Once again, BP only put part of the reddit post. By all accounts, the mother gave the two younger children to their father, sole custody, for SEVEN YEARS after Brooke died. It's no bloody wonder the living, breathing kids don't want to have a favourite ghost child forced on them. The mother also wished she hadn't had them. For nigh on 30 years this woman has resented her living children.

That second NTA is a muppet, Marnie does not remember Brooke at all.

Still in therapy? They feed her loss and grief so she can line their pockets.

Memorial seats/tables are for people one of the couple wish were there. Since the bride almost certainly doesn't remember her sister, why would the bride feel she was missing? It's ridiculous. Now if they'd been 15 and 13 or 25 and 23 when it happened the bride might want to do it, but this is all about the mother and then she has the nerve to call the bride selfish for wanting her wedding day to be the one day in her entire memory (by the looks of it) that has ever been about her and her alone (well her and the groom but not her and her sister).

My mother lost a daughter (I never know her) but the only time she was upset is when a cousin listed our decesead parents (italian family, very big) and she was excluded (I think they genuinely forgot, my sister died 40 years ago and she was only 43 days old, of whooping cough). And even the she told only me that she was upset they didn't listed her, she didn't make a fuss with the cousin.

This has got to be clickbait, right? I'm not trying to be mean... I swear. It's just... my goodness. This is absolutely terrible of the mother to do to those kids!

I feel sorry for her and it does not seem like therapy helped much, if at all. But it is very selfish to burden your grief on the younger children that way. They already had to grow up in the shadow of a dead sister they are too young to remember themselves. Give it a break.

Having worked with grieving parents, this sometimes happens. It is difficult to let grief be a part of ypur life without overshadowimg eveything else. Sometimes, grief becomes so much part of your identity that parents can even feel guilty for not having their grief center-stage. As if they would love their child less by moving on.

You know, if you lost a child when they were 5, it’s OK to grieve openly, but only for a period of time that’s appropriate. Don’t go jumping into the grave with them. I doubt if they were alive they’d expect you to do that. If you have other children, you should be holding them closer because they’re still here, and you should never force them to take a back seat to their deceased sister. Never. Now, there’s nothing wrong with privately remembering the child who isn’t at her sister’s or brother’s birthday party, graduation, wedding. Nothing wrong with that, but keep it private—-inside yourself. Take a moment alone if you have to, but do not, repeat NOT f**k up your living children’s lives by prioritizing your dead child over them. Great way to end up with NO children in your life when they’re old enough to leave and go full no contact with you, and only claim their father as their only parent, because I doubt for those seven years he had sole custody that he ever set up memorials to his dead daughter at every one of the other two kids’ events. I bet he only mentioned her periodically at appropriate moments, not necessarily anywhere around his other children so as to not rain on their parades, and made the mention brief. I hope you and your dead child are happy together, because she will be ALL you have after you chased your other kids away.

JeepersCreepers74 nailed it. But I'll add that I do feel sorry the mom. Both for her loss and for having such clearly ineffectual therapy for decades. She should have been able to comes to terms with this long, long ago. But I feel so much worse for OP and her sister. Their lives have been consumed by this and it's time it stops.

I don't think the mother is a narcissist. I feel she was destroyed by the loss of Brooke and has never had the proper counselling. Her therapist sounds like they've lost the plot and have been highly damaging to this woman and therefore her other children. This is extreme grief with an exaggerated response from grief. She's destroying her living children with her severe demanding for insane memorials. Giving her children to their father for seven years meant she got to wallow in grief, the what ifs, without connecting to her living childrens needs. She had no distractions from her grief which was unhealthy. It would be helpful for the living kids to go lc to nc, they've lived in Brooks shadow long enough

Holy c**p, talk about addicted to her "grief".

At my friend's wedding (against the spoken wishes of the bride and groom), the MOG made the whole reception sing a hymn to commemorate the groom's brother who had died thirty years before in infancy. She does this at any event with a microphone, like someone's retirement party, weddings where she's a guest and not even family, and if people forbid her or try stop her, then suddenly she's having chest pains, etc. She doesn't understand why she gets snubbed for invitations now.

I would consider a new therapist.

the OP sounds like she'd rather be with her dead daughter. So what's stopping her? Get on with it, already.