And what feelings will your passing inspire in them?  Thanks to Jordon Cooper, I ran across the following obituary.  I’ve edited out the names ‘cause I think this is heavy enough without ‘em.

[name], born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on August 7, 2008. She will be met in the afterlife by her husband… her son… and daughter….

She is survived by her [six] daughters…, and son …; [nineteen] grandchildren…; [twenty-one] great-grandchildren…. I apologize if I missed anyone.

[She] had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.

Her family will remember [her] and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again.

There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM.

Snopes — the urban legend reference page — verifies this as real and adds that it ran on August 16 and 17, 2008 in the Vallejo (California) Times-Herald.

Aguilar’s daughter was moved to place the notice after reviewing the obituary of a co-worker’s father and noting as she read through it how little any of it fit her mother. “What struck me was how my mother was none of the things I was reading. She was never there for us, she was never good and she left no legacy. So how could I say any of the usual things about her?” the daughter told a reporter. She and her siblings, she maintained, were kept “unfed, poorly clothed and completely terrorized.”

Now we don’t have the facts to lay blame - and Mom won’t be speaking in her defense any time soon - but what a mess!  How does a family get to this point? 

I’ve heard some funerals described as a celebration of the deceased’s new beginning in heaven but this is the first time I’ve heard of one being “the beginning of a time of healing…”

Who Will Write Your Obit?