Barely a week ago, I posted about a family that was torn
apart when the wife-mother abandoned her husband and daughter in order to find
true love. In that story, ripped from Carolyn Hax’s Washington Post column, the
derelict woman’s relatives were trying to re-establish contact with the woman’s
abandoned child—now grown up. I agreed with Hax, to the effect that it was too
little, too late.
Anyway, the gods seemed to want to confirm the correctness
of our views. They sent us the following obituary, written by the children of a
woman who also abandoned home and hearth to find true love.
Here’s the story, reported by the Daily Mail:
Kathleen
Dehmlow passed away on Thursday in Springfield, Minnesota.
According
to her obituary in the Redwood Falls Gazette, she was not a very good
person.
It
states that after she married Dennis Dehmlow in 1957, the couple had two
children, Gina and Jay.
Five
years afterward, 'she became pregnant by her husband's brother Lyle Dehmlow and
moved to California.
'She
passed away on May 31, 2018 in Springfield and will now face judgment.
'She
will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a
better place without her.'
Lesson to us all: Be careful who you mistreat in this life; they may write your obituary!
ReplyDeleteThough in this case, it looks like the kids either had second thoughts about Mom's obit or are being censored, since the obit has disappeared from the link. (On the other hand, the fact that the original obit hasn't been replaced by a sanitized version speaks volumes! See http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/redwoodfallsgazette/obituary.aspx?n=kathleen-dehmlow&pid=189188418; and https://www.legacy.com/search?countryId=366899&countryUrl=united-states-of-america&dateRange=Last30Days&firstName=Kathleen&lastName=Dehmlow.)
The obituary seems removed now. Living to age 80 sounds pretty successful, and we really know little of what happened in that marriage and nothing what happened after. Getting married at age 19, having 2 kids, and then getting pregnant at age 24 with her brother-in-law certainly doesn't sound like a mature family, but that was now over a half century ago. This story suggests nothing to the moral dilemma of the other post from May 31, whether a daughter as an adult should try to reach out to her estranged mother who abandoned her.
ReplyDeleteThis is a peculiar third-person wording 'She will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her.' Minnesota Nice and passive-aggressiveness go hand in hand.