Alert this is a rant. Recently I lost someone very special to me to death. She was so many things to me, my cousin, best friend, and next door neighbor thru our teens. If I was going to cross the line as a JW teen she and I snuck around together. The life of JW teens trying ti live a little bit normal life.
now 50 years later we are in our Senior Years and I lose her to death even though we were never to grow old in this system. My two beautiful children bought me a plane ticket and helped me fly to her Memorial to be able to say goodbye. saying goodbye is very hard when you have such a long history.
The memorial service was held at her Kingdom Hall. My df'd son was the person who made sure I made it to say good-bye. It started out much better than either one of us expected. We planned to sit in back quietly and listen. We were immediately usherd to the front with the rest of the family. We actually felt welcomed. Service over we were not planning to attend the family reception. our plans changed when this older Elder who I've known since my early teens insisted that as familybmy son and I were welcome to attend, which we concented to.
We are now at the reception where things started going wrong. I was sitting with my JW family and my son was hanging with his non-JW cousins and one JW cousin who is a fringe JW. He was being respectful by not putting any of his old JW friends in a awkward position only speaking to JWs that came to him to speak (this is the congregation who was df'd from). This is when things went wrong. An elder came to my son and asked him to leave because someone complained that my big teddy bear son was making someone uncomfortable by being there. My son agreed to leave but explained that he had to come back inside to get his mother (me). This did embarass this Elder who started to show his embarrasment at that moment and who at that point realized who also needed to ask his own son (long hair, tatoos, and face piercing) to leave.
I no longer protect JWs organization by staying quiet. A week ago I was approached by a Young JW pioneer while sitting in my car. First thing out of my mouth is that he had just walked up to the wrong car. He got an earful about JWs funerals and loving df arrangement. I explained to him what happened and then asked if he thought my son was going to turn a entire congregation gay by attending his families funeral. Yesterday I was visitin with two kind neighbor friends, I asked if they had ever been kicked out of a funeral of course they hadn't and were shocked that JWs would do such a thing, and we soon were laughing about their actions. Yes disfellowshipping is so loving that this one incident has shown our non JW family why they are glad their mom left 20 years ago, and my neighbors say they are shocked by such actions.
Sorry this is so long but I want to put this sad incident behind me and continue moving forward in a normal loving life.
