Posted on 02/11/2017 1:39:32 PM PST by NRx
GALVESTON, Texas — Obituaries reflect the deceased person's life and their impact on others.
The family of one Galveston man decided to be brutally honest when writing his obituary. Let's be real, the truth hurts, even when you're six feet under.
Leslie Ray Charping passed away last month at the age of 74 from cancer. His family writes, in part:
"He leaves behind 2 relieved children; a son Leslie Roy Charping and daughter, Shiela Smith along with six grandchildren and countless other victims including an ex wife, relatives, friends, neighbors, doctors, nurses and random strangers."
"With Leslie's passing he will be missed only for what he never did; being a loving husband, father and good friend. No services will be held, there will be no prayers for eternal peace and no apologizes to the family he tortured. Leslie's remains will be cremated and kept in the barn until "Ray", the family donkey's wood shavings run out. Leslie's passing proves that evil does in fact die and hopefully marks a time of healing and safety for all."
My BIL had that. It was some kind of reaction he learned in childhood. He has since lost it and he is in his 60’s.
It had something to do with fear and the way he was raised.
Avid Hunter, Fisher, and Father of two.
It was the way he was introduced as a child and never allowed to be himself. He is quite a different person now.
He shows me how to accurately use my guns and he is very prominent in hunting with a crossbow as well.
All of our elders have passed on and we carry the torch. Times have changed but everyone is still the same.
We hold dear respect for all that have given us life and especially GOD that has allowed our spirit to manifest itself here on Earth.
Godspeed mylife.
It’s not being a devil, and speaking honestly and openly about how a parental figure was a piece of crap actually FREES you from being a victim. One of the things abusive people (of any stripe) always do is push the people they abuse to maintain the outward appearance, make sure everything looks normal. One of the most important keys to breaking the cycle is spreading the word far and wide: things here aren’t normal. We have this weird thing in our society where abused people not only have to admit they are abused, they have to convince others, people try to talk them out of it, people try to tell them it’s OK, people tell them to forgive, people tell them they earned it.
What I see in this obit is shaking off the last vestiges of being a victim, this is them walking on. They announced how very not normal the situation was, how very abused they were, and how much better their lives will now be.
Well put.
Prayers all around
Pretty easy to walk away, get a restraining order.
Many a man left home to live on his own
Most family retains ties.
But you AND your spouse can be buried at a Vets Cemetary, where your gravesite will be honored and maintained alongside all the others.
My dad arranged that for both my parents and they are in a beautiful hillside area (and beautifully kept) overlooking the nearby Missouri River.
The whole place is hallowed and peaceful.
It isn’t easy to walk away though. And you just said why. Most family retains ties, and when you walk away you become a major outlier in society and people want to know why. If you’re not doing anything for Father’s Day people want to know why. We have a major societal push to maintain that relationship no matter how bad it is.
If you’ve never been in that situation, or had people close to you in that situation, first could yourself lucky, and second accept that you simply do not get it. One of the interesting parts about dysfunctional vs functional families is that people in dysfunctional families totally understand life in a functional family because they are called upon so often to mimic it, while people in functional families just don’t freaking get it. They cannot understand what it means to live in a world where a parent is the enemy, where one of the most basic and important human relationships is exactly the opposite of what it should be. Try and imagine if every single happy memory of one of your parents was the opposite, every time you got praise you were instead told you were a disappointment, every time you got love you instead got violence, every time you were encouraged you were instead discouraged. If instead of your parents having the goal of raising you to be an exemplary human being who can succeed on your own, they had the goal of keeping you tied to them helpless forever.
Your whole life is different, your whole concept of self is different. It’s a long hard climb to get to anything resembling normal adulthood. And multiple times along the way you’re going to have to say “dad you’re a rotten SOB who tried to ruin my life”, maybe even in dad’s obit.
Obits cost money.
The need to vent is understandable, but the way this family did so is not, IMO. The family could have spent it on a private celebration or private counseling, and skipped the obit altogether.
Publicly flogging the dead guy’s corpse, as well as airing the family’s dirty laundry to strangers, is just tacky.
http://abc13.com/news/woman-who-wrote-brutal-obit-says-she-meant-every-word/1749259/
“I told the truth. I am not sorry for telling the truth, and I am not sorry for standing
up for myself,” explained Sheila Smith.
Smith’s father, Leslie Ray Charping, died of cancer last month. But he wasn’t a good man.
He served time in prison and was, by several accounts, both physically and verbally abusive.
So, Smith wrote a scathing obituary for her father, calling him evil and offensive.
“For someone that knew him and family members that knew him and to see something on there
was a complete lie would’ve been an insult to everyone that he did bad things to,” Smith
explained. “I couldn’t write that in good conscience because it’s not going to bring
closure to anyone or to myself.”
The obituary has been so popular it even crashed the funeral home’s website.
Smith has received thousands of positive and negative reactions.
“When you don’t talk about it and you don’t acknowledge the problem even exists, it just
grows,” she said. “It’s not going to stop until people say, ‘this is a problem’ and
they talk about it.
In case you were wondering, Smith is paying for her father’s cremation.
Charping didn’t have any insurance.
end snip........
Sounds like the dead guy was a bastard in life and the people in his life were too cowardly to rip him a new one while he lived. Else why bother after he is dead?
I saw that in another article.
I hear you. Been there done that. I had a father who didn’t do his damn job. THough I had no problem forgetting the past when I walked away from him in my twenties it wasn’t for any past sins, rather, it was because the vicious bastard WOULDN’T STOP being a vicious bastard. Most people will struggle along to keep family together but there are limits...
I have seen instances where guys have been vilified far beyond reason. While I do think some of them deserved ridicule for some things they did, there seems to be no limit to what some mothers will denigrate the father as being, when it comes time for the marriage to end. Some of them spin everything he ever did way beyond truth, to justify their bitter anger.
Was this guy as bad as they say, or did he seem bad because he wouldn’t merely accept ‘her’ view and move on?
Young kids don’t always know the true dynamics that played out. They don’t know that part of dad’s problems with alcohol and drugs could have been related to dynamics within the home that he couldn’t cope with.
That being said, some guys (and some women) cannot say no to bad temptations. I’ve seen men like that too. It’s surprising how the wives of some of them don’t bad mouth the guy to the kids. They seemingly remain above it all. When a woman does this, I think it’s a lot healthier for the kids.
The family in this story is angry over the top in my opinion.
I guess you can’t say if you haven’t been in their shoes. I don’t want to trash the family too much here. They may have gone through hell for real.
Life really sucks for some families. It’s so sad when two people had good feelings for each other at one point.
Funny - in some respects...
“I told you I was sick”......
My (ex)wife once told me I was so miserable that no one would attend my funeral.
I told her that the only one that would bother or embarrass would be HER, as I really don’t care now and probably won’t care then.
I did remind her that at least a VFW/American Legion Color Guard would be at Quantico while SHE had better be the one to ‘worry’ about someone showing up for HER funeral.
We did make it 40 some years 1964-2007, things were bad enough BUT when I quit drinking and smoking in 1990 I discovered many things that I somewhat ‘enjoyed’, I no longer had tolerance for ESPECIALLY HER, and since it was MY HOUSE, I tolerated it/her for another 15 years and gave it to her and left.......
The other articles make it clear this was a violent man who was in and out of jail. Crossing him was dangerous.
I see this as an apology to the other people who survived the ordeal this man (no, let's look at what we know of his rap sheet and be honest - this thug) put people through.
The folks who read and see only hate despite the explicitly outlined apology spelled out in the wording only see life through the lens of their own self righteousness. I know, I know. He Dindu Nuffin, and all people be hating on him.
What if before the man died he made his peace with God and is now in His arms while God’s wrath is now focused on the drafters of the cruel and heartless obit?
She’s raised well enough not to have dumped his worthless butt in a Potters Field
Do they still have Potters Fields I wonder
The woman is a low life. The proper thing to do would be to pay for the cheapest burial possible, and walk away. Keep it under your Stetson. Show a little class.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.