On Thursday night, my family found out that my cousin had hung herself early Sunday morning, March 7 and had been on life support ever since. My ex-aunt and her church kept this information from my uncle and our family (long story). It came out when someone from the church told someone at work, who in turn phoned one of my relatives because she thought we should know. By the time we all found out, my cousin had been taken off of life support and died the following morning. We are all devastated that for the past 11 years, we have been kept out of both of the girls' lives (she has a younger sister) and we are even more devastated that because my aunt is so full of hatred for my uncle, that he was not notified and was not able to say goodbye to his daughter. We live in a very small town and the tragedy took place in a city about
4 hours from us and he is in Vancouver, 4 hours in the opposite direction from us.........
We have since found out that our ex-aunt does not want my uncle or any of his family at the service. She is a complete religious fanatic who hates all of us because my uncle came out of the closet 11 years ago. She considers it a sin and said that we are all heathens because we supported him. She also didn't want anyone to know that her daughter hung herself because of the "shame of suicide". I think the shame is on her for being such an evil, nasty mother who did not help her children deal with the fact that my uncle is gay. He tried before he came out to take the girls to counselling to help them through it and she stopped it. Then she and her church made my uncle's life so miserable with all the legal stuff and kept him from the girls. We found out from the youngest that they were told that their dad wanted nothing to do with them and it is so untrue! My uncle loves his daughters so much and he is so hurt by this tragedy, from missing so much of their lives, and he is so worried about his youngest.
The emotional roller coaster that we have all been on has not been good for me. I have had severe abdominal pains since Thursday night and have been passing so much blood........I am hoping that when we have closure and the pain of our grief subsides, that my system will settle down.........I am trying not to be angry at the church for keeping this a secret from all of us but it is so hard. It's made even harder by the fact that my older sister attends this church and they hid it from her, too. And now she is defending their actions.........
There is so much more to this but I will not subject you to the horrors of it all. It is just simply, so sad. 