Funeral Drama.
I’m 27F and my grandmother passed away last year in May of 2025. I started being left out of family events from a young age. My aunt C who is in her late 60s, has a 34-year-old son who is autistic and I’m also on the AS too. She expects everyone to bow down to him and excuse his bad behavior just because he’s autistic. But if I did something wrong, she holds me to a higher standard. She claims she has no problem with me, but then turns around and tells other family members what the “real problem” is things she never brings up directly to us. For example, she’s still going on about how I supposedly misbehaved at her older daughter’s baby shower when I was 13. She told me she didn’t like my behavior and that was that. My mom doesn’t believe I did anything wrong, and if I had, she would’ve punished me like she always did when I stepped out of line. Not to mention, Aunt C was very mean to me at her other daughter’s bridal party. I walked over to get a better view while gifts were being opened, and I accidentally got in the way of some photos. She snapped at me and rudely said, “Get out of the way,” in a nasty tone. She could have simply asked, “Could you please move?” I understand wanting nice photos without kids in the way especially since her daughter had so many kids at the party but I was only 15 at the time and grieving my dead dad who passed away 3 months beforehand. Not a single one of them were nice to me and didn’t bother to ask how I was doing. Over the years, she’s excluded us from every single family event. One instance really stood out years ago, my Memere was at my great-aunt sally’s house when Aunt C unexpectedly showed up. Upon seeing my grandmother, she went out of her way to brag about all the parties she’d had that we weren’t invited to. Then, she had the audacity to attend my grandma’s funeral, despite never making an effort to talk to her unless it was to rub something in her face.
She approached my sister at the funeral and said, “We haven’t seen you in so long you were just a little girl. Sometimes when adults fight…” my sister shut her down immediately and said, “No, we are not doing this here. I was a teenager. I saw what was happening. We’re not going to discuss this here.” When my sister brought this up to my mom, my mom was like “um what fight was there exactly?” This whole thing didn’t start out as a fight. Like Is the fight in the room with us? At the funeral’s celebration of life feast, aunt c, her husband, and her son showed up sat at a table in the far back, glaring at us and giving dirty looks the entire time. They kept staring at me, then tried to play the victim because we didn’t want to interact with them. They clearly weren’t happy about us ignoring them completely.
I honestly think Aunt C may assume that because I’m autistic, I’m dumb and unaware of what’s going on. But I know more than she gives me credit for. She constantly excuses my cousin’s behavior with the “He didn’t know any better” give my son grace for his bad behavior and excuse him but meanwhile, she still holds a grudge against me over something when I acted out at her daughter’s baby shower when I was 12. All the while, she insists to my mom that there’s “no problem.” If it had to do with my behavior where was my grace in any of this? Sure she demands we give her son grace for each and every time he misbehaved but for some reason it’s hard to give me that same grace?
Aunt C tried to lecture my sister about being an adult at my grandmother’s funeral when she herself has never acted like one. She talked shit about my mom to other people at my grandmothers funeral. She told other relatives that my mom “always runs away from her” at Walmart, where my mom works. In reality, my mom is there to do her job and has no obligation to stop and interact with family members she doesn’t want to speak to. She even brought this up with her coworkers, and they all agreed that she’s just there to work and isn’t required to engage with certain people if she doesn’t want to and have someone else help them if they need it.
And her older daughter turned 40 last year and she has snubbed me in public for years whenever she saw me and she walked up to me at my grandmas funeral and called my name and tried talking to me and I ignored her completely and then she grabbed me a bit aggressively and I yelled “Don’t fucking touch me” in front of the whole funeral home. Who tf do you think you are to put your hands on me when you snub me in public and never talk to me. I almost whooped her ass in front of everyone but resisted the urge to. A few months after and I wrote a letter to my aunt c to address my point of view on the issues I mentioned and mailed it out to them. A few months after I sent that letter, aunt C saw my mom at her job and tried hiding behind some register to avoid my mom seeing her. The other day at my local grocery store my cousin lives a town over and she was shopping with her son at the store and she saw me coming to the dairy aisle and they dropped what they were buying and ran out the store despite me not saying a word, having my headphones in and minding my business. I found the whole thing comical and also pathetic and sad.