The death of a family member is obviously devastating — and one woman’s way of protecting her elderly loved ones has people gobsmacked.
TikTok user Annie Niu shocked her 102,000 followers when she shared she rings her grandparents every Christmas pretending to be her twin sister — who died three years ago from viral meningitis.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most people who contract mild viral meningitis usually recover completely in 7 to 10 days without treatment. It’s typically less severe than bacterial meningitis — but in rare circumstances it can be fatal.
Niu went on to explain in her now-viral video — it’s racked up 9.2 million views in four days — how protecting the older family members is “really common in Asian culture,” adding her family is just trying to “shield the elderly from terrible news.”
She shared her original video just before the holidays — and it’s since elicited thousands of comments. When explaining why she engages in her unorthodox behavior, Niu explained her grandparents “basically raised” her and her sister — and they are very close.
“A lot of people are like, ‘Oh well, they deserve to know,’” she said. “Well, they don’t deserve to die, and you can’t guarantee that’s not going to happen if you tell them.”
Niu said she and her family have no plans to tell her grandparents the truth anytime soon.
“We’re probably just going to continuously make up excuses for why she is not visiting them,” she admitted, adding in a comment: “[We] don’t have the heart to tell them. It’ll crush them.”
Niu says she doesn’t mind calling her grandparents, heartbreakingly admitting it makes her feel closer to her sister’s memory and she still dreams about her “almost every single night.”
“So I treat it as I am spending half of my life with her still,” she said.
Niu’s video viewers responded with mixed reactions — some deeply sympathetic and offering advice, while other’s criticized her choice.
“What happens when they find out?” one user questioned the TikToker, while another declared it: “Actually sick.”
However many TikTokers praised Niu and her family for their decision to keep it a secret — some even sharing their own experiences of sharing bad news with elderly family members, only for it to lead to them developing serious illnesses themselves.
“After my dad passed my grandma stopped eating and basically died of a broken heart,” one user shared. “She passed 2 weeks after my dad. She could not take the sadness.”
“That’s a beautiful things to do, especially knowing it must be hard for you,” praised another.