During a job interview, I was asked why I quit my last job.
I told the prospective employer that my grandfather passed away in China all of a sudden. Because he was dead in China, I must go to China for the funeral arrangements according to the ancestor veneration practices of my birthplace's custom. I know what I said might be confusing him, but I could not figure out what was wrong with it when I said, "my grandfather was dead", I could feel that he wanted to laugh on hearing what I told him, but he just tried not to do it. I was not happy with him because he interrupted to ask, "so how is he now? ha ?"
I am not a native English speaker. I don't understand why he was teasing about my grammar but isn't the sentence, "my grandfather was dead" grammatically correct? Did the employer tease me because he wanted to correct the sentence that it should be, "my grandfather is dead"?