Family who wrote scathing obituary about their mother speaks out
The family who wrote a scathing obituary about their late mother which divided the internet have spoken out about why they felt compelled to tell people the “word is a better place without here”.
Kathleen Dehmlow passed away on May 31 in Springfield, in the United States, at the age of 80.
In an obituary published in the local newspaper, The Redwood Gazette, her family detailed how she “abandoned her children” and ran away with her brother-in-law.
“In 1962 she became pregnant by her husband’s brother and moved to California,” it states.
“She abandoned her children, Gina and Jay who were then raised by her parents in Clements.”
Announcing her death, the siblings declare Dehmlow “will now face judgement”.
“She will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her.”
Now, her son, Jay, says his sister, Gina, felt the need to write the blistering note about their mother.
“They’ll never know what we went through but it helped us [to write this],” he told the Daily Mail.
“We wanted to finally get the last word.”
Jay said that the obituary was rejected by one Springfield newspaper, before it was published.
He also revealed that his friends had no idea what had happened to his family when he was young.
“I’ve got calls from buddies who’ve said, ‘We didn’t know she’d left you. We thought she’d died in a car crash or something’,” he said.