about my husband.

It was a shock to them all, I hear, as they couldn't do that anymore especially the person in question.

I would like to say it was the end of the drama but it wasnt. Though thats another story and to do with another family member on their side I wont go into.

It's people not Facebook. They did it differently when we didnt have Facebook. Place has change. Not the behaviours

My 23yr old son found out that his paternal grandfather had died via Facebook. He and I were appalled. My son’s father and I separated when my son was a baby and although he lost contact a few years ago with his father we were still in contact with the grandparents. I really don’t believe Facebook has a place in informing family members when someone has died. After the family have been informed then yes, but I think it’s rude and insensitive to post it before then ?

And that was back in day before facebook!( i will NOT get facebook just so its 'easier' for family announcements and i will make sure my family knows this for future reference!)

When my brother was in the hospice I visited him each week on Wednesday (I lived far away) one Wednesday when I arrived his bed was empty he had passed away the previous day but no one had told me. It was a great shock even though I knew his time was limited.

SueSocks it sounds as if the death may have been sudden and unexpected. The shock and the work involved with any death are bad enough but a sudden death plunges the nearest relatives into an awful and stressful situation. One of the things you sometimes rely on is word being passed on to others, not because you are cutting anyone out but simply because the sheer effort of telling everyone on top of everything else is too much for you. Young people use Facebook because it is easiest for them. If you were shocked imagine how your nephew is feeling, I don't think he is deliberately shunning you I think he is suffering from grief and will probably feel awful when he realises he hasn't contacted you. Just try to be understanding and forgiving. Hope you are feeling better. As we all expect to live longer the sudden death of someone we thought we would have for many more years is devastating.