You have zero context other than what they said. What about withholding judgement about things you know nothing about before saying people are bad? The full story is likely much more complex.

She had the same reaction to two different people dying. So either she has a complicated relationship with both the cousin and brother or she’s the problem.

I put my money on the mother because people do weak stuff like that all the time. Can’t get over a little awkwardness to do the right thing because people aren’t self aware and fragile.

I think you could use a little more generosity in your very cold, uninformed interpretation of this person.

Ironically I think your opinions are cold as hell. Think about how the brother feels. He’s dying and his sister won’t see him one last time because it might be awkward?

I don’t understand people. If someone is suffering and wants to commit suicide then people call them selfish, but a fully grown woman can’t visit her dying brother because it’s awkward and I’m the asshole for calling it out?

Why do people always take the perspective of the person not suffering?

I'm not taking the perspective of anyone here because there's hardly any information for me to do that. You're the one that has constructed this whole scenario in your mind based off very little from OP's post.

Yes. To start with my mum lives on her own since my dad died not long before this, has macular degeneration so is going blind, and seeing her brother required a trip of 8 hours or do each way. Not a trivial undertaking.

She also wasn’t seriously thinking about not going, just needed a bit of extra encouragement.

That's really harsh. Grief affects people in different ways. It can be overwhelming.

"Get over it" is rarely helpful in these types of situations because it ignores a lot of what we know about human psychology and how people make decisions. It's like telling someone who's depressed to "get over it"; it's not likely to help and often makes things worse because it's tone deaf and ignorant.

Please don't cross into personal attack like this. These are sensitive, emotional topics. I'm sure you have good reason to feel the way you do, but so do the others, and blasting someone else for posting from a different point of view (let alone blasting their mother) is not ok here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Edit: we've had to ask you this before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41803731. If you can't or don't want to respect the site guidelines, we're going to have to ban you, but I'd rather not do that, so it would be better if you'd please recalibrate.