By Amy Wright, Littleton, CO
Have you ever read a rebuttal to an obituary? Yeah, me neither, but hear me out. Paul Graves died recently. Obviously, my rebuttal is not that Paul passed. You can’t argue that. It is, well, science. Instead, my beef is that mine and my family’s names were included in his obituary. Paul had so much hate for his kids that he found it necessary to take the rather arrogant and comically futile step of including in his will the request that we not be notified of his death. The fact that a family member went against his final wishes should in and of itself tell you all you need to know. The hate in his heart ran so deep that it extended to his two only blood relative grandchildren. One of those wonderful children he never even met. So, my rebuttal is simple – our names should have been left off that obituary. You don’t get to have it both ways; you can’t despise us, badmouth us, berate us, and belittle us, and then add us to the list of “loving” family in the obit as if we were ever included as such. The truth is he is not survived by us. In fact, we survived him.