So, I’m just posting this as a warning to lurking JWs. If you’re still on the fence, here is a story.
My grandmother, now in her 80s hasn’t talked to anyone in the family for over 20 years ever since my mother was the last one of her children that left ‘the truth’, she had sent my mother a card to never talk to her again. So here we are 21 years later, she gets a call out of the blue that she needed help, she hadn’t been able to get into her kitchen. My mother didn’t even have her number in her phone anymore, so as soon as she hears the voicemail, she sends her husband out to help, next day my mother goes and visits.
Long story short, grandmother doesn’t even recognize her own daughter, thought she was a nurse, no, you called me yesterday, completely forgotten, but yes, people are continuing to break into her apartment and moving stuff in the kitchen and she had locked the door to the kitchen as a result and then someone stole the key. As you can surmise, she has advanced dementia at this point.
So where is your JW friend. She is the executor of her estate at this point, too old to make it up the stairs to her apartment, so she never visits, but we go shopping together but she buys too many groceries (whether that is all true is up for debate). Nobody from the congregation comes? She laments, nobody knows who I am (she has been nearly 60 years a JW, pioneer for most of it) I go to meetings on Zoom, nobody visits, how about elder so-and-so, died, so-and-so, died, so-and-so, retirement home, okay, so literally nobody knows who she is, nobody cares, nobody arranges for visits or wants to pick her up to go to meetings. She had been without food for 3 days and the only person left to call, I must imagine she has tried the elders, other JWs, is her daughter, who she hasn’t talked to in 21 years, not in the store, not at family functions, flat out stonewall ignored.
So my mother is now in conversation with social services, who were already investigating ‘weird’ bank statements, apparently, grandma’s executor, a JW pioneer, you know the deal, has been spending money on her own ‘needs’ because unlike my grandfather who always worked (he was ‘fiercefully’ against the JWs) and left a nice, cozy pension, pioneers have nothing for their old days.
Truly despicable, this morning my church did a call for a family from another country and another church (not even the same denomination) in need and people stepped up, even though they don’t even know these people. JWs can’t even be bothered to take care of their own and would leave an old lady to die because she stopped being able to attend in person a few years ago and even a ride to the meeting is too far for this new generation.