a A poignant obituary for a spiteful Maine mother It became a talking point Saturday, both for its brutal honesty and its brutal depictions.
Florence “Flo” Harrelson, 65, died in February, but her obituary was not published in the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel until Thursday.
That's because Harrelson's daughter, Christina Novak, who wrote the scathing obituary, said she only found out about her mother's death this month.
In his obituary, Novak wrote that his mother, a former U.S. Marine and corrections officer at a Maine prison, “died without family by her side on February 22, 2024, as a burnt bridge burned and a trail of destruction left in her path.”
Harrelson had been suffering from cancer and died of heart failure, his daughter said.
Novak said she last spoke to her mother 10 years ago.
“Florence did not want an obituary to be published and did not want anyone, including her family, to know that she had passed away,” the obituary said.
“It's because she wanted the people she terrorized to continue to live in fear, looking back, even in death. So this is more of a public service announcement than an obituary.”
She also shared the obituary on Facebook, including a line from The Wizard of Oz: “Ding dong, the witch is dead.”
Novak told the Bangor Daily News. She was “chuckling to herself” as she wrote the obituary.
She said she tried to write a traditional obituary but it ended up being tongue-in-cheek.
Novak even considered listing the injustices her mother had committed against her relatives.
Novak told the site that she paid just over $86 for the obituary without a photo.
But the entertainment afterwards was “priceless,” she said.
