FOOBity-BOOBity

This is for nyone who's been following this week's truly creepy "let's all get buried together" series:



And for your edification, the original (this section crossposted in the comments at Comics Curmudgeon):



Odd, isn't it, how adamant Elly is that her parents' remains be separated? What's going on here?
Dr. Brendan suggests that it might be linked to some deeper psychological issues going on with creator Lynn Johnston, who bases the strip on her own life.

Johnston: I was very unhappy at home. You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a ...very brutal disciplinarian. She was brought up with a "spare the rod and spoil the child" philosophy, and she was raised by a father who brutalized her. He didn't want daughters. He wanted sons. He had no time for daughters. He refused to educate his daughters. It was a waste of his money.

And they all left home as soon as they possibly could. Some of them ran away from home, some left to join the armed forces. That's what my mother did. And my father was the first person she'd met who treated her kindly. She was terrified of men, and she married a very meek, kind, dear man. And she had the upper hand. She ruled the roost. My father was beaten as a child. His philosophy became, "I refuse to lay a hand on my children."

Heintjes: That's the opposite approach of most abused children.

Johnston: Right. But my mother's philosophy was, the harder you beat them, the more they'll realize that what they've done is wrong. She would hit me until she was exhausted. She would use brushes, broomsticks, anything she could wield. I could look at the different bruises and tell what she had hit me with. If it was a black bruise with a red stripe down the middle, it was a piece of kindling. If it was a brown bruise with a certain shape to it, it was a hairbrush. If it was perfectly round, it was a wooden spoon. I used to go to school with bruises from the middle of my back to my heels.

Deep issues. DEEP.