When a person dies, you should speak only well of them, but for one Minnesota woman, the message in her obit was clear: Good, she’s dead.
Kathleen Dehmlow died May 31 in Springfield at the age of 80, and the obituary submitted to her local newspaper by two of her children makes it clear she will not be missed by them.
Her obit, which appeared in the Redwood Falls Gazette, begins with the usual information, including her date of birth, her marriage to Dennis Dehmlow in 1957 and the two children she had with him, Gina and Jay.
It then takes a sharp turn:
In 1962 she became pregnant by her husband’s brother Lyle Dehmlow and moved to California.
She abandoned her children, Gina and Jay who were then raised by her parents in Clements, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Schunk.
The obit then reads that Dehmlow “will now face judgement” and “will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her.”
As you might expect, the brutal death notice has gone viral, with most people just plain shocked.
Some wondered on social media why the newspaper allowed the obituary to be printed.
One Twitter exchange with the newspaper suggested that the decision to run the nasty obit received some pushback in the newsroom.
Redwood Falls Gazette general manager Lisa Drafall told HuffPost the family paid for the obit to run, but she wouldn’t address whether it caused a debate in the newsroom.
At least one of Kathleen Dehmlow’s relatives thinks she isn’t getting a fair shake.
Dwight Dehmlow told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the facts as related in the obit are true but “there is a lot of stuff that is missing.”
Dwight Dehmlow, who wouldn’t specify his relationship to the deceased, said, “The sad thing about this is there is no rebuttal. There is more to it than this. It’s not simple.”
He said she lived in a nursing home the last year of her life and her sisters were there when she died.
“She made a mistake 60 years ago, but who hasn’t?” he said. “Has she regretted it over the years? Yes.”