In January, I posted this thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/220914/1/Leaving-JW-Tracts-at-the-Funeral-Visitation
This is a continuation of the thread. Here's the opening post of that thread, so you don't have to relive the whole thing:
JW's cannot help themselves. A couple who were very close friends with my wife and I when I was a JW had a few kids that grew up. None of their kids remained JW despite their heavy activity while growing up. One of their sons is married with some children of his own. His baby died and because the son was not a practicing JW, I decided to accompany my wife to the visitation.
So to be clear- the mother and father of the child are not JW's. But tons of JW family were there. I did notice that there were virtually no JW's who were not family. I think they were unsure if the son was disfellowshipped or never baptized. (This one was never baptized.)
Well, of course someone (or more than one someones) couldn't help themself and put the WHAT HOPE FOR DEAD LOVED ONES tracts out on the tables. I can say that while I was there, absolutely nobody picked one of them up. I imagine some pioneer was even "counting their time" if they are the one who put them there.
Many family members were elders in their perspective congregations. Only one from my wife's congregation (technically, the congregation I am an inactive member of) was there because he was related to the family by marriage. Except for him (knowing I am not DF'ed), most of the elders seemed to keep their distance from me, possibly because they didn't know if I were DF'ed or not, also possibly because I didn't wear a suit to a visitation. I was dressed nicely, though. Many non-JW friends and family didn't wear suits either.
So continuing on, we had reason to see the one of the people who were our close friends as JW's- the JW grandmother of the child that passed. Let's call her Sally.
My JW wife asked Sally if their daughter-in-law was doing okay with her recent loss. It was such a weird response from Sally. She said words to the effect of "I guess she's doing okay. She has been avoiding me since the funeral. I don't know why."
I wanted to say that it might have been the pushing of their cult religion onto the whole funeral that creeped out Sally's daughter-in-law. But I stayed silent. It seemed that Sally was totally letting her guard down to the fact that "I" was there in the room.
After saying "I don't know why," Sally more fully explained what was happening. She clearly knew "why" the daughter-in-law was avoiding her. It went something like this:
"Well, after the funeral I hadn't seen the other two grandchildren for three weeks so I asked my son if I could have them over. Usually, [Daughter-in-law] dropped them off, but my son did instead. He said that they had been called by many Witnesses and got many cards from Witnesses. It was mainly aimed at him and how much they hoped to see more of him." (I am unsure of their ages, but they are quite young.)
"Anyway, while the kids were here, they talked about how their baby sibling was an angel in Heaven with God. I talked about how that wasn't true and I told them about Jehovah's purposes. [One of the grandkids] said 'Mommy said we should stop talking about Jehovah and talk about Jesus. Well, that' was fine with me. I can do that. [One of the grandkids] said that Mom and Dad didn't want them going to the Kingdom Hall anymore. I said if they are visiting us at meeting time, that we would still go."
My wife made some comments about the daughter-in-law just feeling overwhelmed by the whole thing and Sally said the following:
"I hate always contradicting what [the grandkids] are saying, but all I am doing is telling them 'the truth.' "
I could hardly believe my ears. Sally knew that she was directly contradicting the things parents had decided to tell their children about the loss of their sibling. Even if you fully disagree with the parents, you have no right to decide to tell them something else. There wasn't any point in my saying anything because Sally already knew what she had done and was just pretending not to understand her daughter-in-law's 'problem.'
When we left, my wife said how she really thought Sally was so wonderful. I said I had a huge problem with Sally contradicting her son and daughter-in-law's information to the kids. It was a classic cult moment as my wife would not even consider responding to my comments and instead, abruptly changed the subject.
