wife and mother versus house

I heard about this story a couple days ago from a radio show that I listen to. A woman was having her house foreclosed on, and hours before the house was going up for auction, the woman killed herself in the home. She faxed a letter to her mortgage company that by the time they took her house, she would be dead, and the mortgage company alerted the police, who went to the home and found her body.

I don't get it.

She left a suicide note to her husband and son that said they should take the insurance money to pay for the house. So, she thought that her husband and son would rather have the house than a wife and mother? That being able to keep the house would make up for losing her, at her own hand yet? Maybe it's just me, but I would be furious if my spouse or mother did such a thing. It's not a noble act. I know it's not nice to speak poorly of the dead, especially when it's a total stranger, but I see her suicide as cowardly. She now no longer has to deal with any of the problems, and she can portray herself as the giving wife and mother who couldn't bear to continue letting her husband and son suffering and sacrificed herself for them. But all I see is the husband and son, who have to live the rest of their lives knowing what she did. Given that the auction was to happen in a few hours, I'm not sure the insurance money would have helped anyway. But even if they had managed to keep the house because of the insurance money, how would you feel living in a house where your wife or mother killed herself, and the only reason you're still in that house is *because* she killed herself? Would you really still want to live in that house? Would you not be angry that she thought you'd rather have the house than her still alive and in your life?

There are other parts of the story that I find disturbing, like the husband having filed bankruptcy three years in a row. I don't really understand that part of the article, probably because I don't really understand bankruptcy, but it sounds like he filed all those years, but his petitions were denied, so he never was actually in bankruptcy. In any case, he was obviously in financial trouble - wouldn't he have thought to see how the rest of the marital assets were doing? His wife hadn't paid the mortgage in almost four years, and he had no idea? (Also, I didn't know banks would let you go that long without paying your mortgage before taking your house. Sounds incredibly generous to me.) He was so oblivious to something that big that was going on, because he apparently couldn't be bothered to pay attention?

It's a sad story, but I'm not feeling as sympathetic as people might expect because there were all kinds of choices being made that didn't need to be made. And most of what I'm focussing on is how this all is going to affect the son.