On February 14, 2012 an obituary ran in the Tampa Tribune that was probably less then a well deserved send off for 93-year-old Jose Anello.
The third line of the obituary reads:
“She is survived by her Son, ‘AJ’, who loved and cared for her; Daughter ‘Ninfa’, who betrayed her trust, and Son ‘Peter’, who broke her heart.”
Written by Angelo (AJ), the obituary has revealed a family squabble in which the children blame each other for their mom’s loss of finances towards the end of her life while accusing the third sibling of abandonment.
According to the Tampa Bay Times Ninfa placed a nicer obituary the next day which contained all of the same information, minus the third line shown above.
So what brought about the fight between the 63-year-old Angelo and the 65-year-old Ninfa. Angelo claims that Ninfa was stealing her mom’s social security checks and using them to take vacations with her husband, vacations that included trips to Branson, Missouri and Alaska.
Ninfa on the other hand says Angelo maxed out his mom’s credit cards and then spent her life savings on various items and trips for himself.
In the meantime Angelo isn’t backing down from his original obituary statement, in face he says that the words spoken “reflected what [Josie] had said right up to the end.”
The one family member not speaking out about the obituary is Peter Anello, that’s because he cut himself out of the family more than 25 years ago.
Do you think airing family grievances in an obituary for a dead mother was a foolish mistake?