DEATH BECOMES HER

The part of being an obituary writer I like least is handling family disputes. Dealing with them is like having a root canal without Novocain, only far less pleasant. Thankfully they don’t come up that often, but when they do, they tend to follow a sadly familiar pattern: The mother/spouse/brother-in-law didn’t get along with the spouse/parents/other in-laws while the person was alive and eventually the feud evolves into an all-out war over the content of the obituary. Disputed content runs the gamut from who gets listed as a survivor to where and when the service will be held.

            Last Thursday, just in time for the Christmas holidays, I had to settle my latest family dispute. On Wednesday, an older gentleman came in to place an obituary for his brother, a longtime resident of the area who had moved to the western part of the state about five years ago. The obituary was innocuous enough, listing his background, occupation, survivors and a few nice sentiments about the deceased’s love of animals. There was no reason to believe anything was amiss until the day the obituary ran when late in the evening I received a tearful call from a woman claiming to be the widow of the deceased. As it turns out, the man’s brother left one small but very significant detail out of the obituary: the deceased was married for more than 30 years and his wife took care of him during a long and difficult battle with cancer. According to the man’s widow, a feud broke out recently between her and her husband’s brother and the brother turned around and deliberately left her out of the obituary out of spite. Before it was all over, I heard from other relatives of the couple, all distressed that the widow was intentionally left out and looking to me to provide a remedy for her situation. I was able to offer a solution that seemed to satisfy all involved, but in some cases families aren’t happy regardless of the compromise proposed.

            After more than six years of experience in handling these types of situations, you’d think it would get easier, but it doesn’t. It sounds so heartless to tell grieving family members who are in the midst of a dispute, “Sorry, but we can’t get involved. You’re going to need to work things out with the funeral home and/or other family members,” but it is the truth. We simply can’t get involved because that would mean we’re taking sides and that’s not our job.

            No matter how diplomatic I try to be when handling these disputes, the sad fact is if the family can’t set aside their differences long enough to get through the funeral, someone is still going to walk away with hurt feelings regardless of how the situation is resolved on the obituary front.