I realize that people who want to "send you prayers" or offer to "pray" you and your family in times of loss or struggle are well intentioned and often believe their prayers will help the situation. But I find it very uncomtable and presumptive of my family's religion or perspective. I feel it is especially disrespectful and even insulting when they know that we are not religiously afflicted. I don't want their prayers. If anything, I would only ask five years of their tithing and some respect.

I take it as an insult to my intelligence when someone says they'll pray me whether they intend to follow through or not. I can't help it. It just hits me like that every stinking time. Intellectually, I know that there are many people who believe in a higher power or have other superstitious beliefs about an afterlife example that are much smarter than me. But when I hear it, my immediate thought is " do I look that stupid? Do you really think I am that stupid? Fuck you."

In a time of sorrow or strife I don't want to hear it. Especially then. And, I want my feelings to be known in no uncertain terms. I want them to THINK. It is thoughtless to presume that someone wants their particular God(s) involved in their affairs. How do they know that others may believe their religion is considered satanic and that their prayers are devil worship? "How dare you!" is what I feel.

I always say "thank you" or something courteous. But I want to shut them down, to feel guilty pre-judging and I WANT AN APOLOGY No one should offer unsolicited worship. I would not mind at all if they would ask "may I pray you?" Or, "who is/are your Gods and Goddesses?, I'll give them a shout on your behalf." Then I could politely say "I appreciate the offer but we've already been in touch, they're working on it."

My mother died last Saturday. My immediate family is atheist. My enormous extended family is Catholic on one side and a variety of christian cults and religions on the other. We are reluctant to even tell them about her death but funerals are always a big to-do and there are politics to consider. The service will not mention any gods, profits or sleuth slayers. Oh the horror!

None-the-less, the family will all be offering their god's help just when it's the last thing any of us want to hear. I want them to know IT IS NOT APPRECIATED!

Here's another untunate and perhaps more unbearable twist: many of these folks are devout Trumpers, anti-vaxxers and multilevel marketing herbal healers. So the alternative rife machine wielding, supplement selling faction is very hard to listen to. One of them is convinced she could have saved my mother and now can cure terminally ill wife is especially infuriating. Four days on a ventilator and two weeks in ICU still didn't shake her from her antivaccine crusade. Not even the death of her father. My parents and my siblings are strongly anchored science and medicine, traditional, western medicine. My mother will spin like a top when politics and quackery come up. It undoubtedly will. We're all politically astute if not active in my immediate family and some of my cousins will probably show up with MAGA hats and Trump flags on their pickup trucks.

Adding to what I can only see as a trainwreck there is an additional and severely painful injury. Injury caused a some self righteous, freedom loving patriot or a superstitious/religious or otherwise gullible imbecile who brought COVID into her nursing home. That asshole caused the the doors to close two weeks. Mind you, this was within the last two weeks. We could not be with her when she was dying. She died in a sterile, very cold room under a sheer sheet and a thin blanket. She was alone, probably afraid and probably freezing. In her fragile state of mind we fear she may have thought she had been abandoned. Abandoned and unbearably heartbroken, she just let go. We only got to see her after her life had slipped away.

I can count on one hand the number of nights my parents did not sleep in the same bed....over 67 touching years. It is tragic my father. Not being with her in her last moments is tortuous They so loved each other. A relationship that started in middle school and only got better as time went on according to them. Both of them even. And they were far from sentimental.. They had a loud fight once. That's the only one we ever heard anyway. Thier relationship really is movie material.

Wow, I digressed a bit.

So, how do I shut them down, earn an apology and leave the relationships intact with fanatical believers.