Something's been weighing on my mind for a couple months, and I just want to get it off my chest. We had my mom's public-facing funeral in October, and beforehand, an old friend of hers reached out to me and my siblings - some of whom she'd never met - and asked if we could live stream the service for people who couldn't attend. We declined for several reasons: we'd already had the emotionally wrecking private service for family and friends and were already worn thin planning and hosting a second one in another state, live streaming something so painful felt horrible, we didn't want to handle technical difficulties while managing dozens of people in person who we had likely never met, and finally, the venue hosting did not have any audio or video setup, so we'd have to start from scratch.

She replied in a relatively passive aggressive way, shaming us from keeping people who cared about our mom from engaging with her service. At that point I was sick of demands being made by people outside of the family and immediate friends, so I blocked her number and socials and moved on.

The service came and went, and was just as exhausting as we anticipated it to be. And then, weeks later, I found out that that same woman not only brought her own camera to record the service, but uploaded the entire thing to YouTube without anyone's consent. I had gone up as a last minute speaker and sort of fell apart on the stage talking about my mom. And now that display, as well as everyone else's, is up for the public to peruse.

It feels like a violation, and I'm so angry, but also just so exhausted dealing with these people. Had she reached out before and asked to film, or upload, we certainly would have agreed. And we would have stated at the beginning that the service was being filmed for upload, in case for some, like me, that made a difference in what they did or did not share.

Apologies for the long vent, but that feeling of violation has been building in me, and I'm just consistently stunned by how inconsiderate these people who claimed to love my mom have been to her family, who she loved very, very much.

#grief
#violationOfBoundaries
#celebrationOfLife
#peopleSuck