Who Has To Die Before You Can Reply?

I am disabled and currently using state career services to find a job. My case manager is notoriously bad at responding to emails. Unfortunately, he has a speech impediment that I can’t understand over the phone due to my disability, so I stick to emailing multiple times until he responds.

I have already had a meeting with him, where I told him I am looking for an internship for the summer before I start graduate school. However, shortly after this my grandmother is hospitalized. I email him to say that I will no longer be looking for an internship this summer, as I have to help my family take care of my grandmother.

I don’t get any response to this email, and my grandmother grows considerably worse and passes away a few weeks later. I assume that the email got lost and I’ll have to send him a new one, but because of the stress of losing my grandmother, I don’t get around to it. Three weeks after the initial email, on the exact day my grandmother is buried, I finally get a response. There is no apology for the lateness or even an acknowledgement that he took three weeks to respond, and it opens with, “I hope your grandmother is doing better.”

It takes all of my strength not to reply, “No. She died, you jacka**.”