Obituaries aren’t an easy thing to write. Whether the family members writing it are still in heavy mourning of the deceased or perhaps the relationship was strained, obituaries can be tough to create. Often, they might read like many other obituaries and seem uncreative, but usually, they never speak badly of the dead. But as with everything, there are exceptions.

That was the case for the obituary of Kathleen Dehmlow, who passed away at the age of 80 on March 31, 2018. The obituary of the Minnesota resident appeared in the Redwood Falls Gazette. Because of the unusual words that were composed about Dehmlow in her obituary, it went viral, and people around the world have since shared it widely. Written by two of her children, Jay Dehmalo and Gina, it’s clear from the words they chose about their late mother that the relationship was very strained.

The Washington Post reports that the obituary of Dehmlow seems completely normal in the beginning, stating her date of birth, where she was born, and that her parents were Joseph and Gertrude Schunk.

This probably sounds familiar to people who read obituaries, but after that, it starts to take a very unusual turn. In fact, the words that follow become quite dark. The article goes on to mention that she was impregnated by her husband’s brother, and she moved away to be with him in California.

The obituary immediately begins to tell about how Dehmlow abandoned her two children who wrote the piece for the paper. It turns out that Dehmalo and Gina were raised by their mother’s parents Joseph and Gertrude.

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After the obituary states that she has passed away in Springfield, Minnesota, it goes on to say that she will “now face judgment.” This is an ominous statement to foreshadow the next words that are to follow. The obituary concludes:

“She will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her.”

The obituary painted such a negative picture of Dehmlow, it went viral and left the world wondering what she must have done to inspire her children to write such a scathing text. In a Daily Mail exclusive, Dehmalo opened up about his late mother and shed new light on the obituary he and his sister wrote about her. He told the publication:

“You can’t believe the dysfunction of the family. They’ll never know what we went through but it helped us [to write this]. We wanted to finally get the last word.”

Dehmalo, who changed his last name to distance himself from his mother, revealed that it was Gina’s idea to write the obituary but he penned it himself. In fact, it was so harsh that one local newspaper refused to publish it before the Redwood Falls Gazette did so. However, after backlash, they took down the online version one day after it was published, while legacy.com did the same.

The news was so widespread and shocking to those who know Dehmalo that he stated he had old childhood friends reach out to him, as they never realized his mother abandoned him and his sister but instead thought she was already dead. He explained:

“I’ve got calls from buddies who’ve said, “We didn’t know she’d left you. We thought she’d died in a car crash or something.”

Despite having reservations about going ahead with the obituary, Dehmalo said that it’s been cathartic for him and Gina to get their truth out there. But as one might expect, not all relatives appreciated it. Dehmlow’s surviving sister Judy told the Daily Mail it was “nasty” and “hurt the family tremendously.” She added:

“Why do people want to talk about it? It’s not important.”

But Dehmalo begs to differ, stating:

“Not important? Sure. They have no idea what we went through and back then, in the ’50s and ’60s, nobody talked about anything.”

He adds:

“You could write it all down in a book or turn it into a movie and people wouldn’t believe what we went through.”

The Daily Mail wrote that an insider revealed that neither of Dehmalo’s parents was adequate in their roles as caregivers, alleging that both of them liked to “drink and party.”

Meanwhile, Dehmalo doesn’t gloss over everything, admitting that he and his sister were “bad kids” at times too. While they were lucky to have the love of their grandparents after being taken in by them, he talked about how much it would hurt when his mother did return from California on rare occasions, where she lived with her younger kids and Lyle, her husband’s younger brother whom she’d run off with. Dehmalo recalls:

“We didn’t have so much as a card from her. I remember she came home twice and on one occasion she was showing pictures of her and her kids playing cards, drinking beers … Gina and I were standing in the room, just standing there and she didn’t even acknowledge us. It’s like we didn’t exist. How can you do that to your own children? That’s when we knew we had to get the hell out of Minnesota.”

Do you think it was appropriate for Kathleen Dehmlow’s children to write such scathing remarks about their mother even though she abandoned them? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, and send a link to your friends if you think they would be interested in this unique story.

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