I’ve been thinking a lot recently about when my grandpa died. His second wife (who has been my grandma for as long as I can remember, married when I was an infant) had her own family, grown children and grandchildren when they got married. I never knew them well, they didn’t come to events for my grandpa’s family and we didn’t go to events with grandma’s family. There was never any bad blood, it was just how we worked it out. Both of their families were huge and settled, trying to integrate them was just logistically impractical.
When grandpa died one of the step great grand nieces showed up to a Catholic ceremony in flip flops, a tank top, and yoga pants. She didn’t understand why people were upset, it was all black, “That’s what you do at a funeral, right?” (Her own words exactly.) She tried to sit up front in the first few pews, reserved for immediate family and surviving spouses of siblings that had passed. Grandma had to walk her back further into the church and sit her down in another section.
She sat through the ceremony on her phone, as I found out later from one of my mom’s cousins. Updating Facebook, playing games, not paying attention at all to what was going on around her. When it was time to drive to the grave site she practically ran to her car so she could be first in line behind the hearse. We got to the grave site and she made a huge show of being so upset she could hardly stand, she needed to sit down. She didn’t wait for the pallbearers to carry the casket down, she started right down the hill to the grave site. My grandma had to rush over to her and grab her shoulder to stop her and let the casket go first.
Grandma leaned in close and said something to her and the girl. Girl looked over in my direction and pulled a disgusted face. Behind me were my grandpa’s two surviving siblings (in their late 80s and both having suffered strokes) and their spouses and the surviving spouses of his other two brothers, also elderly. We let the older generation have the extremely limited graveside seating, my mom and my sister and I all stood directly behind them and tried not to cry. I glanced over at one point, there was a car horn and screeching tires on the street, and I saw her standing around looking bored, shifting her weight and fidgeting restlessly before pulling her phone out and typing on it again.
After the graveside ceremony she immediately bolted to her car and drove off. The rest of us lingered for a bit before heading back to the church where there was a sandwich type luncheon provided for us. She had finished a plate of food and was going back for a second plate before anyone else even showed up! (It was obvious, she still had the telltale leftover bean sauce and a bit of potato salad still on her plate.)
I overheard her later on when the luncheon was almost over. “Oh, no, I never really knew him all that well, but it’s so sad when people die, you know?”
Let me be clear, this is a woman in her mid 20s. I don’t know where her immediate family was or why anyone else on her side of the family (there were about five or six of them present) didn’t say anything to her. My mom tried at one point, and so did the cousin who saw her on her phone during the service, she waved them off with her hand and scoffed audibly. My grandma was the only person she seemed to listen to, so in addition to burying her husband of nearly thirty years she had to corral disrespectful family members as well.
I’m glad it was handled. I’m glad it’s over. I’m glad that the next time (and probably the last time) I see this woman will be at my grandma’s funeral where she can go all out mourning, I’ll be polite and respectful and give her and her family the space they need. 0603-15
Tag: Death
Saying “How Are You?” To Those In Grief Isn’t The Best Choice Of Words
I recently read one of the best articles of what not to say to those grieving the loss of a loved one that I’ve read in a long time but because it is copyrighted, I cannot reproduce it in its entirety here.
The premise of the author, Nancy Guthrie, is that asking the question, “How are you?”, while good intentioned, is not a question grieving people like to hear. It’s as if those asking want a progress report on your grief, to see if you are getting better. But as Guthrie’s husband points out, “In the midst of my own pain and confusion, I suddenly also felt responsible to others to give an account for my progress. As the words of my reply came measured through my lips, I wondered if my report would be acceptable.”
So as you interact with someone going through the lonely adjustment of grief, Nancy Guthrie offers a half dozen other questions you should you ask in place of “How are you?”
Well worth reading HERE.
Be Thankful Your Family Isn’t Like This
I grew up around my Mother’s very large, close, well-adjusted family. My Father was welcomed into this family and was estranged from his own. I had no idea of all the reasons why, thankfully he’d kept his children sheltered from them. The summer I was 13 I got my first experience with his relatives. My paternal grandfather died that summer, and his funeral was where I met them.
Some background:
I learned all of this as an adult from my Mother: Both sides of my father’s family were highly dysfunctional. His mother was so poor growing up that she and her 13 siblings only got one meal a day. When they’d get home from school, they got to have rice with sugar. But there were always ants all over the rice, so they’d spread it on a cookie sheet and bake it to get the ants off. Only then could they cook it. Their mother was a mentally ill prostitute and all the kids had different fathers (none of the children knew who their fathers were). My grandmother was very attractive and her siblings considered her sooooo lucky when she married a sailor (my grandfather) and became a military wife. She escaped from the grinding poverty. However, my grandfather was a violent alcoholic who beat her, and eventually, their three children. His entire family were Arkies—they’d come to California during the depression, from the Arkansas Ozarks. They were actually inbred (my great-grandparents were apparently cousins), pretty much illiterate, and quite violent. This is what my Father came from. No wonder he estranged himself!
My dad was the oldest, and he had two younger sisters. My Father’s earliest memory, according to my Mother, was of being in the car while his parents argued in the front seat. My grandfather stopped the car, dragged my grandmother out on the side of the road, and beat her until she bled. Then shoved her back in the passenger seat and kept on driving. When my father got old enough, he began to protect his mother and two sisters by from the abuse. By the time he was 15, he was big enough to fight with his father and hold his own.
My father was physically forced by his father to join the Navy after he graduated from high school. He was shipped off to sea and my Grandfather started to beat his wife and daughters again. One day my grandmother had finally had enough, she and the two girls got in her car (they were 16 and 18) and drove off, sobbing, through Sacramento. She ran a red light, and they were hit by a semi, killing all three of them instantly. My father was brought back to the states for this, where he had a mental breakdown and was consequently discharged. He had been very close to his mother and sisters, after spending an entire childhood protecting them. He blamed his father, and after several ugly incidents between them, he was shipped off to an aunt’s house in Bakersfield about six months after the accident.
My Mother then met my Father, because she was caring for an elderly family friend, and his aunt lived next door to said elderly family friend. She was invited for Thanksgiving dinner at his aunt’s house after making his acquaintance. My grandfather arrived to this shindig drunk, verbally abused all of his relatives, and then physically attacked his son. Consequently my Dad and his father had a huge knock-down-drag-out fight in front of all of them which culminated with them knocking over an entire table full of food, destroying the turkey and everything else. My Mother was absolutely speechless at this behavior, and walked out. My father cornered her later and apologized. He was fascinated with her because she’d shown no fear of my grandfather (my Mother, to this day, has balls of steel. She fears NOTHING).
There’s lots more, but that should give you a general introduction to my Father’s family, and why he distanced himself from them after marrying my Mother. She taught him how to have backbone, and with her support, he cut off contact with them, except for supervised visits with my grandfather. We were his only grandchildren, so he was allowed to see us, as long as rules were followed. 1)Grandpa couldn’t be drunk. 2) He wasn’t allowed to take us anywhere or be alone with us. and 3) my Father warned him if he ever laid a hand on any of us he wouldn’t be responsible for the fact that my Mother would not hesitate to shoot him. Apparently my Grandfather laughed at this until my Father showed him my Mother’s gun collection. She is an old, tough cowgirl and again, the woman is absolutely fearless. She was raised by men who took her grizzly bear hunting for fun—she wasn’t scared of some old, drunken, bullying sailor. Of course, I knew none of this growing up, we were sheltered from it. (End of background)
So anyway, the only one I had ever met was my grandfather, and he had always been on his best behavior around us. He died the summer I was 13; we had to go to Sacramento to hold his funeral and settle his affairs. Apparently my grandfather had bought a house for his widowed mother some years back; after she had passed away, one of his sisters (Aunt Susie) lived in the house. She was elderly and widowed and lived off social security, so he let her stay. At the funeral, Aunt Susie, whom I had never met, latched on to my arm when she discovered who I was, with this incredibly painful vise grip. You see, the house now belonged to my Father, and she was terrified he was going to sell it from under her and leave her homeless; this was apparently not out of character for the men in my Father’s family. She whined and cried to me the entire time and begged me to appeal to my father not to sell the house and leave her out on the street. My parents were super busy and it took a while for them to realize this woman was hurting me (I was quite timid at the time and didn’t say anything to them, trying to handle it on my own). After my father pried her off of me I had bruises all up and down my arm and bloody nail marks; my father had to promise Aunt Susie he wouldn’t abandon her and tell her to stop harassing me. She kept coming back and eventually I had to stick to my father’s side like glue to keep her at bay (I was quite scared of her by this time). He finally yelled at her and she huffed off and didn’t come to the reception.
At the grave site, my Grandfather was laid to rest next to his wife and daughters, who had died 16 years before. Several of my father’s cousins decided to have a loud conversation right in front of my Father about his mother and sisters, and how awful their deaths were, and how mutilated their remains were; that they knew this because my grandfather insisted—INSISTED!—on having an open casket funeral despite this. In other words, they were gossiping quite rudely and graphically about it, during a graveside service, and in front of my Father. My Mother glared daggers at them but kept her mouth shut.
After the funeral there was a reception at my Grandfather’s house. During this reception I went to the bathroom and discovered a dark stain on my underwear; I’d just had my first period. Oh joy. I told my Mother discreetly; she went to find me a pad and mentioned it to my father. My father’s cousin Ricky, who had been following him around all day and trying to get money out of him, overheard this, and proceeded to loudly announce it to every single relative at the reception. For the rest of the afternoon I had strange women coming up and asking me about it, while I just wanted to die of embarrassment. Ricky’s sister Roberta then started talking to me about how boys were evil, they were going to want to attack me now that I was a ‘woman’ so I’d better watch out, and that sex was bad and evil and such until my I ran for my Mother and she had to intervene and tell Roberta to shut her trap and stop scaring me.
Roberta’s two teenage sons, during all this, had gone out back bored, and decided it would be fun to harass the neighbor’s two German Shepherds by throwing rocks at them. When the neighbors got mad, they responded by yelling and screaming obscenities and threats back, until Ricky and my Father heard them and dragged them back in the house. The neighbors called the cops, who showed up at the reception and asked my Father to control the boys. By this time he had had enough, and he told Roberta to take her kids and go home. She tried to refuse and to this day, I remember her exact words: I want some of Uncle Al’s stuff and I’m not leaving until I go through the house and take what I want. My Father suddenly morphed into a man I’d never seen before; he began bellowing at her, calling her really bad things and telling her to get out of the house before he beat the holy living crap out of her. He made several threatening gestures and she and her boys retreated, fleeing the house.
Ricky tried to stand up for his sister, and was holding his own until he made the mistake of telling my Father he was acting like his Dad, at which point my Father lost all self control and put a fist in his face. Suddenly I and my siblings were shoved into a bedroom by my Mother, as she had witnessed these family brawls before and didn’t want us being collateral damage. We were in there for a good half hour before it finally quieted down and my Mother let us out. Everyone was gone and my Father was out back chain-smoking and trying to calm down.
The whole experience was quite frightening for me, I’d never been around people like that before. The entire family was that way! My Father refused to ever speak to any of them again, except for Aunt Susie. He arranged a place for her in an assisted living center before he sold the house she lived in; to her credit, she wrote him a nice thank you note, although she never apologized for hurting and scaring me at the funeral. When she died a few years later, that was it. He told my Mother as far as he was concerned they didn’t exist. I certainly didn’t blame him.
That was 25 years ago. Recently one of my father’s cousins tracked me down on Facebook. I tentatively communicated with her for a little bit. She talked a little about the family and one of the first things she did was inform me was that her father, my Dad’s uncle, had molested her and her sister, and began to tell me about it in great detail. I had to block her, it was so disturbing and she wouldn’t stop. To this day I cannot believe I actually share DNA with these people. 0609-11
Money Is The Root Of All Funeral Evil
My maternal uncle passed away and had many years prior named me as the beneficiary of what was termed a “death policy” through his former employer. I had forgotten all about it until a distant relative mentioned that my uncle had retired from a school district and that someone should check with the School Retirement Agency to see if there would be any funds available to cover the funeral expenses. Low and behold, yes, there was a policy and I was named as the beneficiary. I think you can guess what happened next.
Unbeknownst to me, my mother went on a spending spree: arranging the funeral (planning which I was not allowed to be involved in) and ordering flowers (from “all of us”), ordering twenty (yes, 20) copies of his death certificate from the funeral home (run by a family member), and all the while telling me that I didn’t need to come to the funeral. I thought that was strange. Needless to say, I did attend the funeral because I loved him dearly – he suffered some very miserable last few years. It was all heartbreaking and I hope that in death he has achieved some level of peace that was denied him in life.
Anyway, as I said, I did attend the funeral and within a few days of the service I began to get telephone calls from my mother and her sister (my aunt) wanting to know when I was going to claim the money and telling me that I would need to get a copy of the death certificate from THEM before I could do so (in hindsight, I think they assumed this could be used as some kind of leverage). The calls came on an almost daily basis both at home and at my workplace– the two even tried to drop in on me (unannounced) at my place of work, thankfully I have a secure building with limited access. They had the security guard call me to allow them entry but I was in a meeting at the time and away from the office so I know all this only because of the voicemail message the security guard left me that day. Keep in mind that my mother and aunt both live several hours away from me, so “popping in” would have required them to make some significant coordinated effort.
That’s when things got really ugly. My aunt called me at home one evening (I could tell she had me on speaker phone but I didn’t say anything about it – just played along). She began by asking me in a sickly sweet voice: how was I doing (funny, hadn’t heard from her in YEARS before this), how was work, how was my husband/children and then…. BAM! How much is the death policy- it’s $5K, right? When are you going to collect it?
I told her it was actually $10K, however, because it was not a life insurance policy, there would be withholding taxes that would reduce the payable amount so I wasn’t sure how much it would end up being. She then proceeded to tell me that after I received the money and paid the taxes on it and paid for the funeral, I would need to give the remainder to her because she was “legally entitled” to it and that I “didn’t deserve it”. I was stunned silent and she continued on, “The only reason he named you as beneficiary is because he thought he would outlive us” (meaning she and my mother), and, “Your mother and I are struggling to survive on just our retirement and social security.” (mind you, my aunt lives in a very large custom built home in an affluent retirement community along with a pool/pool-house and a Lexus SUV). Wow – just wow.
I didn’t really know what to say but managed to respond in what I have to admit was an uncharacteristically calm manner. I told her simply that I would pay for the funeral expenses because that was the right thing to do for my uncle but that I would not be handing over the rest of the money to her or anyone else that may be listening in on the conversation. I further told her that if she and her brother had some arrangement in which he desired that I pass along the proceeds of the policy to her and my mother, I would be happy to do so but would need to see some proof of that in writing. I also reminded her that the term “legally entitled” in this situation would actually be applicable to me as the beneficiary. Suddenly she had no further interest in speaking with me or in knowing how me/anyone else in my household was doing. She said very curtly: “Well, have a nice day” and hung up. Within seconds, the phone rang. It was my mother. She wanted to know if I was “alright”. I told her yes but was tired of talking on the phone. She said, “Ok- love you”. End of call.
Several more calls came over the coming weeks (all from my mother) both at home and at work – all wanting to know the same thing: when was I going to claim the money because she had a copy of the death certificate and would be able to bring it to me so I could take care of it.
Neither one of them had any idea that sometime before the School Retirement Agency had mailed me a letter advising me that I was named as a beneficiary on a death policy and that I could use that notice as documentation in requesting a copy of the death certificate which would be needed in submitting my claim. I did so and shortly thereafter, I received the check. I then contacted my mother and told her to let me know how much the funeral expenses had been so I could reimburse her. She came to my house the following day and brought with her a large manila envelope. It contained a copy of the death certificate (which I didn’t need because I had already received the money – they just didn’t know about it) and a crudely hand written “bill” for the funeral. The bill consisted of a piece of notebook paper (college ruled). It noted the cost of the funeral, flowers and copies of the death certificates came to a grand total of $ 3,548.01 (don’t you love it? – down to the penny).
Did I mention my uncle was cremated?
I wrote her a check then and there for the full amount. Happy with her little payout, she left but not before asking me what I planned to do with the rest? Unbelievable. I told her I hadn’t decided yet.
I haven’t heard from my aunt since that ghastly phone call and contact with my mother has been spotty. My sister stopped speaking to me once she found out that our uncle left me money (not a big loss – this is the person that once called my home when I was away at work in order to make a very creepy pass at my husband- of course he was appalled… let me just say this about my sister: her two biggest achievements in life were surgically implanted into her chest). Considering that I have always been generous with my family over the years, including sending money when needed with no questions asked or expectations of being paid back (and finding out the money had been safely received only because I could tell by my bank statements the checks had been cashed), it was really shocking to see how they treated me.
All in all, it was a terrible ordeal. I have never been so hurt but at the same time, I’m reluctantly grateful that these people have little involvement in our lives. Having wished and hoped all my life for a loving relationship with my mother and being hurt and disappointed time and time again is a little like being let down that a blind person can’t see color: It just isn’t possible.
Thanks for listening. It feels good to write this down and let it go. 1029-14
First, my condolences on the death of your uncle.
I do think you are being a little harsh in how you view some of your Mom’s actions. Ordering 20 copies of the death certificate is recommended by numerous funeral arrangement sites and organizations. I can speak from experience that those 20 copies were likely needed by the executor of the estate to close many accounts. In the case of my father-in-love’s estate, more than 20 copies were needed.
Rather than finding your mother’s exact summation of the funeral costs to be worthy of suspicion and disdain, I offer a different view. It appears she was the executor of the estate and by law she has a serious fiduciary obligation to perform the probate of the estate with clarity and accuracy. I would have given you a “bill” that was exactly to the penny, if I were the executor, because ethics and the law demands that level of precision in the estate accounting. I have a relative, executor to a deceased family member’s estate, who embezzled thousands of dollars from the estate by first starting to fudge those few dollars and eventually fudged so much that the delta between the actual costs and what he billed to the estate totaled over $5,000.00. So, you want an executor who will be excruciatingly precise in the amounts of money taken into and out of the estate account.
As for your mother not allowing you into the planning of the funeral, I further suggest that while you were given the legal opportunity to pay for it, you were not given the legal right to plan it. To be honest, I think you created the opportunity for drama by how you handled this situation. If your uncle’s death policy was meant to cover his funeral expenses, I believe you had a duty to take the initiative to inform the executor of the estate in a timely manner what the funeral budget limit was based on the net proceeds of the death policy. Instead you presented the opportunity for your mother to hound you to get answers she needed as the executor to close the estate accounts. And I further think your representation of your mom as greedy is unfair. She merely wanted the funeral expenses reimbursed and she did not ask, like her sister did, for any part of the remaining funds. Her asking you what you were going to do with the remaining money is just “mom talk”. If one of my kids had received a financial windfall, I’d be curious to know what they were going to do with it, too. New car? Add a nursery? To me it’s about rejoicing with them and seeing them enjoy the prospects of blessings brought by unexpected money.
As to cost of the funeral, I don’t consider $3500.00 for cremation, flowers, and other funeral service arrangements to be that unusual or extravagant. The average cost of an embalming and burial in the US is between $7,000.00 and 10,000.00 so $3500.00 for cremation funeral service was a thrifty choice. Did you expect your mother to simply have her brother cremated (about $500-1000, depending on the locale) and his ashes spread in the back woods somewhere or did you think that flowers, the rental of the chapel, programs, the services of the funeral directors were all free? I suspect if your mother had not organized a tasteful funeral service for your uncle, you would have found fault with her as well.
Regarding the remaining money left after all funeral expenses had been paid, I personally would have donated it to a charity I thought uncle would have appreciated, like a teachers’ retirement fund. You were not expecting that money, you noted that it was designated for funeral expenses and by not taking a pro-active position to donate the remaining money (a few thousand?), the temptation to be greedy came to the surface in everyone. While you had a legal right to retain the remaining funds for yourself, and you had no obligation to share it with others, and to certainly ignore whining that others are more “entitled” to it than you, I think you allowed money to create further barriers to relationship health. It became a family squabble over the last “bone” of the estate and to my thinking, if the dogs are fighting, it’s time to get rid of the bone but this assumes one values relationships over money. After my father died, I discovered that he had a huge amount of frequent flyer miles accumulated which would have covered the cost of at least 4 round trip plane tickets to anywhere in the US and I further discovered that one particular family member was exploiting this asset by redeeming those points for his own ticket while other family members were left to pay for theirs. I ended the family drama by calling the airlines and having the remaining frequent flyer points donated to the Fisher House for wounded vets, an appropriate donation considering my dad was a retired veteran. Was the greedy bastard who exploited this asset happy that his access had been cut off? No, he was one angry guy but the rest of the family was relieved and supportive of the decision and it’s by these choices that one really discovers where family priorities lie.
The Seemingly Ungrateful Widow
I would like to hear other’s opinions on this matter.
Is a thank you card from a widow really that important?
Earlier this year, my cousin lost her husband in a boating accident. I am not very close to my extended family, but I sent her a card and a bit of money. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. However, a few weeks ago, my father called asking if I had received a thank you or any sort of acknowledgement as he had not heard from her. I told him that I had not, but that I wasn’t expecting anything either. My cousin has always sent out thank you notes/acknowledgements, but she has suddenly become a widow with two children under the age of ten and is dealing with an incredible life disruption. My father did not send her a large sum (just a little more than I sent), but tends to “play games” with money and I feel his feathers are ruffled unnecessarily. What are your thoughts?
I am certain we will see her and the kids during the holidays. Maybe she’ll say something then or maybe she won’t. Personally, I feel this is a mole hill becoming a mountain. 1015-14
I think your father is a legalist with no sense of grace or mercy. Yes, it is true that etiquette encourages widows and widowers to send thank you notes to those offering their condolences, money, food, etc. Your dad has gotten his shorts in a twisted wad because a recent widow hasn’t jumped through his etiquette hoops to his satisfaction. He’s majoring on the minors and missed the larger picture of extending grace in an extremely difficult time to someone who desperately needs it.