wow.

Except for the fact that she was at times kind and loving to us grandkids when we were younger, that would have been my grandmother's obituary. I hadn't spoken to her since 1997, and that was only because my father called her up and put the phone to my ear. I hadn't seen her since 1993.

She infected her daughters, too, which is why I haven't seen them since 1990.

I think that, when my great-grandmother died, my mother would have wanted to write this obituary. My granddad recently scanned in a bunch of the front pages from her family bible, and she wrote some rather toxic things about both my grandmother (her daughter-in-law) and my great-aunt (her other daughter-in-law).

It doesn't appear in the newspaper's archives, so it's either been pulled or was a hoax.

hoax or not, the wider point is that there's no point in pretending, some people are just horrible parents who will not be missed by the family they abused and/or tore apart; whitewashing their abuse and their cruelty or burying it under an insincere layer of fake piety might appeal to the hypocrites among us, but then truth is truth. we are not all equal because we don't act all the same -- and in the end we reap what we saw.

There is good in everyone. If you can't see it, maybe that says more about you than it does about them.

SFist has been looking into this. It is real. But it leaves me wanting to know the other side of the story, which unfortunately will not be forthcoming.

ouch... and oddly enough squee!

part of this is why i've yet to have kids. i really want to be a good person but i really doubt i can be a good mom. i have scars from my family and maybe part of them is my inability to not be selfish, but i fear i am - really selfish and i don't want to scar anyone that i may give life to. of course, this woman isn't me but it can't be only me that fears being horrible to my own family.

Holy Crap! What a bitter obit to write. Poor grandma; she sounds like she needed prozac.

Poor grandma; she sounds like she needed prozac.

Or to have not had children in the first place. Not everyone is cut out for it, even with the support of the pharmaceutical industrial complex.

Or not to have had NINE children. I think very few people are cut out for that.

More info.

What matteo said.

What you see above is a distillation of eight first-draft pages crammed with the sad story of a woman who, [daughter and obit author] Brown said, probably suffered from never-diagnosed mental disorders that caused her to keep her children unfed, poorly clothed and completely terrorized.

See, that's what pisses me off about this. The daughter who wrote the obit acknowledges that the mother most likely suffered from mental illness, but is unwilling to acknowledge that it might have been responsible for the mother's alleged terribleness. The article goes on to say that the nine siblings aren't close, and that it's the mother's fault.

It sounds like a fucked up family, but it takes all 10 for it to be as fucked up as that -- not just the mother. Blaming it all on the mother -- in her obituary, for god's sake, to which she can't respond -- is just a way of saying "See? It was all you, all along, and I'm completely innocent."

There are horrible parents in the world, yes. But at some point, terrorized children become adults, and you know, sometimes you just have to move on and be better than what you came from. It's not fair, no, but that's life, and it becomes up to you to make it a good one.

What that woman doesn't realize is that the obituary says a hell of a lot more about her than it does about her deceased mother. And maybe her obituary will reflect that one day.

Yeah, maybe her obituary will. But, kids that are terrorized aren't really interested in a rationale. To me, this woman was just stating facts.

I agree, we can make different choices as adults, and we should not become victims or blame, but some horrible parents have a wonderful way of pitting siblings against one another. It's clear that these children have issues, and it's probably because of their parenting.

Right on, mudpuppie.

Feh. I disagree. What would you write about Jeffrey Dahlmer? Ted Bundy?

None of you caught whatever hell that woman dished out. How could you know?

the sad story of a woman who, Brown said, probably suffered from never-diagnosed mental disorders that caused her to keep her children unfed, poorly clothed and completely terrorized.

"She was a chameleon. She could make outsiders see her in any way that she wanted while behind closed doors she would beat at least one of us every day," Brown said of her San Francisco childhood. "

Awful stuff. I imagine that telling the truth about what happened and its impact is helpful to the survivors. Good for you, Virginia.

I'm with mudpuppie. An obituary is not the place to air grievances.