Should be understanding of my (27F) sister (32F) who arrived late to a funeral of our mutual close friend and failed to bring photos or give the reading she promised to the friend's son (17M)?

EDIT: Sorry title should read "Should I be understanding..."

My sister (32F) and I (27F) lost a very good friend of ours, Cee, to cancer a couple weeks ago. The loss was very unexpected. My sister was a lot closer with Cee and spoke/met up with her weekly, whereas I saw her usually once every few months. Cee was a really wonderful person, but quite private and so not a lot of people in her life aside from family and very few close friends knew about her illness. My sister had met Cee's son many times but I had just met him once.

My sister offered to Cee's son (17M) to prepare photos of Cee, put them in frames and bring some candles to set up at the funeral service. He welcomed the offer and sent some photos to my sister for her to print out. My sister is always very disorganized and seems to always be having a crisis of some kind but I thought that she would pull it together for the funeral. She had a week notice before the service to get ready.

Instead of getting everything ready for the Tuesday service on the weekend, on Sunday she went on an 8 hour round trip drive to look at bengal kittens. I ended up attending an expensive pottery workshop that evening with my mom that my sister had pre-paid for since she took to long trying to decide on the cat that she wouldn't be back on time. She was getting mad at me on the phone when I asked for the location of the service so I didn't press her very much about how the photos were coming along etc.

On the day of the service, my sister was supposed to arrive at 12:15pm at the church ahead of the 1pm service to meet Cee's son and set up the photos + talk to the pastor about the reading, but instead she arrived more than 5 minutes after the service had begun. I had been there since 12:30, and it put me in an awkward situation as Cee's family thought I was my sister and when I clarified they seemed very surprised she wasn't there. It was almost all family aside from about 5 friends of Cee's (including my sister and myself). Cee's son was very sweet and walked over to me and gave me a hug while I was in one of the pews and said he felt bad that I had to sit by myself.

I feel really horrible and embarrassed after the service, like my sister was so disrespectful to Cee and her family. When I called her after the service, she was feeling badly about being late but was giving a million and one excuses and not taking any blame (i.e. blaming a friend for talking to her too long on the phone, blaming her boyfriend for not picking up a card, blaming me for not offering to print the photos for her, blaming google maps for missing her exit etc.). In my opinion, she put undue stress on Cee's son who must have been waiting for the photos, and who would have had to talk to the pastor to change the service to take out her speech when she wasn't there on time.

I feel very fed up with my sister, as I find she is always having these crisis and she is always putting stress on people, particularly on our aging parents. This to me was really a last straw with her behavior as for months she has been stressing out my parents because she's freaking out about work, or unsure whether to break up, or couldn't figure out how to pack boxes before the moving truck arrived etc. But I know she must have been through a lot lately with the loss of Cee, her cat, and a divorce a few years ago.

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I was looking for advice on two things:

1. Whether I should be understanding of my sister, or if it may be my place to call my sister out and tell her this should be a wake-up call for her
2. Would it be appropriate for me to send a card with a donation to a cancer charity in Cee's name to Cee's son? I would have to get the address through my sister which makes me hesitate.

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TL;DR! My older sister was late to our friend's very small funeral, and did not bring the photo display or do the speech that she was supposed to do. I wonder if I should talk with her about this as I found it really disrespectful, or if I should be more understanding given she lost a close friend and has had other things ongoing in her life. I also am wondering if there's something nice I could do for the family as I feel very badly about it.

Submitted March 05, 2020 at 05:31AM by Ordinary_Quarter https://ift.tt/38rtsGv