April 2023 by Adrein D W Smith
I hope this finds its way to the people it needs to .
This is going to be a long story.
When I found out that my daughter had passed I called my ex's family. Nana.. my ex's stepmother.. Angie Wilkerson .. works for hospice in Russellville and she told me that she would help.
She stated ..that there were only three crematoriums in the state , one of them was far off, one of them was in greenbrier and one of them was in Dardanelle. She stated that she worked with the funeral home director in Dardanelle.. Cornwell funeral home . very closely that he was a very good guy.
I thought this was very kind of her, I was a mess and so very grateful for her help.
A couple days of days passed when she had called wanting to write my daughter's obituary and I said no. If anybody's going to write my daughter's obituary I will and I don't want to write one right now. I stated that if her dad , my daughter's father , wanted to write an obituary that was within his right.
After that, when I texted her the answers were extremely short ...one or two words or she wouldn't respond to my messages.
I actually became worried , during this time the time , the time I was Burying my daughter, that somehow I had upset her and I was apologizing if I had come across curt ..still the responses were minimal
We had no idea when the funeral was going to be .
Monday evening we receive a call telling us the funeral will be tomorrow, Tuesday . He said to start getting ourselves together and wait for a phone call.
So Tuesday morning we start getting together at about 10qm he says okay we're ready for you guys.. and we had to hurry bc Evie had been in the Arkansas state crime lab for almost to long .
now mind you it's a two-and-a-half-hour drive. So we rush out of here
When we arrived I asked the funeral director, the good friend of my ex-mother-in-law , where everybody was. he said due to covid-19 .. we are keeping groups small and seperate .. and he went on further to say but he wanted us to see her first. To me it wasn't about first or last .. it was about us being together as a family , but I said okay and I thanked him.
We spent time with Eve, then my eldest son asked me if I knew when Nana , Grandpa and the other side of the family was going to be there ..and I said well they should be coming soon.. why don't you call see when they're going to to get here.
So he called his uncle and his uncle told him they had already been there.. my eldest became distraught and angry .. he really needed the rest of his family.
I messaged the funeral director and told him that the other side of the family had already been down here to see my girl. He responded saying he had no idea about it check into it. He messages back and relays that some other worker had let them in and he apologized.
I calm everybody down. We get back to the house and my eldest calls his uncle and asked who let him who them in to see evie . His uncle responded, the funeral director, Nana's friend.
Turns out, that less than 24 hours after my girl passed, Angie lied the first of many lies to follow . Not only that but she had the funeral director lie to us as well .
I could have had my daughter cremated 5 miles from the house. She could have been in her hometown. We all could have said goodbye to her. Her world , my daughter's world could have said goodbye to her.
The ex in-laws never had much to do with my kids ..even when we were part of the family . I was married to his son for 18 years .
She offered her help ..when I was the most vulnerable I had ever been .. but instead took advantage of me ..she didn't help us at all .. she helped herself
As it turned out Eve's funeral was for my ex's family. They had all their people there.. had people visit their home from outta state .. . we were just on the sidelines.. none of them ever called us .. came to the house .. nothing . She also painted me in an unflattering light as everyone told her how wonderful she
