Truth In Obituary

When Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick died, her kids let her have it.

They wrote her obituary and they spoke bravely and truthfully.

In part: "Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick born January 4, 1935 and died alone on August 30, 2013. She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible. While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them. When they became adults she stalked and tortured anyone they dared to love. Everyone she met, adult or child, was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit.

On behalf of her children whom she so abrasively exposed to her evil and violent life, we celebrate her passing from this earth and hope she lives in the afterlife reliving each gesture of violence, cruelty, and shame that she delivered on her children. Her surviving children will now live the rest of their lives with the peace of knowing their nightmare finally has some form of closure."

Lest you think her children are ungrateful wretches or mentally unstable, please know that this abusive woman's horror stories prompted Nevada to become one of the first states to allow children to sever parental ties.

This is good stuff. We need more honesty in death. Actually we need more honesty in life but it is a lot harder emotionally to confront somebody in life than it is in death.

We have a tendency to make saints out of the dead. Overlook the bad, puff up the good into zeppelin sized memories.

I am not 100% sure why this is. Maybe we are trying to be kind in death. Maybe we don't have the balls for honesty even when our adversary is dead. Maybe we are just plain afraid of death and feel that if we respect it, it will leave us alone.

Too bad it isn't that easy.

It seems that death is a good place to start in the honesty department. Most people deserve a considerate obituary, most people deserve to be remembered lovingly.

But for the exceptions to the rule, it is probably healthy to trash them out. Cathartic. If the children of Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick delivered a eulogy similar to the obituary, I'll bet whoever was gathered around, drinks in hand, would start nodding their heads. The nodding would pick up rhythm, escalate into hand clapping and eventually lead to story telling.

Evil story after evil story would be told, and MTJ-R's soul would blacken and shrivel up and lose elasticity and careen faster and faster along the highway to hell.

It would be immensely satisfying to have a hand in shepherding someones twisted soul speedily to hell along as efficient a route as possible.

I once read a book that was a collection of suicide notes. Some of it was dark and some of it was humorous.

A collection of vitriolic but truthful obituaries would be equally as entertaining.

One more book for me to read.

My god there is not enough time in the day.