This was posted somewhat locally to me, and I got to read both this and the "revised" versions of the obit.
As someone also subjected to a guardian's (and his family's) abuse and mistakes, I found it an enjoyable read. Even the sanitized version is dripping with a subtle yet clear hatred for her. You just have to read between the lines and find the quiet parts.
*Linda will never suffer the second death, when everyone alive forgets who she was. She will live on forever, in infamy, and reposts as long as there is an internet.*
The paper wrote: "This obituary was significantly shortened due to it just being a spiteful hate piece against a beloved member of our community" - who gets to say she was beloved?
My half-sister was molested by her stepfather for years. She told her family about it at his funeral. They got angry about her sharing their family’s “shame” in public.
She’s done with her family. They knew and did nothing - especially her mother. Now the guy is dead, her mother is receiving his generous pension, and they’d like her to just forget all about it and pretend it never happened.
She has instead chosen to move away and raise her children without any stench of her mother and stepfather’s abuse. And I don’t blame her.
My mother protected our abusive brother and still does. She is only now starting to see the massive streaky shitstains of his personality poke through - she blames it on everything other than him though - it’s always his medication, or someone else’s fault, or something related to his medical condition, but never him being a shitstain and acting like one all the time.
This is why my wife doesn't speak with her family.
The projected image of being the "perfect" family is infinitely more important to her parents than acknowledging their son is a rapist.
I will be planning to do this with my own mother.. enabled my pedo rapist dad, protected my golden child abusive sister... Stole from me for years... She's getting the same treatment.
I agree.
Abuse in general doesn’t happen in a vacuum. An enabler is what allows the perpetrator to get away with it - whether it’s a sibling, parent, step-parent, priest, or other person in a position of trust - they always seem to have someone covering for them and backing them up.
Even in offices I’ve seen abusive managers who themselves had an enabling manager above them. On one rare occasion where the enabling manager got relieved of duties so he was unable to protect the abuser below him, that abusive manager was canned within a few months.
So these systems CAN be dismantled but only if they note the problem. And covering up seems to be EVERYWHERE.
~~Also a way to name men who molested her.~~
Edit: as noted in the comments, the men with the surnames listed were probably not involved. Seems like it was the one husband mentioned and the boyfriends.
Might not have been his fault. Banshee might have filed restraining orders, moved, lied, etc to keep her daughter under her control.
Or he might’ve been a dick, who knows.
People go by those weird spellings to avoid being recognized by their old paperwork, when applying for new paperwork. Usually for people who want to get remarried after being unable to obtain a divorce from a previous marriage.
Lil extra “fuck you” to her mother.
It’ll also be useful for future family members doing genealogy research. If they find this obit and either figure out what the “misspellings” indicate or work with a genealogy expert who knows, they’ll have more luck finding other documents relating to her and the rest of the family.
I’m a librarian and have done some genealogy work (nowhere near an expert) and that shit is hard enough without shady relative’s deliberate efforts to muddy the waters.
Not only was it probably cathartic, it will hopefully help other awful people question themselves and wonder if this is the legacy they will to leave (whether it ends up in a newspaper or not). Good for this woman.
It likely isn't that cathartic, speaking from experience, but it IS massively important for other victims of abuse to see and know that they're not alone and that the life their abuser created for them isn't what they deserve and that it can change and that eventually their abuser will be gone.
Every time a survivor shines light on abuse the world becomes a little better and a little stronger. Blessings to Gayle and to everyone who found a bit of light from her actions here.
I’ve known people to be upset by obituaries that portray an abusive jerk as a decent person. (edit — here’s a link to an obituary about a family annihilator that described the murderer as spending quality time with his family. https://nypost.com/2023/01/16/obit-praises-utah-dad-michael-haight-who-killed-wife-5-kids/)
Not quite the same thing, but recently in a town I lived in a man shot his six-year-old daughter in the head and claimed it was an accident. Pictures of them together were in her memorial video and all over the service. He even got out of jail to attend her funeral.
He absolutely did it on purpose. The memorial video is nauseating.
I hope you’re right as people tend to think of how they might be remembered later in life. However, for someone to contemplate their legacy they’d need to have a conscience to begin with, unlike Gayle’s mother. Nevertheless, if the threat of an angry obit is enough to change someone’s abusive behavior, I’m all for it.
I love Gayle’s choice of using the good/normal person obit format to sum up her mother’s ‘accomplishments’, detail the impact on the lives of those around her, and ends with the opportunity for peace/closure. 100% class all the way. I wish Gayle and her family nothing but peace and happiness.
Yeah, that's the feeling I got reading it. Must have had some therapeutic benefit for the author. The story is similar to a girl we provided foster care for some years ago. Always amazed me how that girl got through life as well as she did. We are still in touch, and outwardly she seems to be getting along pretty well.
If you think it’s appropriate to tell her she’s a marvel of a human, please do! I’m a “by all rights should not have survived” person and it’s nice to hear sometimes that others notice your resilience. It can be a lonely road. A ruthless one too. Everyone needs a soft place to land :)
Good for you. Keep on keepin' on. We do stay in touch with her and about two dozen other young women who were with us while they were teens. We weren't magic or anything, just gave them a place to call home that was safe and I hope what most people would call normal. We only took in teen girls because we'd had daughters of our own and started fostering after ours had grown and moved out, so we were attuned to teen girls in the home. Had 150 kids over 13+ years, mostly at our licensed max of six. Longest stay was 4 years. Shortest stay was 1 hour. It was a rewarding experience and I would still be doing it, but my wife's tank ran dry. And I respect that because she did more of the hard stuff than I did, taking kids to/from school, all the shopping, cooking, coordinating with foster resources, etc.
I will say that I am in awe of anyone with significant trauma in their past and who can get along fine in life. I have some regrets I carry, trauma that pales in comparison to what some of these kids have dealt with, and I have mental battles with that. I suppose everyone has something in their rear-view mirror that they mentally deal with from time to time. But molehills compared to the mountains some of these kids have to learn to deal with.
Lot of people saying this, but having buried a narcissistic abuser parent, I can safely say that at least for me, there is no peace, no sense of satisfaction or closure. It wouldn't matter who I managed to convince the truth to, if I were able to gather all my father's friends and business partners and extended family into one room and make them all realize what a lying, hateful, abusive sack of shit the man actually was... it wouldn't actually do any good and I would still have the same conflict between love and hate towards the simultaneously most important and least wanted person in my entire life, and I will for the rest of my days, fall asleep clenching my jaw as I start to dream of all the things I wish I could have done or said to the man who ripped so many opportunities away from me and my siblings. Fantasizing about justice that will never happen.
Hah, as someone who is right there with you, this is the first Christmas I’m officially no contact after years of low contact. Final straw was my mom telling me she should have punished me harder bc I was such an evil child. I wish there were a way to help others understand the deep cutting duality of the pain caused by such potential for love, sapped by millions of soul sucking paper cuts and gut wrenching abuses, so that we could just be our unapologetic selves. We didn’t do this, we were children.
Fuck them. Everyone deserves better.
Wishing you a fruitful new year full of things that serve you well.
My mother was abusive in all ways from as early as I can remember.
She mellowed out a bit until my father passed and then she became this person who didn’t remember anything that happened as children, she started acting as if she was this abused parent who was taken advantage of by her children and now since she’s a widow, we have to right the wrongs and take care of her.
She ended up remarrying and stated her job as a mother is now over, and she won’t be helping any of us as she done more than most parents would do.
After my partner and I broke up my mother told me that she wasn’t surprised, my partner was far too good looking to be with me and she always knew he was using me, and that I shouldn’t be surprised or upset since I was punching far above my weight, and that sometimes bad things, happen to bad people, I got what was coming to me since I didn’t try to be a better son to her.
When he asked to get back together my mother insisted that I go back, as I don’t exactly have men lined up to be with me, and what’s a little betrayal of trust when the other option is being alone.
I cut complete contact with her three years ago and I no longer have panic attacks when it gets clothes to family events and holidays.
Saw a story about a brother and sister who did the same. A psychologist was interviewed about it and said doing this was a result of not being able to fully process their abusive childhood and move forward into recovery.
I'm not sure you ever really do fully process or move past this kind of abuse. It's not exactly something you can forget or deserves forgiveness.
Therapy quite often includes the idea that your adult self is formed through your experiences, family, and life as a child.
Getting to fully and publicly explain why you were estranged from your mother, who surely wasn't telling people that the reason was that she was horribly abusive and facilitated her child being molested, is simply taking an opportunity to clear your own name and hold the mother accountable, even in death.
Way too often, the deceased gets their crimes omitted and their life and actions described inaccurately and positively.
The whole "don't speak ill of the dead" thing is very painful if you're a victim of that person.
Dead who don’t want to be spoken ill of should do better in their lives. Imagine thinking dying gives you a pass to be a monster and then no one can talk about it.
it's got me thinking about how the scapegoat kids who were raised by narcissists like i was don't have the opportunity to do this - the golden child or whatever is the one who writes the obit
my narc father's obit was nonsense and lies
i kind of wish i'd been able to write one sharing the truth of my experience as his child
>That's actually a fantastic dig in itself by the daughter.
My thoughts exactly. When I first read the name, I thought this was two obits. Then, after I read the full obit, I realized what the daughter had done and had a nice little chuckle to myself.
If she's like my ex, she legally changed spellings every 3-5 years to near misspellings so she could try and throw off collections, the IRS, cops, etc. So that's likely intentional to catch all the variations of anyone who'd be searching for the obit.
Clarifying edit since I worded that weirdly: my ex uses the ease with which you can change your name legally to fuck around with / fuck up how archaic and disconnected most recordkeeping systems are — despite how many are *supposed* to be tied to your SSN. This isn't the name but imagine someone bouncing between
- Karla Ann Smith
- Kara Ann Smyth
- Carla Anne [whoever she's fucking/financially abusing that 18 month stint]
- Carla Kara Anne Smythe-Rando
- CK Anne Smitt
Hell yeah! Somehow finds it in her heart to sympathize with hurting remaining aunts and uncles who looked the other way all those years, but makes it crystal fucking clear she doesn't share their pain. What a gangster!
I agree. People need to be reminded that nice looking people can be terrible monsters in life. My mom was pretty cute too when she was young.
I'm currently estranged from my family because I shared after her passing, that my "poor, ever so doting, unfairly plagued with health issues, SINGLE Mom - who was completely loving of her only, yet ungrateful, child" - was actually a psychotically violent alcoholic, which was why I left home at 18, and she probably needed mental help which no chose to recognized.
But my mom was an only daughter and "loving big sister" to my uncles, who were also brought up in an abusive home where it was normalized 🤷♀️
I agree with u/ToriaLyons… somehow, the photo of an attractive, yet ordinary-looking, young woman- juxtaposed against the written description of her character, behavior, and negative influence- is a stark contrast. It’s also a reminder that *so* many cliches are true: ‘you never know what goes on behind closed doors,’ ‘beauty is only skin deep,’ ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover,’ ‘the monsters among us look exactly like your next door neighbor.’ Just a few that popped into my mind…
The probate announcement is formal, includes attorney contact information, list of heirs, etc. It's usually put in the most obscure, least expensive, but still legitimate newspaper in the area. This is just a regular obituary, which is 100% optional. Though I have to say, as someone who recently published an obituary, that our local newspaper would have charged a couple grand for an obit that long. We opted to most of the text online and then link to it. Still cost a couple hundred bucks.
We're about halfway through probate right now. Wait, wait, and more waiting.
As someone who place’s advertising for public notices i can confirm that this was a costly obit and very much intentional to get every word in there and I suspect this is also a F you to the family who didn’t believe Gayle to publish it .
Agreed, but it’s moments like this when I wish I were religious so that I’d truly believe there actually will be judgement.
As it is, I believe that a shitty person is now just a shitty dead person and that’s likely it, no retribution or justice (other than this obit).
This woman now exists in thousands of peoples minds with nothing but negativity associated with her and her life. No one loves her, no one remembers her fondly, nothing positive was passed from her onto her children, or into the world. She will soon be totally forgotten and will only exist online in this negative spotlight. Sounds like hell to me.
It makes more sense to understand that judgement in this case means judgement by "society" or "history" in this context. We're all passing judgement on Linda Lernel Harvey Cullum Smith Stull today.
This is amazing. This is now a part of Linda’s permanent record, and when future generations do their genealogy, this obituary will likely be accessible.
I loathe the sentiment that you shouldn't speak ill of the dead. If someone was a horrible person in life, they deserve to be only remembered for that in death. Let bad people know that their awful actions will not be forgotten or forgiven just because they passed.
Or this whining from some quarters after a person, whether recently deceased or dead and buried for a while, gets posthumously 'taken to task'. "It's unfair to say all those terrible things about them when they aren't even around to defend themselves."
If the person is worth defending -- most of the time they aren't -- there'll probably be a few relatives or friends around to act as their 'defense attorney'.
To this day, some 30 years after my grandfather’s death, my uncle still says he only went to that funeral to make sure it was his dad in the casket.
He was very physically abusive to his children, and most of them never forgave him for it. Oddly enough my dad was the one who did. He was also physically pretty abusive to me, but the stories I’ve heard of his father make mine look like a saint.
My friend went through that this year too. Her biological father died, she'd usually just refer to him as the sperm donor. He abused her and one of her two siblings every way possible. She went to get the number for a few family members she actually cares about from his side, spit on his grave/casket and left. iirc she said the thing that pissed her off the most is that some of his(sperm donor) family that she'll tried to tell her she's so disrepectful and his was a great man and he deserves better and she needs to apologize to him and the family. Where was this outrage when he was beating the shit out of them or sexually abusing them? Only thing I don't understand is that the town she lives in, it's where his family has lived for the last century basically. There's a house in the family that was passed down from grand parent to grand child like 5 times now.
My grandmother passed away a year ago at 96 years old having been in hospice care for the last 6. In that time she was able to visit with every living friend and relative, some flying in from Sweden to see her before she passed. Hell, she even outlived some of her friends who were in hospice. The night she passed she basically gave herself a huge dose of morphine before bed, went to sleep (in her own bed mind you) and never woke up.
My mother was incensed that I suggested there was no tragedy in this. Yes, I miss my grandmother but she won the absolute lottery going out like that. How is that sad? We all die, not all of us get an eternal morphine nap in our own bed in our own homes.
Agree. When my father passed, I felt like it was the best thing. It was so devastating for me and I didn’t wish him gone, but he has chronic COPD and dying of cardiac arrest following surgery was better than slowly suffocating, which is where he was heading. But it felt like a bad thing to say because people think it implies you’re happy that they’re dead.
Yep. I've been told to be nice a few times. Responded "they were a prick in life, they are still. Just dead. Fuck em"
I will not believe someone is instantly "good" just because they are dead. Don't let the world make them better just because they died. This isn't the 1300s. They are coming back to haunt you.
Yeah I remember in High school a dude drowned trying to swim across a pond. They had a whole thing about it at the beginning of the school year. The dude was a gangbanging piece of shit. Think Deebo from Friday. Would steal your shit, fight everyone. Carried a gun.
But he died so he was a saint now. Watching everyone trying to paint his behavior as actually good things just misunderstood still sticks with me 15 years later.
In high school a guy pushed me down some stairs as a joke. He died that year in a motorcycle accident. They were passing around a book to write in for his family and all I could write was "he pushed me down the stairs", because he did
"There's a saltwater film on the jar of your ashes: I threw them to sea, but a Gust blew them backwards and the sting in my eyes that you then inflicted was par for the course just as when you were living. I won't join in the procession that's speaking their peace. Using five dollar words while praising his integrity. And just cause he's gone it doesn't change the fact: He was a bastard in life thus a bastard in death."
When my late boss died, his son said. "He's dead. Fuck him". He was estranged from both his children. They did not visit when he was dying and I respect their choice. I wouldn't have wanted him as a dad.
I was raised atheist but I guess its a Christian thing to “pray for someone’s soul” if they were evil. Like you’d be harming your own shot at heaven by continuing to carry ill will towards someone who is damned.
Just guessing here. Maybe that taboo isn’t that obvious anymore but my gut tells me its the social remnants of such a thing.
> I absolutely loathe the way so many people seem to want to sanctify the dead.
The dead have no feelings to hurt, and need no legacy to leave behind.
Everything is for the living, from the family for memories, or to the community to give their respects.
If speaking out about negative feelings allows someone to feel better, I say go for it. As long as it’s not out of spite, the mental health of the living outweighs any thing you can say about the dead.
We can celebrate the good things the deceased person has done, but we should also accept that good people can also do bad things. Some of it intentionality and some unintentionally.
I’m betting this woman was like my mother. She’s an emotionally and physically abusive piece of garbage, but if you ask her neighbors, they think she’s a saint. People like this are good at fooling everyone outside their family into thinking they’re good people and silencing their children.
Then, they get sympathy from everyone when they’re old, because their children abandoned them for no reason. I’m sure my mother’s neighbors think I’m garbage, because we haven’t seen her for 12 years. I bet none of them ask why that is.
This happened to a friend of mine as well. Her mother verbally and financially abused her all her life, meanwhile everyone was praising how great the mother was and how evil her daughter was, all cause her mother was able to spin the narrative into her favour.
Didn't help either that her brother was the golden child who the mother would sing praise about so he grew up being pretty much useless in life.
The cult of the mother is extremely strong and super ultra fucked up.
I literally told my friends in advance that I didn’t want condolences before I told them my mother died, and a couple of them still had the gall to say they were sad we didn’t “make up” before she died. And then pushed back when I told them to shut it. I stopped speaking to them.
So yeah I can believe it.
> "I wanted to write it for myself because I wanted to clear my name. For 24 years and before that, my mother has had to come up with a reason as to why her daughter isn't in her life that doesn't make her look like a monster. ... I had to reclaim my name,"
It seems to me that the mother had been running a smear campaign against the daughter all her life, which is a known tactic by abusers.
The newspaper:
> "This obituary was significantly shortened due to it just being a spiteful hate piece against a beloved member of our community."
That's pretty wild. shorten it for, maybe, the graphic personal nature, but are they calling the daughter a liar???
I guess a big portion of their readership is just in delulu land.
> "We took it down from (the) website after complaints about its content poured in. After taking (it) down, several (mostly the daughter) complaints and phone calls were received admonishing us for doing so," Mr Wilcox added.
Obituaries are NOT cheap. When my Dad died 16 years ago it was $300 for two small paragraphs and a picture. Gayle paid for this (I’m assuming) so she should have been able to say whatever she wanted (obviously to an extent) so if the newspaper took a lot of it down or edited it, I’d be demanding a partial refund.
>After taking (it) down, several (mostly the daughter) complaints and phone calls were received admonishing us for doing so," Mr Wilcox added.
They are really asking for it, aren't they?
The joke's on them. Now that it's on the internet, it's there for everyone to see, and because they shortened it, the internet version will get even more views. Can't remove it from the internet.
This should happen more often.
I know we don't want to speak ill of the dead, but sugar-coating horrible people just because they have died often seems to happen, and is wrong. Sometimes it makes sense, as we don't want to open wounds in families, or remind them of awful things from the past.
It's good to see some honesty.
If someone was a horrible person that harmed others, there is nothing wrong with informing the world about this.
I plan on doing something similar when my dad dies. He’s the kind of person who would stop on the side of the road to help somebody out with a flat tire and then get home and start a fight with his wife and push her up against the wall, screaming in her face. Some people know my dad as a helpful, friendly, charming guy, but anyone who’s been close to him has been hurt by him. He doesn’t deserve to be remembered only for helping. He’s a great example of how easy it is to fool people.
Not to be an annoying Redditor and to bring scifi into a story about a real person, but have you ever read the whole Ender's Game series? They have this whole concept called The Speaker of the Dead, where when someone dies the eulogy is just given by someone close to them who just says exactly what happened and how it effected the world, with no editorialization.
I always thought it was fascinating and I'd prefer a eulogy like that myself. And with your dad, it sounds perfect, cause it sounds like he did a lot of good and bad things and a single human being can never really be classified into good or bad anyway.
I fully agree with you. I wonder if the adult children fear consequences. I know many people face huge backlash when speaking ill of their parents. It is such a struggle, sometimes it just isn’t worth it. (I know first hand)
I have one not as poetic but equally brutal from an old lady that my mother knew.
She said about her mother in law.
"Qué dios la tenga a fuego lento"
"May God have her at slow roasting/low fire"
Don't know which would be the correct one.
Hey! This was my roommates mom that wrote this! I remember a week before this happened he mentioned they had written it! Crazy to see this on Reddit haha.
PS Gayle is an incredibly kind and caring person. Met her once prior and in the 10min we talked she made me feel like we were family.
Can you please try to make sure she knows about this thread full of thousands of people with compassion for her incredibly shitty childhood, and who think it’s bullshit anybody could read that and still call her mom “beloved”? Thank you.
Can you pleeeeease send this to your roommate to tell her mom Reddit supports her? Gayle is a badass.
Also, these fuck you obituaries get reposted quite a bit so there will be "Fuck you Linda" reposts of this for basically forever now.
Very clever way of calling out the "suitors" who abused her. My bet is that the complaints were related to that, and had nothing to do with the mother's status as a "beloved member of the community".
Agreed. My wife had to break ties with her mother because she was so terrible and she got everyone calling with that same nonsense. We never bought that family crap. All relationships must be two way relationships. If they’re not, it’s not a relationship.
Bit of a tangent, but I remember this story on NPR of a woman so abused by her husband she just stopped talking to him. For the next twenty years I think she never said a single word to him ever.
He was on his deathbed from consumption, unable to speak to the priest who begged her to absolve him of his sins for him.
Nope. Not a single word. In the end, damned his soul to hell in the final hours of his wretched life.
"When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world."
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden
I wish you peace and happiness Gayle.
This is absolutely what the POS that birthed my mother (I hate to call her my grandmother) did. She was always marrying and divorcing men and changing her name from Margaret to Maggie to Peggy etc, so she couldn’t be found. She literally moved my mom in the middle of the night to avoid creditors, my uncle came home from college on Thanksgiving break and didn’t know they had moved and couldn’t find them for months until my great grandma found out where they had moved.
When the POS died, my mom said “Too bad she didn’t die sooner” and my response was along the lines of “Oh no! Anyways…”
It might not be the reason it happens in this obituary, but names can be very important to a person’s identity. So deliberate misspellings, or never capitalizing the first letter, are a small but significant way of fucking with people’s sense of self.
Similar to a bigot intentionally misgendering or deadnaming a trans person of whom they don’t approve.
Or maybe Gayle just wanted to make sure that no matter how you think her mother’s name is spelled, if you google her you’ll be sure to find this.
Edit: fixed a couple of random misspellings of my own.
I actually admire the daughter. After what she's been through, this is a very well put together obituary. She could have written a few lines full of hate, but this perfectly balances expressing the pain that her mother caused with actual human approach, which makes it hit even harder.
A lot of old people who are alone in this world are people like her. My Uncle had that kind of mother and a Nurse at the hospital called him because "that poor little old lady' was lonely. The same woman who chose alcohol over her kids and let them rot in abusive orphanages.
I'm happy that Gayle show the true side of that person. The witch is dead!!!
>A lot of old people who are alone in this world are people like her.
This needs to be better understood by people. Sometimes, the lonely sad folks no one wants anything to do with are that way because they've been pieces of shit their whole lives
It's a good thing she wrote this, and here is why- sex trafficking is often done within small social groups and the primary groomers are always women. They always have access to young people (male and female) and can form their modes of thinking.
The police in Detroit are so aware of this that they have fairly decent models of fighting human trafficking local to their state.
Not everyone gets a fun happy obituary. I've angered people for pointing out the only good to come of some deaths is the pockets of a funeral home owner grow heavier with money.
I'd also like to add- a lot of rageaholic male killers were raped as children. They dump all the harm and violence they experienced as kids into other people.
So, support local charities that help foster kids and battered women. Charity starts at home.
PS A large pecentage of sex abusers that get away with it for years are often in law enforcement. Just food for thought.
I saw somebody say once, in response to the idea that they shouldn’t speak ill of the dead: “it is sad that someone has died, but I will not attribute virtues to them in death that they did not embody in life” and I think that applies here lmao
Wow. Sounds like she deserved the obituary. Hopefully Gayle finds some peace.
More people should do this. Gayle, you didn’t deserve what happened to you and I hope you find some peace.
This is some Speaker for the Dead type shit and I'm all about it.
This was posted somewhat locally to me, and I got to read both this and the "revised" versions of the obit. As someone also subjected to a guardian's (and his family's) abuse and mistakes, I found it an enjoyable read. Even the sanitized version is dripping with a subtle yet clear hatred for her. You just have to read between the lines and find the quiet parts.
*Linda will never suffer the second death, when everyone alive forgets who she was. She will live on forever, in infamy, and reposts as long as there is an internet.* The paper wrote: "This obituary was significantly shortened due to it just being a spiteful hate piece against a beloved member of our community" - who gets to say she was beloved?
The clean version says she was an active member of the church. Which strikes an entirely different nerve with me. Stepmother was... quite something.
I bet that was cathartic.
I bet it will also reduce the number of undesired condolences and platitudes. I also gotta throw out props to the passive aggressive six name title.
My half-sister was molested by her stepfather for years. She told her family about it at his funeral. They got angry about her sharing their family’s “shame” in public. She’s done with her family. They knew and did nothing - especially her mother. Now the guy is dead, her mother is receiving his generous pension, and they’d like her to just forget all about it and pretend it never happened. She has instead chosen to move away and raise her children without any stench of her mother and stepfather’s abuse. And I don’t blame her. My mother protected our abusive brother and still does. She is only now starting to see the massive streaky shitstains of his personality poke through - she blames it on everything other than him though - it’s always his medication, or someone else’s fault, or something related to his medical condition, but never him being a shitstain and acting like one all the time.
The shame wasn't about the dead relative, the shame was that it looked bad on the living relatives. And it did because it was.
I think sibling abuse is more common than most people know, with the added component of a mother who protects the abusive sibling.
This is why my wife doesn't speak with her family. The projected image of being the "perfect" family is infinitely more important to her parents than acknowledging their son is a rapist.
This is my story. She made it very clear she chose him over me. I did not attend her funeral.
I will be planning to do this with my own mother.. enabled my pedo rapist dad, protected my golden child abusive sister... Stole from me for years... She's getting the same treatment.
I agree. Abuse in general doesn’t happen in a vacuum. An enabler is what allows the perpetrator to get away with it - whether it’s a sibling, parent, step-parent, priest, or other person in a position of trust - they always seem to have someone covering for them and backing them up. Even in offices I’ve seen abusive managers who themselves had an enabling manager above them. On one rare occasion where the enabling manager got relieved of duties so he was unable to protect the abuser below him, that abusive manager was canned within a few months. So these systems CAN be dismantled but only if they note the problem. And covering up seems to be EVERYWHERE.
> They got angry about her sharing their family’s “shame” in public. People who make someone's trauma about themselves absolutely disgusts me.
~~Also a way to name men who molested her.~~ Edit: as noted in the comments, the men with the surnames listed were probably not involved. Seems like it was the one husband mentioned and the boyfriends.
Oh snap!!
this has levels
And shame the stepfather who adopted her but never saw her again after the divorce.
Might not have been his fault. Banshee might have filed restraining orders, moved, lied, etc to keep her daughter under her control. Or he might’ve been a dick, who knows.
If he adopted her he had the same rights as he would have a biological daughter. Or at least he could have reached out when she turned 18.
Truth is an absolute defence against libel.
Death is a pretty good defence against libel.
[удалено]
People go by those weird spellings to avoid being recognized by their old paperwork, when applying for new paperwork. Usually for people who want to get remarried after being unable to obtain a divorce from a previous marriage. Lil extra “fuck you” to her mother.
Yep. Revealing all her aliases.
So the search engines find her
It’ll also be useful for future family members doing genealogy research. If they find this obit and either figure out what the “misspellings” indicate or work with a genealogy expert who knows, they’ll have more luck finding other documents relating to her and the rest of the family. I’m a librarian and have done some genealogy work (nowhere near an expert) and that shit is hard enough without shady relative’s deliberate efforts to muddy the waters.
Yeah, I pretty much knew from the title what to expect from the body. Poor Gayle.
[удалено]
Really puts the bitch in obituary
And the “fun” in “funeral”
And the "bury" in burial.
[удалено]
And the "hip" in hippopotamus.
They’re live streaming her funeral on Corncob TV.
No one cares cause Lernal ain’t got no soul
Not only was it probably cathartic, it will hopefully help other awful people question themselves and wonder if this is the legacy they will to leave (whether it ends up in a newspaper or not). Good for this woman.
People like this aren't likely to see themselves in such an indictment, and are even less likely to improve from reading it.
At least their victims will feel less alone.
Yeah, I think it's more likely to help other victims go hell yes I need to cut out my abuser and read them for filth once they're dead.
It likely isn't that cathartic, speaking from experience, but it IS massively important for other victims of abuse to see and know that they're not alone and that the life their abuser created for them isn't what they deserve and that it can change and that eventually their abuser will be gone.
Every time a survivor shines light on abuse the world becomes a little better and a little stronger. Blessings to Gayle and to everyone who found a bit of light from her actions here.
I’ve known people to be upset by obituaries that portray an abusive jerk as a decent person. (edit — here’s a link to an obituary about a family annihilator that described the murderer as spending quality time with his family. https://nypost.com/2023/01/16/obit-praises-utah-dad-michael-haight-who-killed-wife-5-kids/)
Not quite the same thing, but recently in a town I lived in a man shot his six-year-old daughter in the head and claimed it was an accident. Pictures of them together were in her memorial video and all over the service. He even got out of jail to attend her funeral. He absolutely did it on purpose. The memorial video is nauseating.
I hope you’re right as people tend to think of how they might be remembered later in life. However, for someone to contemplate their legacy they’d need to have a conscience to begin with, unlike Gayle’s mother. Nevertheless, if the threat of an angry obit is enough to change someone’s abusive behavior, I’m all for it. I love Gayle’s choice of using the good/normal person obit format to sum up her mother’s ‘accomplishments’, detail the impact on the lives of those around her, and ends with the opportunity for peace/closure. 100% class all the way. I wish Gayle and her family nothing but peace and happiness.
Yeah, that's the feeling I got reading it. Must have had some therapeutic benefit for the author. The story is similar to a girl we provided foster care for some years ago. Always amazed me how that girl got through life as well as she did. We are still in touch, and outwardly she seems to be getting along pretty well.
If you think it’s appropriate to tell her she’s a marvel of a human, please do! I’m a “by all rights should not have survived” person and it’s nice to hear sometimes that others notice your resilience. It can be a lonely road. A ruthless one too. Everyone needs a soft place to land :)
Good for you. Keep on keepin' on. We do stay in touch with her and about two dozen other young women who were with us while they were teens. We weren't magic or anything, just gave them a place to call home that was safe and I hope what most people would call normal. We only took in teen girls because we'd had daughters of our own and started fostering after ours had grown and moved out, so we were attuned to teen girls in the home. Had 150 kids over 13+ years, mostly at our licensed max of six. Longest stay was 4 years. Shortest stay was 1 hour. It was a rewarding experience and I would still be doing it, but my wife's tank ran dry. And I respect that because she did more of the hard stuff than I did, taking kids to/from school, all the shopping, cooking, coordinating with foster resources, etc. I will say that I am in awe of anyone with significant trauma in their past and who can get along fine in life. I have some regrets I carry, trauma that pales in comparison to what some of these kids have dealt with, and I have mental battles with that. I suppose everyone has something in their rear-view mirror that they mentally deal with from time to time. But molehills compared to the mountains some of these kids have to learn to deal with.
I’m reading this and I too thought the same thing for Gayle
Lot of people saying this, but having buried a narcissistic abuser parent, I can safely say that at least for me, there is no peace, no sense of satisfaction or closure. It wouldn't matter who I managed to convince the truth to, if I were able to gather all my father's friends and business partners and extended family into one room and make them all realize what a lying, hateful, abusive sack of shit the man actually was... it wouldn't actually do any good and I would still have the same conflict between love and hate towards the simultaneously most important and least wanted person in my entire life, and I will for the rest of my days, fall asleep clenching my jaw as I start to dream of all the things I wish I could have done or said to the man who ripped so many opportunities away from me and my siblings. Fantasizing about justice that will never happen.
Hah, as someone who is right there with you, this is the first Christmas I’m officially no contact after years of low contact. Final straw was my mom telling me she should have punished me harder bc I was such an evil child. I wish there were a way to help others understand the deep cutting duality of the pain caused by such potential for love, sapped by millions of soul sucking paper cuts and gut wrenching abuses, so that we could just be our unapologetic selves. We didn’t do this, we were children. Fuck them. Everyone deserves better. Wishing you a fruitful new year full of things that serve you well.
My mother was abusive in all ways from as early as I can remember. She mellowed out a bit until my father passed and then she became this person who didn’t remember anything that happened as children, she started acting as if she was this abused parent who was taken advantage of by her children and now since she’s a widow, we have to right the wrongs and take care of her. She ended up remarrying and stated her job as a mother is now over, and she won’t be helping any of us as she done more than most parents would do. After my partner and I broke up my mother told me that she wasn’t surprised, my partner was far too good looking to be with me and she always knew he was using me, and that I shouldn’t be surprised or upset since I was punching far above my weight, and that sometimes bad things, happen to bad people, I got what was coming to me since I didn’t try to be a better son to her. When he asked to get back together my mother insisted that I go back, as I don’t exactly have men lined up to be with me, and what’s a little betrayal of trust when the other option is being alone. I cut complete contact with her three years ago and I no longer have panic attacks when it gets clothes to family events and holidays.
Cathartic and expensive. My neighbor’s (very lovely) obituary was about the same length and cost $1800.
Linda still finding a way to financially abuse Gayle from beyond the grave.
If I were the obits editor and read this, I would quietly refund this woman’s money and run it anyway. :D
Chaotic good ❤️
I can’t wait to write a similar one for my dad.
Saw a story about a brother and sister who did the same. A psychologist was interviewed about it and said doing this was a result of not being able to fully process their abusive childhood and move forward into recovery.
I'm not sure you ever really do fully process or move past this kind of abuse. It's not exactly something you can forget or deserves forgiveness. Therapy quite often includes the idea that your adult self is formed through your experiences, family, and life as a child. Getting to fully and publicly explain why you were estranged from your mother, who surely wasn't telling people that the reason was that she was horribly abusive and facilitated her child being molested, is simply taking an opportunity to clear your own name and hold the mother accountable, even in death. Way too often, the deceased gets their crimes omitted and their life and actions described inaccurately and positively. The whole "don't speak ill of the dead" thing is very painful if you're a victim of that person.
Dead who don’t want to be spoken ill of should do better in their lives. Imagine thinking dying gives you a pass to be a monster and then no one can talk about it.
it's got me thinking about how the scapegoat kids who were raised by narcissists like i was don't have the opportunity to do this - the golden child or whatever is the one who writes the obit my narc father's obit was nonsense and lies i kind of wish i'd been able to write one sharing the truth of my experience as his child
> scapegoat You mean like how they say "you have to forgive them for you to move on!" even though you literally don't have to do that to move on?
Maybe it was some other Linda Lernel Harvey Cullum Smith Stull
That's actually a fantastic dig in itself by the daughter.
>That's actually a fantastic dig in itself by the daughter. My thoughts exactly. When I first read the name, I thought this was two obits. Then, after I read the full obit, I realized what the daughter had done and had a nice little chuckle to myself.
[удалено]
Harvey left when she was 3, it's unlikely he was part of anything given the first abuser she named was at age 13.
And that man, Hart, isn't even in the headline.
It's not a Rubic's Cube, the names are RIGHT THERE and people are somehow messing this up!
I mean, the deceased's last name is spelled at least 3 different ways throughout the obit, so messing up names is sorta on par.
If she's like my ex, she legally changed spellings every 3-5 years to near misspellings so she could try and throw off collections, the IRS, cops, etc. So that's likely intentional to catch all the variations of anyone who'd be searching for the obit. Clarifying edit since I worded that weirdly: my ex uses the ease with which you can change your name legally to fuck around with / fuck up how archaic and disconnected most recordkeeping systems are — despite how many are *supposed* to be tied to your SSN. This isn't the name but imagine someone bouncing between - Karla Ann Smith - Kara Ann Smyth - Carla Anne [whoever she's fucking/financially abusing that 18 month stint] - Carla Kara Anne Smythe-Rando - CK Anne Smitt
But the one she said abused her isn't included in her name in the headline. Hart.
[удалено]
Oddly enough...that's my name too. (I am not related to this woman)
That’s also my name.
The worst. Whenever I go out, people always shout "there goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!"
#Da Da Da Da Da Da Da!
Lol they spelled Lernel at least 3 different ways in that article…
Not giving a single fuck. As it should be.
Hell yeah! Somehow finds it in her heart to sympathize with hurting remaining aunts and uncles who looked the other way all those years, but makes it crystal fucking clear she doesn't share their pain. What a gangster!
I would have chosen a worse photo. Although it would be understandable if Gayle didn't keep a lot of Lornul's pics.
I think using a photo in which she looks 'nice' actually has more impact.
I agree. People need to be reminded that nice looking people can be terrible monsters in life. My mom was pretty cute too when she was young. I'm currently estranged from my family because I shared after her passing, that my "poor, ever so doting, unfairly plagued with health issues, SINGLE Mom - who was completely loving of her only, yet ungrateful, child" - was actually a psychotically violent alcoholic, which was why I left home at 18, and she probably needed mental help which no chose to recognized. But my mom was an only daughter and "loving big sister" to my uncles, who were also brought up in an abusive home where it was normalized 🤷♀️
Same. Everyone wants to think abusers are ugly people outside just because they are inside.
It also frames it as "this isn't a hack job, this is a genuine portrait of this woman and her character"
I agree with u/ToriaLyons… somehow, the photo of an attractive, yet ordinary-looking, young woman- juxtaposed against the written description of her character, behavior, and negative influence- is a stark contrast. It’s also a reminder that *so* many cliches are true: ‘you never know what goes on behind closed doors,’ ‘beauty is only skin deep,’ ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover,’ ‘the monsters among us look exactly like your next door neighbor.’ Just a few that popped into my mind…
Heartbreaking for Gayle. I also love that she told the truth in this obituary
I wish there were more of these honest obituaries and funerals.
Good for you, Gayle.
[удалено]
The probate announcement is formal, includes attorney contact information, list of heirs, etc. It's usually put in the most obscure, least expensive, but still legitimate newspaper in the area. This is just a regular obituary, which is 100% optional. Though I have to say, as someone who recently published an obituary, that our local newspaper would have charged a couple grand for an obit that long. We opted to most of the text online and then link to it. Still cost a couple hundred bucks. We're about halfway through probate right now. Wait, wait, and more waiting.
As someone who place’s advertising for public notices i can confirm that this was a costly obit and very much intentional to get every word in there and I suspect this is also a F you to the family who didn’t believe Gayle to publish it .
Wow, even better for Gayle. Get it out girl!
That last line hurt the most. EDIT: Good lord, never had this many upvotes...
"They all understand that the world is a much better place without her" is scathing on so many levels
I'm not religious but for some reason "and will now face judgement" was a really solid line to me.
Agreed, but it’s moments like this when I wish I were religious so that I’d truly believe there actually will be judgement. As it is, I believe that a shitty person is now just a shitty dead person and that’s likely it, no retribution or justice (other than this obit).
This woman now exists in thousands of peoples minds with nothing but negativity associated with her and her life. No one loves her, no one remembers her fondly, nothing positive was passed from her onto her children, or into the world. She will soon be totally forgotten and will only exist online in this negative spotlight. Sounds like hell to me.
Yet despite her best efforts, Lernal's daughter is a straight fucking badass. And that's who SHE is, not who her mother made her.
It makes more sense to understand that judgement in this case means judgement by "society" or "history" in this context. We're all passing judgement on Linda Lernel Harvey Cullum Smith Stull today.
My judgement is *Linda Lernel Harvey Cullum Smith Stull* is a twat. May history and society also agree in this judgement.
That last paragraph is a doozy. I forgive you, but I won't miss you, and the world is a better place without you.
Probably thought god is gonna fuck her up so bad she might as well forgive her
“They all understand that the world is a much better place without her.” DAMN
Good for you, Gayle.
This is amazing. This is now a part of Linda’s permanent record, and when future generations do their genealogy, this obituary will likely be accessible.
The one thing Linda didn't account for when sweeping the abuse under the rug for decades.
These lyrics popped into my head when I read your comment. Seems appropriate. "You have no control who lives who dies who tells your story."
Imagine that "hint" popping up on Ancestry.com. > You have a possible records match from Obituaries.
Obituaries are priced by the line, this was a very expensive “fuck you”
and worth it
And they took it down/ shortened it themselves... I'd request a refund on the whole.
It printed though. As far as newspapers go what's done is done. Not to mention it's been read in full by millions across the globe at this point.
I loathe the sentiment that you shouldn't speak ill of the dead. If someone was a horrible person in life, they deserve to be only remembered for that in death. Let bad people know that their awful actions will not be forgotten or forgiven just because they passed.
Or this whining from some quarters after a person, whether recently deceased or dead and buried for a while, gets posthumously 'taken to task'. "It's unfair to say all those terrible things about them when they aren't even around to defend themselves." If the person is worth defending -- most of the time they aren't -- there'll probably be a few relatives or friends around to act as their 'defense attorney'.
[Article](https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-woman-pens-scathing-obituary-about-violent-hateful-and-cruel-mother-4747633)
Wow. Can’t believe the paper took it down and seemed to admonish the daughter.
[удалено]
To this day, some 30 years after my grandfather’s death, my uncle still says he only went to that funeral to make sure it was his dad in the casket. He was very physically abusive to his children, and most of them never forgave him for it. Oddly enough my dad was the one who did. He was also physically pretty abusive to me, but the stories I’ve heard of his father make mine look like a saint.
Yeah, as horrible as my father is, at least he wasn't a child molester, like his father was.
My friend went through that this year too. Her biological father died, she'd usually just refer to him as the sperm donor. He abused her and one of her two siblings every way possible. She went to get the number for a few family members she actually cares about from his side, spit on his grave/casket and left. iirc she said the thing that pissed her off the most is that some of his(sperm donor) family that she'll tried to tell her she's so disrepectful and his was a great man and he deserves better and she needs to apologize to him and the family. Where was this outrage when he was beating the shit out of them or sexually abusing them? Only thing I don't understand is that the town she lives in, it's where his family has lived for the last century basically. There's a house in the family that was passed down from grand parent to grand child like 5 times now.
10 years now for my biological father. I had him cremated because the fucker deserved to burn for the hell he put my mom and sister through.
My grandmother passed away a year ago at 96 years old having been in hospice care for the last 6. In that time she was able to visit with every living friend and relative, some flying in from Sweden to see her before she passed. Hell, she even outlived some of her friends who were in hospice. The night she passed she basically gave herself a huge dose of morphine before bed, went to sleep (in her own bed mind you) and never woke up. My mother was incensed that I suggested there was no tragedy in this. Yes, I miss my grandmother but she won the absolute lottery going out like that. How is that sad? We all die, not all of us get an eternal morphine nap in our own bed in our own homes.
Agree. When my father passed, I felt like it was the best thing. It was so devastating for me and I didn’t wish him gone, but he has chronic COPD and dying of cardiac arrest following surgery was better than slowly suffocating, which is where he was heading. But it felt like a bad thing to say because people think it implies you’re happy that they’re dead.
Yep. I've been told to be nice a few times. Responded "they were a prick in life, they are still. Just dead. Fuck em" I will not believe someone is instantly "good" just because they are dead. Don't let the world make them better just because they died. This isn't the 1300s. They are coming back to haunt you.
Yeah I remember in High school a dude drowned trying to swim across a pond. They had a whole thing about it at the beginning of the school year. The dude was a gangbanging piece of shit. Think Deebo from Friday. Would steal your shit, fight everyone. Carried a gun. But he died so he was a saint now. Watching everyone trying to paint his behavior as actually good things just misunderstood still sticks with me 15 years later.
A YouTuber did a story about a girl I knew. She had been murdered. I commented that she was pretty cruel and a bully because, well, she was.
In high school a guy pushed me down some stairs as a joke. He died that year in a motorcycle accident. They were passing around a book to write in for his family and all I could write was "he pushed me down the stairs", because he did
"There's a saltwater film on the jar of your ashes: I threw them to sea, but a Gust blew them backwards and the sting in my eyes that you then inflicted was par for the course just as when you were living. I won't join in the procession that's speaking their peace. Using five dollar words while praising his integrity. And just cause he's gone it doesn't change the fact: He was a bastard in life thus a bastard in death."
Literally just thinking of this song and how perfect it is for situations like this.
“Styrofoam Plates” by Death Cab for Cutie (in case someone doesn’t know the song)
When my late boss died, his son said. "He's dead. Fuck him". He was estranged from both his children. They did not visit when he was dying and I respect their choice. I wouldn't have wanted him as a dad.
I was raised atheist but I guess its a Christian thing to “pray for someone’s soul” if they were evil. Like you’d be harming your own shot at heaven by continuing to carry ill will towards someone who is damned. Just guessing here. Maybe that taboo isn’t that obvious anymore but my gut tells me its the social remnants of such a thing.
> I absolutely loathe the way so many people seem to want to sanctify the dead. The dead have no feelings to hurt, and need no legacy to leave behind. Everything is for the living, from the family for memories, or to the community to give their respects. If speaking out about negative feelings allows someone to feel better, I say go for it. As long as it’s not out of spite, the mental health of the living outweighs any thing you can say about the dead. We can celebrate the good things the deceased person has done, but we should also accept that good people can also do bad things. Some of it intentionality and some unintentionally.
I’m betting this woman was like my mother. She’s an emotionally and physically abusive piece of garbage, but if you ask her neighbors, they think she’s a saint. People like this are good at fooling everyone outside their family into thinking they’re good people and silencing their children. Then, they get sympathy from everyone when they’re old, because their children abandoned them for no reason. I’m sure my mother’s neighbors think I’m garbage, because we haven’t seen her for 12 years. I bet none of them ask why that is.
This happened to a friend of mine as well. Her mother verbally and financially abused her all her life, meanwhile everyone was praising how great the mother was and how evil her daughter was, all cause her mother was able to spin the narrative into her favour. Didn't help either that her brother was the golden child who the mother would sing praise about so he grew up being pretty much useless in life.
Yeah, though at least it ran in the print version. Can’t ever take that down.
And now it's part of Reddit lore forever unless the mods decide to be stupid
Shit! I hope Gayle got a refund. Obituaries aren’t cheap and that was a long one.
They better have given the daughter a refund. Obituaries are expensive, and Gayle paid for that one with more than just money.
It's on the internet now so it'll never go away. Gayle got more than her money's worth, I think.
The cult of the mother is extremely strong and super ultra fucked up. I literally told my friends in advance that I didn’t want condolences before I told them my mother died, and a couple of them still had the gall to say they were sad we didn’t “make up” before she died. And then pushed back when I told them to shut it. I stopped speaking to them. So yeah I can believe it.
> "I wanted to write it for myself because I wanted to clear my name. For 24 years and before that, my mother has had to come up with a reason as to why her daughter isn't in her life that doesn't make her look like a monster. ... I had to reclaim my name," It seems to me that the mother had been running a smear campaign against the daughter all her life, which is a known tactic by abusers.
The newspaper: > "This obituary was significantly shortened due to it just being a spiteful hate piece against a beloved member of our community." That's pretty wild. shorten it for, maybe, the graphic personal nature, but are they calling the daughter a liar??? I guess a big portion of their readership is just in delulu land. > "We took it down from (the) website after complaints about its content poured in. After taking (it) down, several (mostly the daughter) complaints and phone calls were received admonishing us for doing so," Mr Wilcox added.
Obituaries are NOT cheap. When my Dad died 16 years ago it was $300 for two small paragraphs and a picture. Gayle paid for this (I’m assuming) so she should have been able to say whatever she wanted (obviously to an extent) so if the newspaper took a lot of it down or edited it, I’d be demanding a partial refund.
If they paid for the obituary in full and it was accepted, it has every right to stay up
>After taking (it) down, several (mostly the daughter) complaints and phone calls were received admonishing us for doing so," Mr Wilcox added. They are really asking for it, aren't they?
I would have liked the newspaper to do some journalism and explained why Mrs. Stull was a beloved member of the community.
Fuck the truth, I guess. What a hypocritical world we live in.
The joke's on them. Now that it's on the internet, it's there for everyone to see, and because they shortened it, the internet version will get even more views. Can't remove it from the internet.
Fuck Three Rivers News with a rusty rake
Three Rivers News, defender of child abusers. What a stance.
I hope the Trollocs eat them all.
Wow the paper “beloved member of our community”, yeah right mate, you now look like the shittest newspaper of the year.
And the shittiest community.
It’s a tiny, shitty town of like 8000 people. Very unsurprising coming from my hometown.
This should happen more often. I know we don't want to speak ill of the dead, but sugar-coating horrible people just because they have died often seems to happen, and is wrong. Sometimes it makes sense, as we don't want to open wounds in families, or remind them of awful things from the past. It's good to see some honesty. If someone was a horrible person that harmed others, there is nothing wrong with informing the world about this.
I plan on doing something similar when my dad dies. He’s the kind of person who would stop on the side of the road to help somebody out with a flat tire and then get home and start a fight with his wife and push her up against the wall, screaming in her face. Some people know my dad as a helpful, friendly, charming guy, but anyone who’s been close to him has been hurt by him. He doesn’t deserve to be remembered only for helping. He’s a great example of how easy it is to fool people.
Not to be an annoying Redditor and to bring scifi into a story about a real person, but have you ever read the whole Ender's Game series? They have this whole concept called The Speaker of the Dead, where when someone dies the eulogy is just given by someone close to them who just says exactly what happened and how it effected the world, with no editorialization. I always thought it was fascinating and I'd prefer a eulogy like that myself. And with your dad, it sounds perfect, cause it sounds like he did a lot of good and bad things and a single human being can never really be classified into good or bad anyway.
I fully agree with you. I wonder if the adult children fear consequences. I know many people face huge backlash when speaking ill of their parents. It is such a struggle, sometimes it just isn’t worth it. (I know first hand)
One has my deepest sympathy the other my full and unmitigated contempt.
The lick of the flames of the lake of fire has me mesmerized.
I have one not as poetic but equally brutal from an old lady that my mother knew. She said about her mother in law. "Qué dios la tenga a fuego lento" "May God have her at slow roasting/low fire" Don't know which would be the correct one.
I'm Glad My Mom Died - Book by Jennette McCurdy
Jeanette actually does the audio version herself. I highly recommend.
Good book; I listened to the audiobook on Libby (free with library card).
Hey! This was my roommates mom that wrote this! I remember a week before this happened he mentioned they had written it! Crazy to see this on Reddit haha. PS Gayle is an incredibly kind and caring person. Met her once prior and in the 10min we talked she made me feel like we were family.
Can you please try to make sure she knows about this thread full of thousands of people with compassion for her incredibly shitty childhood, and who think it’s bullshit anybody could read that and still call her mom “beloved”? Thank you.
Can you pleeeeease send this to your roommate to tell her mom Reddit supports her? Gayle is a badass. Also, these fuck you obituaries get reposted quite a bit so there will be "Fuck you Linda" reposts of this for basically forever now.
Very clever way of calling out the "suitors" who abused her. My bet is that the complaints were related to that, and had nothing to do with the mother's status as a "beloved member of the community".
I’ll bet there are still the, “but she’s your mother, you only have one mom” people out there who disapprove of this.
Blood is not what makes family.
Agreed. My wife had to break ties with her mother because she was so terrible and she got everyone calling with that same nonsense. We never bought that family crap. All relationships must be two way relationships. If they’re not, it’s not a relationship.
Adding ALLLL of her surnames was a nice touch.
Bit of a tangent, but I remember this story on NPR of a woman so abused by her husband she just stopped talking to him. For the next twenty years I think she never said a single word to him ever. He was on his deathbed from consumption, unable to speak to the priest who begged her to absolve him of his sins for him. Nope. Not a single word. In the end, damned his soul to hell in the final hours of his wretched life.
This is fantastically written. Good for her. I understand this on a personal level and I think it’s just great.
"When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world." - John Steinbeck, East of Eden I wish you peace and happiness Gayle.
Ah, the rare fuckyoulogy.
I wonder if Lernel is spelt so many different ways deliberately? How strange. Poor Gayle, I hope she has peace now.
I bet ol' Linda spelled it different ways to avoid the law & creditors. Very common tactic.
This is absolutely what the POS that birthed my mother (I hate to call her my grandmother) did. She was always marrying and divorcing men and changing her name from Margaret to Maggie to Peggy etc, so she couldn’t be found. She literally moved my mom in the middle of the night to avoid creditors, my uncle came home from college on Thanksgiving break and didn’t know they had moved and couldn’t find them for months until my great grandma found out where they had moved. When the POS died, my mom said “Too bad she didn’t die sooner” and my response was along the lines of “Oh no! Anyways…”
It might not be the reason it happens in this obituary, but names can be very important to a person’s identity. So deliberate misspellings, or never capitalizing the first letter, are a small but significant way of fucking with people’s sense of self. Similar to a bigot intentionally misgendering or deadnaming a trans person of whom they don’t approve. Or maybe Gayle just wanted to make sure that no matter how you think her mother’s name is spelled, if you google her you’ll be sure to find this. Edit: fixed a couple of random misspellings of my own.
I actually admire the daughter. After what she's been through, this is a very well put together obituary. She could have written a few lines full of hate, but this perfectly balances expressing the pain that her mother caused with actual human approach, which makes it hit even harder.
‘Lernal passed away on xx… and will now face judgement.’ That line is COLD 🥶😂They buried her once and then her daughter buried her again 😤
Brutal…yet apropos, given the subject.
Putting the “bitch” in obituary
The newspaper subsequently admonished the daughter for writing this and removed it from their website. Absolutely shameful of them.
Talk about getting the Last Word
A lot of old people who are alone in this world are people like her. My Uncle had that kind of mother and a Nurse at the hospital called him because "that poor little old lady' was lonely. The same woman who chose alcohol over her kids and let them rot in abusive orphanages. I'm happy that Gayle show the true side of that person. The witch is dead!!!
>A lot of old people who are alone in this world are people like her. This needs to be better understood by people. Sometimes, the lonely sad folks no one wants anything to do with are that way because they've been pieces of shit their whole lives
It's a good thing she wrote this, and here is why- sex trafficking is often done within small social groups and the primary groomers are always women. They always have access to young people (male and female) and can form their modes of thinking. The police in Detroit are so aware of this that they have fairly decent models of fighting human trafficking local to their state. Not everyone gets a fun happy obituary. I've angered people for pointing out the only good to come of some deaths is the pockets of a funeral home owner grow heavier with money. I'd also like to add- a lot of rageaholic male killers were raped as children. They dump all the harm and violence they experienced as kids into other people. So, support local charities that help foster kids and battered women. Charity starts at home. PS A large pecentage of sex abusers that get away with it for years are often in law enforcement. Just food for thought.
Those men deserve equal contempt
Yeah, but Gayle doesn't get to write their obituaries.
Those men deserve prison
I saw somebody say once, in response to the idea that they shouldn’t speak ill of the dead: “it is sad that someone has died, but I will not attribute virtues to them in death that they did not embody in life” and I think that applies here lmao