Final Disrespect

I never read the newspaper. I  do not have time and I do not want to know the world's unhappiness. I am fully up to date on what is important but do not want to know life's daily strife. The other day I had a few minutes so I skimmed the paper. As I got to the back, I saw a picture of a beautiful woman who was in the obituaries. The headline said, "Woman, 54, dies in house fire". It looked like a thirty year old picture, but most obituary photos are from a time when the person looked their best. I decided to read the article. It seems that there was an electrical fire in the woman's home and she and a tenant died. Then I read further and was appalled. Her family told a story of how she was an alcoholic, how she lost her children to her husband of 20 years, how she was so sick that they could never rekindle a relationship and how she died a drunk because the alcohol meant more to her than her family. How could a family strip this woman of her last ounce of dignity by airing her dirty laundry in a public forum? How heartless were they? In the article they called it, "her disease", so if they knew that it was a disease how could they fault her so cruelly?