[Grammar] Matching prepositions

[Pedantric]

I am unsure about this sentence. It doesn't seem right, but I don't know why: 'Looking back, I remember feeling sadder at seeing her personal effects in our lounge than in actually attending her funeral.'

My question is would the sentence be better if the prepositions in each half of the sentences matched. The options could be:

Looking back, I remember feeling sadder IN seeing her personal effects in our lounge than IN actually attending her funeral.
Looking back, I remember feeling sadder AT seeing her personal effects in our lounge than AT actually attending her funeral.

Or perhaps someone has a better option. Are there any grammatical rules to help clarify this?

 

[J&K Tutoring]

It doesn't seem right, but I don't know why:

I don't know why you think it doesn't seem right either. It seems fine to me, with the exception of the unneeded word actually.

I'm not aware of any rule that states that prepositions must agree. Consider your second example: Looking back, I remember feeling sadder AT seeing her personal effects in our lounge than AT actually attending her funeral. You didn't feel the need to change "in our lounge" to 'at our lounge', did you?

 

[teechar]

Looking back, I remember feeling sadder at seeing her personal effects in our lounge than in actually attending her funeral.'

I would use "by" instead of "in" in the above.