This family should check and see what the laws of their state say bout miss handling human remains.
I am guessing if they site the appropriate statute they will git more cooperation.
Maybe even git these ashes to the proper recipient.
They make money the old-fashioned way: they urn it.
I found the article confusing. It seems like one pile of ashes should look like any other. I am definitely not putting it together.
My friend had an uncle who died. Whenever there’s a family get together, whoever has the ashes foists them on an unsuspecting relative and they are stuck with them until they can foist them on some other unsuspecting family member. I don’t think the family liked the guy that much. People find his ashes in luggage, under car seats, bags of food etc.
When my Dad passed away, my oldest sister took charge of the Memorial and arrangements. This resulted in the four of us adult children getting an Urn with his ashes inside.
I could not figure how to say it, back then, but as much as I loved my Dad (and still do) I didn’t want any container holding his ashes. But I know that during weddings/funerals and new babies, people can be extremely sensitive and easy to get hurt feelings when no harm was intended.
So I kept my mouth shut, took custody of the Urn and placed it in back of my front closet.
I have moved from that address since then, but never again, did I touch that Urn.
“...one of a few his family purchased after the death of his grandfather...”
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They needed multiple urns for grandpa’s ashes?
Ashes are ashes. People oughta know that when they send grandma off to be burned to a crisp that they’re going to get back her ashes along with a half a dozen other people who were burned up prior to her.
It’s okay folks - just a deceased Minnesota Somalian freeloading through death after freeloading through life. Barely weighs anything at all, so don’t be racist.
Yyyeahhh. Amazon is just the middleman. It doesnt actually make the sh*t it delivers. Dumbasses. Why am I surrounded by dumbassery?
Yikes!
How could they tell who the ashes were?
My aunt was recently cremated. She would have been laughing her ass off...
I guess this is the risk of buying “used but in good condition”
Please bury your dead. They need to be intact to be ready for that great day to come.
Strict return policy.
Some years back, my brother in law died in an accident. He was a big union guy in the movie business, what they call a “Key Grip” I think, and he knew a lot of people.
All those people showed up for his service which they did in a local fancy hotel. In the room where they did the service, the urn with his cremated remains was front and center on a table with a picture of him beside it.
When the service was done, his grieving widow approached me, and privately asked me if I would be kind enough to take the urn with his ashes up to her hotel room, which I readily agreed to. I pocketed her room key, and made my way through the thick crowd to take the urn away. It was a beautiful, very large, and appeared to be porcelain enameled. It seemed unnaturally heavy for its size. He was a very big guy, over 300 lbs. if I recall correctly.
I picked the urn up, and turned around to carry it away, and as I moved through the crowd, well-dressed people parted respectfully to let me through.
I suddenly became very self-aware, and found myself gripping the urn with a death-grip, and feeling that every inch of carpet contained an invisible, protruding fold that was going to trip my suddenly very self-aware feet and cause me to stumble and drop the urn, right in the middle of this parting crowd.
When I had picked it up, I noted how heavy and solid the urn felt, but I was holding it normally. Before I had walked ten feet, I felt like every step was a potential disaster (causing me to stop walking normally and I began nearly sliding my feet) which no doubt increased my chances of a urn-mishap. It was very unnerving.
The whole time in my imagination (and I have a very vivid imagination) in super-slow-motion at high resolution, in my mind, I could feel my toe stub the carpet, me beginning to fall, the urn somehow escaping from my steely grip, and as it flew through the air I envisioned the cap coming off that the gray ashes issuing forth in a plume, and everything, me, the urn, the cap, and all that gray ash coming to rest on the hotel carpet, with a forest of legs around me watching in horror.
All this before I had even taken five steps!
Finally, I got to the elevator, and was able to poke the button with my elbow and get on. But I was still holding that urn with the tenacity of a moray eel that wasn’t going to let go.
When I found his wife’s hotel room, I suddenly realized the room key was in my pocket.
I shifted the urn, and began to fiddle about, holding the urn in the crook of my arm, and was inexplicably fishing around in my pocket for the room key, when I could suddenly envision myself clearly again externally-shifting the urn about to get a better purchase on the key, extract it, and put it in the door lock and everything going South all at once, dropping the key AND the urn and again, in super-slow-motion, me...bug-eyed and sounding like one of those slowed down recordings with “OHHHHHHHHHHHNOOOOOOOOOOO” issuing gutturally from my wide open mouth, as the tumbling urn again had the cap come off and the gray ashes all heading towards a carpet-ly oblivion.
I saw all this like a movie, playing in my mind.
Fortunately, it was all in my mind. I froze in place, dropped the key deliberately to the floor, got a good purchase with both hands on the urn, placed it squarely on the carpet (in a place I couldn’t clumsily, as is my wont, kick it over by accident) and picked up the key. I opened the door, picked up the urn and went inside.
Oddly, when I thought of that sequence in front of the hotel door, it reminded me of my wedding day. I was at my brother’s house (who would be my best man) changing into my tuxedo as he changed into his, but my trousers had a problem. They had this adjustable metal clip so you could tighten the belt-line without needing to wear a belt, and it was broken.
I examined it, and realized it could be fixed, if the tip of a pointy object like a kitchen knife could be poked into the clip as you held it upside down in your hand, and lever the little adjustable arm back into place.
So, here I am, with no pants on, holding this clip in my bare hand, while my brother is pushing the tip of a ridiculously large and exquisitely sharp butcher knife downwards into this little chrome buckle which I held firmly,
In a flash, I suddenly visualized my brother pushing down on that knife with enough force to move that clip into place, when I saw the buckle slip in my hand, the huge butcher knife came down, the point slicing my hands and fingers open, bright red blood going everywhere, a ride to the Emergency Room, and me, walking in late to my own wedding with my wife waiting at the altar with my hand encased in a gigantic white bandage that seemed to be bigger than a football.
I blinked, and that vision had been a flash in my mind! I looked up, my eyes met my brother’s eyes, and I could see it in his eyes too-he had the exact same visualization at the same time that I did!
He slowly withdrew the knife, we fixed it adequately in some fashion, I put my pants on, and were were late getting to the church, but not so late that my bride had already gone up the aisle. She had not arrived yet, and someone came up exclaiming “You’re late!” and I went inside to the front of the church to wait for her.
It was that same weird prescient mental visualization of something going completely awry withe enough warning to step back before the damage was done that I had while I fumbled clumsily for a hotel room key while holding an urn full of human ashes in the crook of my other elbow!
During Covid and scarcity on shelves, I thought about ordering toilet paper on Amazon. Then didn’t do it.
Funny thing: Even for toilet paper they had active preference boxes for people to check “NEW” or “USED.”
Maybe this case involved a computer mixup in the order. But would they really accept a return for refund like that?
Free gift with purchase!
Well, I bought a picture frame that had a photo of a stranger in it, so…
This story took an urn for the worse.