Idiot JWs

The title is low on creativity, but high on "true dat."

So, yeah, my uncle died about a week ago. He was blind, severely autistic (think of a blind Rain Man), and diabetic. Among other things. Sister and I always told Mom he needed to go to a nursing home, mainly because he liked to go walking around town, and when he got home, he’d go to sleep, skip lunch, and wake up to find himself in the throes of really low blood sugar shock. Plenty of times he hollered so much the neighbors called an ambulance to come and get him. They had to break his window and crawl in over the trash (he collected everything—literally), but they hauled him away to the hospital. Plenty of times Mom walked in and found him stretched out on the floor in the middle of a low sugar period, pretty much incoherent. Sometimes he had gone to the bathroom on himself. His heart was weakened because of those attacks, and recently he had surgery for it, which landed him in the nursing home for what seems like six months. After he was well, she insisted he stay living on his own in that apartment with a nurse coming to visit him a couple of times a week. She let him do that because, quite frankly, she liked getting his groceries on a Sunday and talking about what a burden he was. She liked being a martyr about it. She hauled him to JW meetings he never cared to go to three times a week. If that sounds harsh, I’m not in a particularly generous and loving mood. And facts are facts.

She found him a little over a week ago just as Sister and I always said she would: lying in the floor just like any other low sugar period, but stiff and dead. She found him two Sundays ago. She isn’t sure if he’d been dead since Thursday. She only checked on him for meetings and groceries. His funeral arrangements ensued. She was making them, which I appreciated. My experience with JW funerals is that they spend very little, if any, time on the family member’s life and much more time on describing what that family member believed. It’s a chance to proselytize. So, I told my mother I wanted to speak for five minutes at his service, to thank people for the little kindnesses they showed him over the years (he could be very difficult to deal with) and follow it with a poem. I said nothing about doubting how the JWs would treat the service. She said she’d check to see whether it was “OK.” I told her anything the family wanted to do should be “OK,” as it was the family’s choice, not the preacher’s. She hates when I call them “preachers.”

Late that night I get a call from her that starts with “Virgil, I want you to promise me you’ll do me a favor.” I knew right then it was going to be all downhill. She had spoken to the JW preacher. He had said he would refuse to do the service if I got up and said anything. He didn’t want the “platform” tainted by me. He said a paraphrase of that. He also said it was a “serious” event, which should be held with grave “respect.” As though I was prepared to do a dog and pony show. The more she told me to shut up and sit down, the angrier I got. It was just one more example of the JWs using a moment of grief to take advantage of the family in some way. He was holding the service hostage to his wishes. To cut a long story short, the call didn’t end well. I told her I simply couldn’t discuss it anymore, I was too angry, too insulted, and I couldn’t believe she had sided with that blackmailing religion over her own flesh and blood. I left her with something to think about: “His behavior is outrageous. What is the rest of the non-JW family going to think when they find out about this story?” Because that’s the real witness, not what comes out of their mouths from a pulpit.

I didn’t talk to her the rest of the week. She tried to get Sister to run interference with me. I hope she was scared to death. I know she was, or she wouldn’t have bothered with Sister. I hoped that she and that idiot preacher Tom were stone cold terrified of what I was going to do when I came in. I hoped they lived in dread, because that’s what people like them do to all the people like me whom they turn away and shun in the name of “teaching us a lesson” while they get up and spout pious nonsense about how God tells them to love everyone regardless of reason. I was good and pissed.

But I didn’t want to scandalize my uncle’s funeral. I realized that making a power grab for control was basically the same damned thing they were doing. There was next to no time to get another preacher. Mom had already threatened to move the service to the Kingdom Hall and not tell me about it. But, I was also determined not to let them get away with it. So, I printed what I would have said on nice paper. Once I got to the service, I pulled the funeral director aside and told him I had written it, that I was my uncle’s legal heir (which is true), and that I wanted it with the program. As people came in, JWs and non JWs alike, they filed by and took one of each. I selected the busybodies of the room who would be most likely to spread your personal business all about town, and I told them in my most amazed and naïve voice, “I’m so glad you picked up one of those copies. You know, I was going to read that out loud, but their preacher said he wouldn’t do the service if one of the family got up and said something. You can’t blame Mom, he practically held her hostage! I have no idea what we’re going to do when something happens to her. Those people are so difficult and they really took advantage of our grief to push their own religious agenda.” By the time the idiot took the “pulpit,” he was getting the stink-eye from many different directions. This will bounce around town for months. My aunt’s eyes positively glittered when I told her.

Har.

To add insult to injury, the idiot preacher PLAGIARIZED me at the beginning of his stupid speech. He used the metaphor I had come up with to explain how my uncle functioned, and referred to it as though he came up with it himself. He also used my examples without crediting me or asking my permission. Fortunately, everyone had already picked up a copy and knew it was mine—some of them even commented about how he had cribbed it from me. So he just made himself look bad. Neither he nor his hardcore wife came up and talked to me and Sister. I made sure to tell people about that, too. They were appropriately outraged. His “flock” will have a hard time picking up extra sheep the next time they go god-bothering.

The other JWs in general were pretty well-behaved. The ones who, I think, felt bad for their behavior seemed to make open amends with me that night. They stayed and talked for a while, not that stupid brief nod they’re required to do. Sister had a couple of different experiences. But only the hardcore can stay mad at you when your life is going so well away from their influence. Most of them saw the announcement I put in the local newspaper back home (blog on that later). They knew life was going well. At that point they’re just haters, to borrow slang from some of my favorite music. One of my favorite made up expressions is, “revenge is a life well lived.” That was really very true in this case.

I’m still very angry with my mother over this crap. But for the first time in our relationship, other people have gotten a peek at what’s on the inside of our family struggle and have seen it for the one-sided view she always presents to outsiders. For once, people saw just how wrong things were. It was a long time in coming, but it was very satisfying.

-- DV (still not answering the phone)