With Memorial Day upon us, many are headed to cemeteries to pay their respects to, and decorate the final resting places, of family and friends.

Many people–some with their Husbands or Wives–establish final instructions for themselves.

No matter how carefully you–or you and your Husband or Wife–set forth your final instructions, it is imperative that others guard them.

Yes, disobeying final instructions dishonors the deceased.

Yes, disobeying final instructions that a Husband and Wife jointly establish is interference in their marriage.

Yet not even the best funeral directors, clergy, or lawyers can prevent all mistakes by others.

It’s even harder if what others commit isn’t mistakes but sabotage.

And please consider this: No one on a deathbed is sure to be in a good position to prevent mistakes, much less sabotage. Nor is the person’s Husband or Wife.

What you need, and what your Husband or Wife needs, then is multiple people in whom you can, with 100 percent certainty, entrust duties of guarding your final instructions and seeing to the fulfillment of every detail.

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Consider what happened to one couple.

One pastor says that in 40 years of ministry, he has never heard anything this bad.

Experienced funeral directors, pastors, bishops, lawyers, judges, and even a seminary president have reacted similarly. Their eyes opened wide, and their jaws dropped.

Today’s column identifies neither the couple nor anyone else involved, because today’s column–rather than being about them–is about you, faithful reader of this column. It’s about encouraging you to have others meticulously guard your final instructions.

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A Husband and an ill Wife established their final instructions.

In short, hers included a Mass of Christian Burial with her remains in her casket at her family parish. A longtime family priest was to be celebrant.

She further instructed that she be entombed in her casket in her crypt next to her parents’ crypts.

She selected her clothes and shoes. She instructed that she wear a pendant her Husband had worn during their wedding.

The Husband and Wife exchanged locks of hair to be entombed with her and interred with him. This is how the Husband and Wife would be together even though their final resting places aren’t next to each other’s.

Further, she instructed that no final act or final event take place without her Husband’s being consulted, involved, and included.

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So what happened? Others knew the Wife’s final instructions and violated them.

Here’s a small fraction of the story.

According to the funeral home, one of the many nurses who had cared for the Wife during her illness ordered the Wife’s cremation and took possession of the cremains in a non-tamper-proof, non-indelibly-marked container. That means only the untrustworthy nurse can know the container’s contents.

How could the nurse do this at all, much less without anyone’s consulting, involving, or including the Husband?

The funeral home said the nurse presented a health-care proxy with the nurse as designee and alleged the Wife had signed it.

Doesn’t a health-care proxy expire at death?

Not in the state where the Wife died, the funeral home said. There, a health-care proxy allows the designee to take such post-death actions.

Furthermore, the nurse’s brother alleged that–in the days before the Wife’s death when her Husband briefly left her bedside–the nurse, the brother, and two friends of theirs had the Wife sign an alleged codicil designating the nurse’s brother as the Wife’s executor with respect to post-death actions and removing the Husband as executor.

The two friends of the nurse and the brother declared, under oath and in writing, that the Wife signed the alleged codicil and was competent to do so.

However, the Wife’s alleged signature on the alleged codicil doesn’t even come close to matching the Wife’s signature. So either she didn’t sign it, or she wasn’t competent to sign it.

When did anyone first tell the Husband of the alleged codicil? After the Wife died.

Sabotage is one thing. Cowardice is another.

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In the years since, the nurse and the nurse’s brother have refused to surrender the cremains for entombment in her crypt.

The nurse has refused even the priest’s entreaty.

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Those who have sat at deathbeds know that in the hours before death, lucidity can return.

During this special time, the Husband and Wife reviewed her final instructions, point by point. She confirmed all of them.

Neither knew what was impending.

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With that, let’s pick up where we left off six weeks ago.

In the words of Pastor J.D. Walt, “In many, if not most cases, the offenses people commit against us are not about us. They are about them. They come from their brokenness, immaturity, or infirmity. Broken people break people.”

Broken people, especially narcissi, may revel at the harm they cause.

Their motives are beyond the point if their maldeeds are unjustifiable.

The maldeeds are the maldoers’ fault, no one else’s.

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Randy Elf’s column of six weeks ago is at https://www.post-journal.com/opinion/local-commentaries/2025/04/moving-on-is-both-hard-and-essential and https://www.observertoday.com/opinion/commentary/2025/04/moving-on-is-both-hard-essential.

COPYRIGHT © 2025 BY RANDY ELF