Suck it up and go
Dear Prudence,
The neighborhood curmudgeon finally kicked the bucket after, from what I am told is a 50-plus-year reign of terrorizing the community. “Miss Jones” made life a misery for everyone she encountered—screamed obscenities and threats of calling the police at neighborhood kids who had the temerity to ride past her place; frequently dumped her yard waste on the next door neighbors’ lawns; stole newspapers from others back when physical papers were a thing; allowed her dogs to defecate on other people’s property; thought nothing of plugging in an extension cord at the next door neighbor’s to help herself to some electricity, etc.
The problem is that my wife, for reasons I cannot understand, is insisting that our family attend her funeral! This woman had no friends or family willing to remain close to her for good reason. She says that’s the point. As far as I’m concerned, if that’s the way she feels, she’s welcome to go on her own, but she’s insisting on dragging the rest of us along. Our teenage children and I all think this isn’t right. Other than faking a collective case of food poisoning, how do the kids and I get out of this one?
Re: Suck it up and go
And sometimes you can state that you're just not going to support her in situations like this.
Sometimes gentle kind people find themselves alone in old age unfortunately.
This sounds like it was of her own making and creating an argument to force people to take time out of their busy schedules to show up where he's actually pleased he no longer has to deal with her sounds like the wife is needs to sort out her own guilt and empathy about how the woman wound up that way - but forcing it on kids is actively teaching her offspring that adults are to be obeyed and time with them is mandatory rather than talking to them about relationships built on treating others well.
I don't think anyone needs to attend the funeral specifically, and i don't think anyone is wrong for not wanting to. This LW is just really rubbing me the wrong way with the language and vitriol toward his wife and the neighbor. Don't love that.
There were a number of elderly people on my block when I first moved to my house. Four of them have passed in the time I lived here. I didn't go to any of their funerals. I mildly didn't like two of them. They were part of the same local, large family. I'm sure there were plenty of people at her funeral. One of those women wasn't as bad as the OP's neighbor but had some of that attitude. She was always unfriendly and scowling, even when we didn't have a beef. And we had a few minor ones because of her nonsense.
I was close friends with one of the others, but our relationship really soured in the year before she moved to a retirement home and then she died about a year after that. She'd had a 30+ year friend/roommate that I was casual friends with. But she moved to a nursing home in MS and I wasn't going to travel that far for her funeral.
But it would be hard to get me to want to put on my dressy somber attire after waste was thrown in my yard repeatedly, I cleaned up animal excrement often on my property and my children were threatened in their neighborhood.
Unfriendly and scowling? Yeah poor old lady is grumpy. But if my teen thought she can finally ride her bike down the road without learning new curse words, my sneakers not tracking in anything but outside dirt, read the morning paper that I paid for and know that I won't find additional waste in my yard that I need to clean up....I don't know. I think it's a really dangerous thing to insist especially to children that funeral attendance is owed.
Even if this elderly woman was gravely ill or suffering from dementia (which might be true, but he also says she's terrorized the neighborhood for 50 years), it doesn't mean everyone should suck it up and suddenly mourn her death. You don't have to have a party, but you don't have to pretend for....reason?....to have enjoyed her presence and mourn her. I didn't think he talked about his wife badly, just that "I don't understand why she's insisting on this." I also didn't feel he talked about the neighbor badly...he listed her behaviors which are vile, not his language.
Mean hateful people don't have well attended funerals. **shrug**
But IMO it's pushing REAL hard on the family to insist that they go for anything other than feeling like it's faith-based.
I also didn't read this as insulting. I read it as the LW listed all the things that the neighbor did including what he personally witnessed and he wasn't consulted by his wife but TOLD that's how he was going to spend his time. I don't know - I think that's a big issue marriage-wise to force that on your spouse and not hear the counterpoint as to why they feel equally as strongly about not going. He isn' telling her that she can't go. He's saying that he objects to her requiring his attendance and the attendance of their kids.
And I think if this was any other situation or a change in genders we'd all be bristling at the concept that a husband TOLD and did not ASK his wife that she and their offspring would be taking time to attend the funeral of her tormenter.
And depending on the ages of the kids and the work/home situation, it's telling the H that he's now taking a day of PTO to do this or sacrificing precious weekend time to do it. For the kids, it's missing school which may or may not be an issue or missing one of their commitments.
There are the two key things for me: the background in the neighbor's behavior over a span of many years (long before it can be blamed on a cognitive decline) and the concept that one spouse is mandating this without the opportunity of negotiation or ability for their partner to say no.