…a signed release so they could send part of the ashes to a lab that turns cremated remains into diamonds.”
The funeral director, Mr. Patel, showed me the email. It came from my daughter-in-law, Brittany. She’d asked for a “release form” so she could send “a portion of my father-in-law’s remains” to a company that makes lab-grown memorial diamonds. She wanted a two-carat stone set in a ring “for herself, as a keepsake.”
Mr. Patel had refused. But Brittany had found a company online that didn’t ask for paperwork. She’d opened the urn herself and mailed them most of what was inside.
I called the company the next morning. A manager named Linda checked their records. The order had been placed two months earlier. The diamond hadn’t been made yet. The process takes several months. The ashes were still in their lab, sealed in a labeled container.
“We require consent from the legal next of kin,” Linda said. “She told us she was his daughter. Clearly, she lied. We’ll return everything to you.”
She did. The ashes arrived by special courier a week later, in a sealed box, with a handwritten note of apology.
Brittany’s order was cancelled. The company reported her to the police for fraud.
My son, Tom, had laughed about the urn in the fireplace. He wasn’t laughing when I told him what his wife had done. He hadn’t known about the diamond. He told me he thought the urn in the fireplace was “a joke Dad would have liked.”
“Your father would have laughed at the fireplace,” I said. “He would not have laughed at being turned into your wife’s ring.”
I brought my husband home. He’s back on my dresser, where he belongs, in his silver urn with the little dent near the lid. I put him there myself, and I locked my bedroom door.
