Completely Out of Order
My son passed over a year ago when he was seven, and it’s been hard on everyone in the family, obviously. My mother-in-law was pretty close with him. She babysat him for me while I worked, until he passed. I felt more comfortable leaving him with her as she was a nurse. He was born at 24 weeks and had cerebral palsy and was generally medically fragile. My mother-in-law and I aren’t too close. At first she didn’t like me but seemed to warm up once we had kids.
She still babysits for us when needed, which is less often these days. We had my son cremated. When he was cremated, my mother-in-law suggested that we get a few smaller urns and split up the ashes so we can all have an urn—the in-laws, my parents, and us. Obviously that did NOT go down well with me and I said no. She seemed to admit it was a bad idea and didn’t mention it again. For mother’s day this year, we planned on getting my mother-in-law and my mom a necklace with some of his ashes in, which she knew about as she’d been asking for one.
We were up for it (I fancied one myself so was going to get us all one) but we never got around to doing it. She seemed pretty irritated by that at the time but never mentioned it again and thanked us for the other gift we sent her. A few days ago, she babysat my daughter at my house. Today I was cleaning and while I was cleaning the shelf that we have for our son for some of his things (pictures, trophies from baseball, ornaments, etc), I noticed a detail that sent a chill down my spine. His urn was gone. Naturally I freaked out. I asked my daughter if she’d moved it even though she can’t reach. It has NEVER been moved in the time it’s been there. My mother-in-law is the only other person that has been in the house, so I called her.
She owned up to it right away and explained she took them so she can “spend some time with him”!??? and get the ashes sent off for her gift because she was disheartened that I didn’t get it sorted in time for mother’s day. She hid the urn in her bag so I wouldn’t notice, and took it home. I told her she was completely out of order and demanded she bring the ashes back as I did not give her permission to TAKE HIS ASHES from his house and his family, but she said as his grandma she has every right to “have him for a while.”
Screw. That. Even if she’d asked I probably would have said no, but I’m in complete shock that she would just TAKE him like that?!? She says she will bring his urn back tomorrow and told me not to be angry about it because what’s done is done, but every time I think about it I get so angry. I’m so worried now that she won’t even bring him back. Story credit: Reddit / marifleur