feel the need to one up you when you are grieving? Or tell you that you are doing it wrong?

I have this friend, I'll call her S. She and I have been friends for a long time, but during the last few years of my husband's illness, she has truly shown her colors.

See, my husband died of hepatorenal failure. This is a secondary issue to cirrhosis. D was not a heavy drinker, but did drink daily, and just beer. He would readily admit he was a functioning alcoholic. Not that beer makes it better, but he was not a falling down, sloppy drunk. Either way it doesn't matter. It killed him.

About six months ago, I was frustrated and griping about the fact that I could not get him to put down the beer to S. I wanted him to live, and I knew that this was slowly killing him. Her response to me was that it was too bad he wouldn't move out of the house to spare me the agony of watching him slowly die.

I was infuriated. It took almost five months for me to speak to her again, and I only did because she is my daughter's godmother, and we have been "friends" for over 20 years.

When D died, S was in the process of moving from NY to AZ. She was making her first trip cross country to get the new house set up, and was leaving the next day. I called her, told her what was going on, and then got off the phone, I just didn't want to talk. I still don't, not really to anyone.

I didn't hear from her the entire time she was gone, which honestly didn't bother me because I didn't want to talk to her anyway.

Fast forward 3 weeks, and she is back in NY. She gives me a call under the pretense of checking on me. It was the day after I picked up D's ashes, and I was really struggling with the fact that he is never going to be here again. Keep in mind, this is literally 3 weeks after he died.

I bought a pendant that I can wear a tiny bit of his ashes around my neck, and a small urn so that I can keep some of the ashes. The rest will be buried close to his parents next month, but for now he is on my dresser. I am okay with this. It makes me feel close to him, knowing a part of his physical being is still with me.

So I am telling her all of this, and that I really have not been in the mood to talk to anyone, and she starts telling me that isn't healthy. I immediately went quiet. It's not healthy that I don't want to talk to anyone, but prefer to grieve in peace? Then she says she gets that I have the pendant, but she thinks it is unhealthy that I have the urn, and what am I going to do when I don't want to look at it anymore? (This is the same woman who has kept the ashes of every dog she has ever owned). I was kind of stunned into silence, and went into justification mode. As if I needed to justify how I grieve. I told her that I planned on planting a tree in my back yard and then if I didn't want to "look" at the urn anymore I could put his ashes in the earth.

Then she makes up this bald faced lie about how when her father died, and she was going to say her last goodbyes, she literally was looking through a window watching him go into the oven to be cremated. I thought OMG how horrible!!! Why in the world would a funeral director do such a thing? And ended up telling her how sorry I was that she needed to go through that. Then she asked me if she could go with me to the memorial, but I would have to pick her up because she does not have a working vehicle that would make it the 1 1/2 hour drive to my husband's hometown. I said sure.

Fast forward again to last night. I spent the weekend with my sweet in laws, crying, reminiscing, and planning the memorial service for next month. I got home, emotionally spent, yet wired beyond belief. I scrubbed my house til near exhaustion, and got in the shower. And then it occurred to me that the whole story about her watching the cremation was probably a lie.

So I ran a search, and NYS law says that only authorized personnel are allowed to handle a cremation. And NYS is one of the few states that require a license for this type of work.

I am enraged. I don't care what the reason was that my husband died, he was a wonderful, sweet, funny caring man, and I love him with all of my heart. I always will. And this woman, who is supposed to be my friend, has the audacity to come in and try to put the focus on her?

I don't know how to handle this. I don't want to be her friend anymore, and won't be. But I know that she will have some lame excuse for why she said those things, and I don't want to hear them. I guess what I am asking is has anyone else experienced this, and is it okay for me to just stop talking to her with no explanation?