DEAR ABBY: May I add my experience to the letter from "Disgusted in Indiana," who believes that it's sacrilegious to list pets in obituaries as survivors of a loved one? I couldn't disagree more. I find it obscene to have to include someone who didn't live up to the part.
My husband and I were married more than 30 years. He was very good to his mother. She didn't return the favor. She mostly took from him. I watched her divorce herself from anything distasteful. My husband was diagnosed with cancer, and although he fought it with all his might, there came the terrible time when the doctor told me he would not survive. I had to tell my mother-in-law, who quite matter-of-factly told me she didn't want to see him but wished to remember him "the way he was." She never saw or talked to him again.
I brought him home so he could pass away there. Our pets never turned away from him, but gave him great joy. His mother could have done the same, but didn't. I wanted his obituary to include those he loved and those who loved him back. It never occurred to me not to include our pets. I felt obligated to include his mother strictly because she was his mother, not because she deserved to be included. -- MOURNING IN CALIFORNIA
DEAR MOURNING: Please accept my sympathy for the loss of your beloved husband. That he could not have the comfort of his mother's presence and support as he lay dying was a tragedy for both of them.
Please try to forgive her. While I understand your anger and disgust at the woman, she deserves your sympathy. She's a woman who's unable to cope with the realities of life, and apparently her fear of death is so profound that she preferred living in a fantasy to seeing her child through to the end.