# Daughter writes brutally honest obituary about her deceased father
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [February 14, 2017, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786 "2017-02-14T00:30:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/1 "2017-02-14T00:30:02Z")
I’ve definitely seen obits that said this between the lines, and others where I knew that the “devoted spouse/friend/parent” etc. thing was a bunch of crap.
> **[This may be the most brutal, honest obituary ever](https://www.wqad.com/article/news/local/drone/8-in-the-air/this-may-be-the-most-brutal-honest-obituary-ever/526-da7243fe-fccf-42a0-b614-56a98e1768cd)**
>
> “I apologize to anyone that my father hurt and I felt it would have been offensive to portray him as anything other than who he was.”
I also remember a similar story a few years ago that also went viral.
☹
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### Author:  [@MoodIndigo1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoodIndigo1)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/2 "2017-02-14T00:57:45Z")
This is hard to read. I hope she did get some closure. Btw, I’ve know up close a couple of men like her father.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/3 "2017-02-14T01:08:50Z")
Good for her. When my father died, the funeral was very crowded, from all the people dancing on his grave.
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### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/4 "2017-02-14T01:44:29Z")
> [@MoodIndigo1](#):
>
> This is hard to read. I hope she did get some closure. Btw, I’ve know up close a couple of men like her father.
The story that went viral a few years ago was about a woman.
I have an old FEMALE boss who’s like this too. When stories were run in the newspaper and on a TV station about her after a serious car accident some years back, the e-mail boxes of the reporters all crashed because of the volume of feedback they got about what kind of person she really was. :eek:
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/5 "2017-02-14T17:01:26Z")
This is the part that got to me -
> [@](#):
>
> I am happy for those that simply do not understand, this means you had good parent(s) — please treasure what you have
_De mortuis nihil nisi bonum_ - if possible.
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/6 "2017-02-14T17:06:37Z")
> [@](#):
>
> She _asked not to be named in_ the KTRK report.
Yeah, real classy lady.
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### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/7 "2017-02-14T17:34:43Z")
In the years following my grandmother’s death, I’d sometimes get strangers offering their condolences (its an unusual last name - if you hear mine and knew her - you’ll ask). It took a lot to say “thank you, many people miss her” without saying “but not the people who put up with her goddamn shit for all those years.” And she wasn’t abusive - just a narcissist.
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### Author:  [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/8 "2017-02-14T18:13:08Z")
> [@AK84](#):
>
> Yeah, real classy lady.
Probably to keep people like you away.
Not everyone has a good family. It takes courage to stand up and say, “No, I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
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### Author:  [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/9 "2017-02-14T19:41:44Z")
> [@ivylass](#):
>
> Probably to keep people like you away.
>
> Not everyone has a good family. It takes courage to stand up and say, “No, I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
Yeah, if this guy’s daughter, who presumably knew him better than \*\*AK84 \*\*does, felt the need to post that obituary, then he was probably a real piece of shit. Sometimes people are awful, and sometimes awful people have children.
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### Author:  [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/10 "2017-02-14T20:00:30Z")
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> _De mortuis nihil nisi bonum_ - if possible.
>
> Regards,
> Shodan
_There once was an old man from Stoneham.
I can’t say I am glad to have known him.
A liar, a cheat,
A stinker, a deadbeat.
But… De mortuis nihil nisi bonum_
---
### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/11 "2017-02-14T20:41:33Z")
_golf clap:_
Regards,
Shodan
PS -
_There was a young lady from Memphis
Who was a bit non compos ments
For whenever her dad
Was not to be had
She used horses in loco parentis_
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/12 "2017-02-14T20:42:26Z")
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> This is the part that got to me - _De mortuis nihil nisi bonum_ - if possible.
>
> Regards,
> Shodan
On doit des égards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la vérité. (We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth. )
– Voltiare
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/13 "2017-02-14T20:44:30Z")
A witty saying proves nothing.
– Voltaire
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/14 "2017-02-14T20:47:18Z")
> [@ivylass](#):
>
> Probably to keep people like you away.
>
> Not everyone has a good family. It takes courage to stand up and say, “No, I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
Sometimes the most positive thing you can say is,
“No Flowers, Please. We’re burying a large sack of shit and expect that there will be plenty in the Spring.”
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/15 "2017-02-14T20:50:32Z")
> [@ivylass](#):
>
> Probably to keep people like you away.
>
> Not everyone has a good family. It takes courage to stand up and say, “No, I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
I think the world needs more honesty like this. The world is full of terrible people, and it does no good to pretend they don’t exist.
If they didn’t want to be remembered as assholes after they died, then they shouldn’t have been assholes when they were alive.
Yes, yes, they aren’t around to defend themselves. If the “honesty” is not factual, people will set the record straight.
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### Author:  [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/16 "2017-02-14T20:56:59Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#):
>
> Yeah, if this guy’s daughter, who presumably knew him better than \*\*AK84 \*\*does, felt the need to post that obituary, then he was probably a real piece of shit. Sometimes people are awful, and sometimes awful people have children.
Unless the daughter herself was a horrible person.
IME, horrible people have huge difficulties getting along with other people and invariably think it’s because the other people are so horrible.
I don’t see the need to post that obit, even if the parent was as horrible as all that.
Not to say the daughter is the bad one here. But you never know, and the obit is consistent with either scenario IMO.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/17 "2017-02-14T21:04:52Z")
I don’t know the people in question, so I have no right to an opinion as to whether the deceased deserved the treatment his daughter gave him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.
But even if he did, if I had been an editor at the newspaper, I would have refused to publish the obituary as written.
If this man was genuinely cruel and abusive, his family has a right to feel relief, even joy at his departure. They don’t have any obligation to put on a false show of grief.
But it would have been more dignified to cremate him, scatter his ashes, and forget him quietly than to insult him publicly post mortem.
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### Author:  [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/18 "2017-02-14T21:05:54Z")
It may have been cathartic for her. For all we know, she was so terrified of her father the only way she could get closure was to get in the last word.
Since I don’t think obituaries are mandatory, she could have just not written one in the first place. The opposite of love isn’t hate but apathy. But we don’t know what she went through.
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### Author:  [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/19 "2017-02-14T22:42:18Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> But it would have been more dignified to cremate him, scatter his ashes, and forget him quietly than to insult him publicly post mortem.
The family has no obligation to act in a “dignified” manner simply avoid offending strangers. We’re talking about an unkind obituary, not abandoning his unburied corpse at a crossroads in the dead of night.
The daughter included an apology to anyone her father hurt - that suggests that plenty of people knew he was a horrible person.
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### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daughter-writes-brutally-honest-obituary-about-her-deceased-father/779786/20 "2017-02-14T23:48:42Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> I don’t know the people in question, so I have no right to an opinion as to whether the deceased deserved the treatment his daughter gave him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.
>
> But even if he did, if I had been an editor at the newspaper, I would have refused to publish the obituary as written.
>
> If this man was genuinely cruel and abusive, his family has a right to feel relief, even joy at his departure. They don’t have any obligation to put on a false show of grief.
>
> But it would have been more dignified to cremate him, scatter his ashes, and forget him quietly than to insult him publicly post mortem.
You pay for an obit. If she wanted to use her money that way, its her dime. I’m not sure the editor gets much of a say.
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