The holiday season should be a joyous time of year for all, but the timing isn’t always right in people’s lives, and catastrophic life events can occur when they least expect them. If you or anyone you know has lost a loved one, holidays are hard. You feel the void like a hole in your chest and a gash in your heart, but at least you have family to share in your grief—most of the time. Certain family members don’t share the same grief for whatever reason, and in that absence of grief, come across cold, calculated, and inconsiderate. Some of them are such things.

So, the mother and daughter in this next story clearly don’t want to host their extended family for Christmas after losing a husband and stepdad in that same year’s November. The extended family didn’t listen and proceeded to take over their home by way of unwelcome dogs, critique of meals, and overall judgment of the coldest kind.

Holidays should be warm. However, losing a loved one freezes that warmth for a while—grief isn’t linear. This extended family revealed their true colors. Scroll to read.