It pissed me off. I’ll get back to that but let me tell you the level of “I am so done with the universe!” I was on. My dad passed away in early January. Coming off the December holidays for me, were not so great, I was depressed. My mom lives with me, she is old, she is possibly in a dementia world, she is definitely in her own denial world, so she is exhausting and sad. My 13 year old cat Figaro was sick, we thought it was just kitty ibs and then a tumor showed up. He has cancer and we have months with him to go, I am anticipating grieving him. I rescued and hand-raised him, just days old. I was devastated, still am. The new year came and went. And then my birthday was coming up! It’s on January 5th and I am a Capricorn queen. I thought that was my chance to get myself back. No, my dad died just a couple days before my birthday. My birthday was only special to me because of the love given to me by my friends. I felt seen and loved and I knew I would be ok, I knew I would be supported.

The day came for me to ride to Virginia with my half-brother for the funeral. I had planned to go to the funeral. But I did not go and I will talk about that later. In the morning as I was packing, my 15 year old rescue cat Lovey, she had a stroke and I had to say good-bye to her at the vet. An entire run of days of the universe piling it on. I was devastated once again. While I was waiting to get her into the vet, the obituary was published. And yes I had been googling fiercely checking for it because I was not getting information from my family. I also knew in my gut it was going to be disrespectful and it was. 

See my dad has been in many relationships and married a few times. There are many many step-children and he seemingly treated them as his own. Actually he treated them seemingly better than his own biological children. My half-brother and I were my dad’s only biological children. Were we listed as such in the obit, no. I am not saying the steps should have been left out but it was weirdly put together by gender and age and at the end of it all I was listed last and my name was spelled wrong. His only biological daughter, his youngest daughter, her name was spelled wrong, there she is forgotten again. 

And there were other step-children who were omitted and biological grandchildren missing, honestly it was a mess. It also mentioned him being married for 32 years. I was 10 years old that long ago. My mom was certainly divorced from him, but he had a whole other wife in between the one who wrote the obit. I had always heard she was the one he cheated on all his ladies with so the timeline was looking really messy. What I didn’t love was that it proved to me exactly what I was expecting that no real effort or thought was given to make sure no one was left out and that names were spelled correctly. I don’t care who did it, I do not care where their head was at. Was it intentional or not, I cannot say, but was the care there, no. And that hurt.