Woman's partner passes away: his family demands that she return the engagement ring to them
Losing the love of your life, especially the one you decided to marry as a young person, is a horrible situation that no one should ever have to face. When you lose someone so close, you should be able to count on the support of your family and that of your lost partner. Unfortunately, that's not always possible.
A 31-year-old young woman got embroiled in a nasty family argument soon after her terrible loss. The young woman told her story on Reddit after a friend of hers suggested she seek an unbiased opinion.
via Reddit
A family heirloom
"Jake and I had been together for 6 years" wrote the woman in her story, "his death was sudden and I am still in mourning". If this news wasn't already dramatic, the two had just become officially engaged. The engagement ring given to her by her late fiancé was a priceless heirloom from her future in-laws: it had been in their family for many generations and the fiancé himself had obtained it only with the blessing of his grandmother.
At her fiancé's funeral, which the young woman organized and paid for, her ex-brother-in-law asked her to return the engagement ring. Jim, Jake's 32-year-old brother, told her that his girlfriend, Stacy, loved the ring and kept asking him for a similar piece of jewelry. The man then asked the grieving woman to give the ring back so he could use it to propose marriage to his girlfriend, since the heirloom originally belonged to his grandmother.
The woman refused to return the ring, berating Jim for making a request like this during a funeral. After the ceremony, Stacy sent her a message saying that she "would always think of her and Jim's wedding as a bittersweet ending" to their relationship. Immediately afterwards, the woman blocked Stacy from all of her social media accounts.
Finally, the former mother-in-law contacted the mourning woman, telling her she couldn't keep the ring. "I snapped and told her no, the ring will stay with me and go with me to the grave if necessary," she wrote. "It is a beautiful symbol of Jake's love and I will not allow Jim and Stacy to tarnish his memory," the woman wrote.
In an updated post, the woman said she considered a workaround to the problem: "Jake has a 10-year-old cousin who lives far away. I babysat her while her parents were still living in town. I think I'll give her a gift, the ring, after she graduates from high school and I will pay for her college tuition using the life insurance money I got. I hope that way I can do both Jake and his grandmother proud. They say time heals - hopefully 8 years will be enough for me to let go of the ring. If not, I guess I'll see what I will do in the moment. I won't tell anyone in the family what I have planned - I want them to think they've lost the ring forever. I think it's a just punishment, appropriate for their actions. "
Reddit users mostly said that she was right to do this, due to the fact that she paid for the entire funeral at her own expense. What do you think?
