Sudbury woman's scathing obit about dad who was 'total darkness' becomes a TikTok hit

For Amanda Denis, saying goodbye to her father meant telling some uncomfortable truths about the man.

Now, a scathing obituary the real estate professional in Sudbury, Ont., wrote as an honest depiction of her complicated family relationship has become a TikTok hit.

Denis said she wasn't anticipating the reaction on the social media platform after she she wrote the first line: "I am pleased to announce the passing of Harold Stefan Kandulski at the age of 74."

The obit describes Kandulski, who lived in Penticton, B.C., in his final days, as an absentee father who was narcissistic and abusive.

He died after suffering multiple strokes, the obituary said, with one leaving him "thankfully unable to speak."

In an interview with CBC News, Denis said the piece wasn't to settle any scores, but rather to show others that people — even close family members — can be multi-layered.  

"The man was just total darkness," she said. "But the truth needs to come out regardless of what it looks like. 

"Sometimes it doesn't look very nice to some people and I wasn't writing it for them," Denis added. "I was writing it for the people who could relate and who could understand where I was coming from."

Denis has written other obits about family — nine years ago for her mother and in December 2022 for her brother — but they had a gentler tone.

Denis said she couldn't write a similar, more positive one for her father.

"It's not truthful," she said. "It's not who that person was. It's not their life."

Originally, Denis wanted to post the obituary on a local funeral home's web page, but the business refused to allow it after reading it, she said.

"They didn't want to deal with the backlash and they didn't want to field those phone calls."

Denis was directed to another site — castanet.ca — that's used to post obits, and Kandulski's one about her dad was up briefly but then removed. Fortunately, Denis said, she grabbed a screen shot before it was deleted.

Denis shared the screen shot on TikTok, and it's attracting a lot of attention. 

"I would say 90 per cent [of the feedback] is positive," she said. "A lot of it is people relating and saying, 'I have parents like this, I have a mother or a father or grandparents' or, you know, someone in their life like this.

"And thank you for doing this because now I'm going to either follow suit or take some version of this and make it my own."

For those who say Denis should be kinder to the dead, especially family, she explained that the social media post wasn't meant to cause any further quarrels.

"I was not happy that he died, but I was happy that he was no longer a part of my life — happy that he could no longer try and manipulate or try to speak to me," she said.

"I was afraid that without the backup of my mother and my brother, without them here as support, it was a scary world to live in with just him and I."

As a final note, the obituary thanks staff at Penticton Regional Hospital and Sunshine Ridge Seniors Community for "putting up with this miserable human for so long."

The obituary also asks readers to be kind to one another in lieu of flowers or donations, and no service would be planned, since "he treated people with disdain."

A brother's reaction

Ed Kandulski, from his home in Okanagan Falls in B.C.,, read the obituary in the days following his brother's death.

When asked what he thought about the obituary, Kandulski said "it was the absolute truth. My brother was a piece of crap." 

"Years ago, my mother visited him in his fifth wheel [a type of mobile trailer] and he said, 'If you don't give me my inheritance, then get out.'

"If you weren't giving him something, he wanted nothing to do with you."

Kandulski said he didn't fault Denis for writing the obituary the way she did.

"For her, for a lot of us, that was the truth."

As for the comments on TikTok depicting her as cold hearted and petty for speaking ill of the dead, Denis said she's open to hearing different perspectives about her father.

"If there is a difference of opinion, I would love to hear it," she said. "If there is one good story out there with regard to my father, then, quite honestly, I would be happy.

"It's horrible walking around the earth thinking that my father was 100 per cent bad."

CBC reached out to the Funeral Service Association of Canada (FSAC) for comment about whether there are any industry standards funeral homes have to follow when it comes to obits, but had not heard back as of Friday afternoon.