My father was never a JW and was very ticked off when I became one at the age of 17. He didn't like JW's very much and the only two times he ever entered a Kingdom Hall that I know of were for my first public talk and my wedding. He wouldn't have missed the latter no matter where it was, and he came to the former only because it coincidentally fell on my 21st birthday. He generally considered himself Protestant, though he never went to church. The family background was largely Episcopalian on his side, and Methodist on my mother's. However, my mother had died at the time I was born, and my father remarried, to a Catholic woman with 4 children, shortly before I was baptized. Because I was planning to become a JW, I was not allowed to live with my father and stepmother and her children, but continued to live in my grandparents' home (where my father had also lived prior to his remarriage). All this happened in 1969.
I was in the middle of my divorce from my JW (now ex-) wife when my father died in December of 2000. He and I had not been close over the years, mainly because of my JW association, although we did mend many of the bridges during the last year or so of his life. My stepsister and stepbrothers were actually closer to him in many ways than I was. In fact, my stepsister considered him her "real" father (though not biological), because she had been only 3 when her mom started dating him and 7 years old when they married. As a result, it was the stepchildren who made all the funeral arrangements. They arranged for a Protestant minister (I don't recall what denomination) to conduct the funeral - as I am sure he would have wanted. My JW then-wife, from whom I was already separated, and who knew I didn't want to be a JW, marched into the funeral home like she owned the place and started leaving Watchtower tracts on "hope for the dead" in strategic places. She then proceeded to berate me rather loudly for allowing a clergyman of Christendom to conduct the service rather than asking an elder from the Kingdom Hall. After all, she argued, I was his only natural offspring and should have taken charge of the situation - and had the legal right to do so. I replied that the last thing my father would have wanted was a JW funeral service, since he didn't even like JW's very much. She continued to press the issue and finally stomped out of the funeral home in a huff.
I found the arrogance of her position astounding, even for her. Clearly, to JW's, a funeral is not about remembering the person who has died and comforting the survivors. Rather, it's about "giving a witness," another opportunity to do an infomercial for the Watchtower. She certainly wasn't worried about making me feel better after my loss. In fact, as time went on, her real motive in showing up became clear: to get any information she could about any inheritance I might receive so that she could access it in the divorce proceedings. Though he left me a decent little nest egg, she succeeded - between her and the lawyers, I had virtually nothing left of it after the divorce.
