Who Should Pay For My Wife's Funeral? Me or the Congregation? She killed herself.

by ÁrbolesdeArabia 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  ÁrbolesdeArabia

  Is this topic in poor taste? I don't think it is anymore because this is going to keep happening until the Watchtower start's to care about something more than "Field Service Hours" and "Meeting Attendance". Stop investing in nonsense and began to act like Shepherds you tell everyone you are! Warning to these men in the book Ezk, chapter 34.

  How do we change the Organization, by exposing their incompetence with men and women who suffer from depression and other ailments they blow off, or give bad advice to.

  How do you "pretty much kill yourself"? You can learn something new everyday!

  1. You refuse to take your medication because life is not worth living anymore, and you stop eating for weeks and sit in the dark.

  2. The stress to the body leads to heart death.

  A phenomena experienced by some schizophrenics and others who suffer another form of mental illness "hypomania" is their ability to starve themselves to death without knowing what their doing. The deep dark cloud of depression sets in and visual distortions Hallucinations, keep people occupied day after day until they die.

  Author Kurt Vonnegut's son almost died two or three times from food deprevation, if I am correct he is now a medical doctor and details he trip through Hell in his book. How Kurt's son was able to come back from being gone, and become a MD is beyond belief.

  The elders were not trained to deal with this situation (what could the elders have done that might have saved her but not involve Jehovah's name?) she sat in her room for weeks until her death, how sad don't you think?
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  AnnOMaly

  ..."He refused to allow the kids of the deceased wife, to pick up her possessions even though their marriage was less than six months."

  Why? Is it because he's too emotionally attached to them? Or is he just being mean? What kind of possessions are they? Trinkets, mementos? Clothes? Valuable antique furniture? What? Two years on, have the children been able to retrieve anything of their mother's?

  Very tragic case. But surely it's the husband's prime responsibility to pay for the funeral out of her estate. Whether he shouldn't have married her or otherwise is irrelevant - he did. Nobody forced him down the aisle, did they?

  Why does the widower think the congregation is responsible? It's not part of the elders' remit to handle psych cases. They can only offer 'spiritual' guidance. Did they encourage her (them both) to seek professional help? Even if they didn't, did the family encourage her to seek professional help? Why dump all the responsibility on the congregation? Some things don't add up here.
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  Larsinger58

  I'm just commentin in passing here. I find this sad, of course. But if we don't know the details, how can we comment. One thing that might be the case is that the wife herself was estranged from her kids, perhaps the congregation, and told her new husand in the case of her death to make the congregation pay for her funeral and not to allow her kids anywhere near her possessions which she gave to her husband.

  I knew of a case where a worker had AIDS and was to die soon, but was so estranged from his family, he left everything to his employer who was nice enough to let him keep his job until he was too sick to continue. Who knows? Maybe the wife in the end was looking out for her new husband?

  Even so, this is unfortunate.

  Of course, there could be some technical details as well of how the funeral was to be handled. Maybe if the local congregation wanted certain things done, the husband figured they should pay for it. For instance, he may have decided to just have no service at all, or just a service for a few persons at the local mortuary, or nothing at all, justing having her cremated. This might have outraged the brothers in the congregation who wanted a funeral and burial and so the husband might have went along with that request if they paid the additional expenses.
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  Vidiot

  ÁrbolesdeArabia - "This brother is one of the most humble and helpful elders you will ever meet, reads anything on psychotherapy, couple's counseling and takes classes in Orange County via another church, because our Organization has no methods of teaching "real world life-skills". The program is part of a Master's in 'family relationships', which open's up Pandora's box for him."

  Decent R&F members of his congregation probably love him.

  The heirarchy, on the other hand...

  ÁrbolesdeArabia - "Should he be disfellowshiped for going to a non-JW church to help the Congregation, and become a licensed therapist(two-year program)?"

  Should he be?

  Absolutely not.

  Will he be?

  If the GB's increasingly hard-line stance is any indication, his eldership (at least) ain't much longer for this world.
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  tiki

  this sounds a bit much. the close family of the deceased is responsible for whatever funeral/burial they opt...... granted some people can be rats, but seriously...... those closest are the ones to take care of arrangements.
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  cobaltcupcake

  They should have had life insurance. Period.
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  Balaamsass

  I agree cobaltcupcake.

  Why do so many JWs not spend the $15-$30 per month for a little life insurance? A couple of JWs told me they thought "it showed a lack of faith"........ ..idiotic.
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  ÁrbolesdeArabia

  @cobalt, the husband had, has plenty of coin for any kind of funeral short of a "Micheal Jackson" type. He refused to pay for the funeral, basically wanted the "County" to do a "Colonel Sinders Special (that's where the county cremates her as a Jane Doe, "street-or-homeless person" at tax-payer expense)" which outraged the friends of his Kingdom Hall. This brother was furious he married a "broken women (menally ill)", he is very screwed up in the head too.

  Her kids were not part of the Organization ("unbaptized-publishers" who fell away from the Truth)therefore he felt uncomfortable allowing them (unwholesome association) to pick up her clothes, trinkets, knick-nacks of purely "sentimental value"

  If I had $750,000 in CDs, and I allowed the Kingdom Hall elders who are poor materially to pay for this expense, I am a piece of shit! What a good hearted congregation to take over her expenses when they don't have the "means" her husband had/has. There is alot of good with Witnessses as human beings, compassion and altruism when they are able to push "the rule-makers" back and listen to their consciences.

  This is the hardest part of walking away from the Organization, for many of our friends is they still enjoy socializing with decent people. The "husband" still is going in field service and preaching the "Good News", and think's the congregation should have paid for his wife's funeral, if they did not like the "County Option".

  He's a selfish bastard from all accounts, sidenote(most of his friends in the kingdom hall decided he was not good assocation, so it's costed him for being a "skate".). Reading past accounts of people's stories of "defraying cost in Field Service", many of you here never received consistent donations from the "free-loading mooches" who sat in your "new-field-service-cars" Tusday-Saturday while you paid for Petro and "wear and tear" on your cars, vans or trucks. He was one of those people who enjoyed sitting in your cars, while you paid for gas week-after-week.
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  AnnOMaly

  Outrageous! I understand now why the congregation ended up paying. They couldn't let one of their 'sisters' have a 'Jane Doe' funeral as if nobody gave a damn. What a rat. Did the kids ever get any of their mother's things?
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  wha happened?

  I don't get any of this