Controlling daughter in law regarding the death of her father

the OP wasn't told she couldn't visit him icanhandthemback.

I can’t see from the OP that the wife and daughter did not visit the dying man during his last 4 Days. In fact, the sons angry Text indicated that the two women were going back to see him. Hardly “writing him off”

I'm firmly on the side of those who think OP has overstepped the boundaries here -

Whatever the choices the DiL and her mother - the wife of the deceased - in not being by the bedside, it strikes me as incredibly rude, indeed, incredibly thoughtless, for the OP to put herself in the position of one giving out the details of him being moved out of ICU. In a text! Can you imagine being the direct family expecting news of the death and getting that text from a member of extended family?

Worse still - quoting from the OP :
*I was told that his wife does not want me to come to there house as her anger toward me is palatable.
I told him I was just fine with that as I had no desire at all to see her but that I wanted and needed to see my grandchildren an he agreed to bring them to me.
I told my son to make sure his wife understands that I will NEVER compromise who I am and what my beliefs are to make her feel better.
I told him the burden is on her to contact me.
I told him this will remain a situation where she and I will have to agree to disagree.
I told him I have moved on and that If she wants to live in anger she owns the problem, not me*.

Good God! This is their bereavement and OP is laying down all sorts of laws, dictating terms, demanding to see the grandchildren.

Someone needs a good dose of cold hard fact that the World does not revolve around her, and it isn't the DiL or her bereaved Mother!

Extraordinary post, OP.

If the OP is always this wilful her son and DIL will have stopped giving her much information a long time ago so I doubt her account of FIL's last few days are all that accurate tbh.

Poor Mal2, she's not likely to be posting on here again after all that vileness.
All she did was visit a dying man in hospital. A man who had been written off by his family 4 days before he died, and who's grandchildren had been told he was already dead.

Apart from anything else, it would have been a matter of courtesy to contact his wife or daughter, or your son, to check when you could make your visit without overlapping with any visits they might have planned.

I don't think this is straight forward but I do think you have overstepped the mark in this instance. You had been told not to visit but you decided you would anyway. That is a big no-no.
I think it is sad that this gentleman was left to die alone. When a relative is in Comfort Care, there is normally a way that someone close to the person can stay for the entire time.
The man who brought me up for the longest time out of all my "fathers" and who I thought of as my Dad died back in March. He had gone on to marry another woman who had 2 fatherless children of her own. When I heard he was in "Comfort Care" I immediately asked if I could see him. They said, "No." I was heart broken so do you know what I did? I howled my eyes out and respected their wishes. Did I think they were unreasonable? Yes, but she was his wife and I had to take that into account whether I wanted to or not. That is what you do if you have empathy.

I'm sorry for your loss, and the blow up with your son.

I think your response to ask the family to take him to hospital, (which they ignored), is a big part of the problem.
Plus, you had the kindness to make an extra effort to see him.
Which it would appear they didn't.

You may well have compounded it by not asking his wife if you could visit him.
Although I really dont see that is ignoring the feelings of the family. How could you know what they required if they didnt make it clear?
You did afterall, ask the hospital.

I think it's such a shame that a dying person can be controlled in such a way.

Yes the family are grieving, but so are you.

In short, I think their grief has been turned into anger against you
A) because you were right about his poor health, which they didnt respond to.
B) it's easier to be angry at someone rather than look to ones own failings.

BUT, please please think of the bigger picture and eating humble pie.
Apologise to all of them, so your son can find some relief from the intolerable situation he finds himself in, I feel through no fault of his own.

I honored his order of not contacting him but not because he ordered me to but because if I had spoken to him I would have cut him to shreds with my tongue and knew that doing so would only compound the stress he was under

Quite shocking that you even thought of doing that.

The wishes of the next-of-kin are paramount.

It's unbelievable that the OP is making it all about her at this difficult time for the man's family.

You could be right, welbeck.
It stretches credulity.

must be a spoof.
dang !
caught again.

The OP is quite a lengthy post to what amounts to a friend visiting a dying friend in hospital.
The "plan" (horrible choice of word) by the family sounds very clinical, and to me it sounds like a competition as to who would be the last to see him. As someone else mentioned, if he was that frail then someone from the family should have been with him all the time.
I do think some of the posts here are quite harsh towards the OP, she just wanted to say good by to a friend, not realising the rules the family had put in place. If they had rules, they should have let people know.

Hopefully time will heal this family rift, and everyone can move on. Maybe just stay quiet, and wait for them to contact you.

I feel sorry for your son who is in the middle of this, you will have to tread very carefully if you do not want this to develop into a huge rift where you do not see the family at all.

Your feelings are not more important than the feelings of others.

Has there been a funeral yet? If not and you attend remember it is not about you.

If I had been going to ring anyone to check if it was OK to visit my son's dying f.i.l., who had been a good friend to me, I would have asked his wife, not his D.

The whole thing seems very strange TBH. Presumably your d.i.l. knew her dad had been a good friend to you Mal. You'd visited him in his home, so it wasn't unlikely that you'd visit him in hospital, and if his wife and D didn't want him to have any visitors other than themselves, why didn't they so?

Were you the last person to see him before he died? There would have been no way of knowing when he would so I'd have thought that his wife and/or D would have continued to go until that happened.

I agree that an apology is needed, from both 'sides'. You hadn't intended to intrude on their grief and had you known they didn't want anyone else to see him, which in itself is rather odd, they should have made that clear by telling you themselves or instructing the hospital staff not to allow anyone to go.

You checked with the hospital before going which appears to have been overlooked by your son, d.i.l. and her mother.

Caleo

All you who are criticising the OP can have no idea how close she and the dying man were. She may have been his lover for years , for all you know. Also remember sometimes friends are emotionally closer than relations.

In any case, this woman was obviously very upset and needs at least some ordinary sympathy for being at odds with her son!

Is this a sick joke? If she was his fictional lover that makes it even more hurtful for his wife and daughter.

Two people ..not days

I would have rang to check whether it was ok to visit your dil's father and abided by dil's decision. Hover I am puzzled about the family deciding they would be last to visit but not being there over 4 days themselves.
I think that sadly, the passing away has not happened as quickly as they though so they feel they have lost something important to them in not being the last two days goodbye.
When people are greiving they go through a whole range of emotions.Sometimes anger or hurt at these times is overwhelming. Give them all a bit of space, reflect on what you might have done differently and hopefully you can all move forward as a family. ?

I think it’s all to do with the relationship between them all.

Exactly this.

Bags
I agree, as I said, I don’t think we would have minded, my dad might have done, but that would have been a different matter.
I think it’s all to do with the relationship between them all.

Septimia

I can't understand why his family wouldn't visit him themselves while he was still alive. Saying goodbye in anticipation seems most odd and surely most people would go on visiting someone they supposedly cared so much for.

Strange.

This is how I feel too.

My mum took several days to die after a huge bleed on the brain that left her unresponsive. We visited every day while we waited for the inevitable to happen. If an unrelated friend had wanted to visit her after our last visit (which was about 10 hours before she died), none of us would have minded at all. Nor would we have expected to be consulted about it. If someone had asked if it was alright, we would have said of course.

I don't understand what there is to get angry about. It seems to me the son's inlaw family had "staged" what they wanted and when the "performance" did not go exactly according to plan, they blew their tops.

It seems an unnecessary complication to be making up rules and then expecting other people to just know, without being told, what you have in mind.

Definitely strange. Perhaps a strange story is all it is.

Stranger things have happened between groups of human beings.

Jackiest

It is not what the Dil wants or her son wants or what the OP wants that matters it is what the dying man wants that matters. He is the immportant person in all this and his views seem to be being ignored. We need to look at it from his point of view.

It doesn't sound as if he was in any fit state to make a decision by that stage.

However, I think you over-stepped the mark. You should have checked with your DS/DIL/DIL’s Mum that it was ok. Heavens, we have friends, one of whom is far advanced in his dementia journey but I wouldn’t dream of visit him without running it past his wife first.

I agree and with others who said something similar.

We recently visited a relative who has advanced dementia; she is a much loved in-law and we checked with her children first to make sure it was in order to visit.

The wishes of the next-of-kin are paramount.

But I presume that they were the last to say goodbye, as he lived longer than expected.

It is not about rights, but about sensitivity and thoughtfulness.

You are all being very judgemental and very harsh, it just happened that she was the last person to say 'goodbye' and not his immediate family. They do seem strangely possessive over this.
However this puzzled me more:-

_Because they all assumed that he would pass away quickly, my son and DIL told their children 6&8 years old that their grandfather had passed away.
The family was awaiting a call from from the hospital telling them he had passed_

Why tell the children their grandfather had died when he hadn't?
(sorry I don't know how to put quotes into boxes on here)

It is not what the Dil wants or her son wants or what the OP wants that matters it is what the dying man wants that matters. He is the immportant person in all this and his views seem to be being ignored. We need to look at it from his point of view.

I think you are being a bit harsh.
Yes, she probably overstepped the mark, but I was wondering how I would have felt had my mother in law had popped in to say goodbye to my dad, and I most certainly wouldn’t have gone ballistic.
Knowing my dad, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to see anyone, but I would have made his wishes clear to everyone.
An apology is in order if the relationship is to be mended.