My daughter always loved the wild chrysanthemums on the mountain. She said they symbolized freedom.
So, I took her ashes up there. It was a quiet, secluded spot. I set the urn aside and went to pick some flowers.
I only stepped away for a few minutes, but when I came back, the urn was gone.
Panic set in. I dropped the flowers and searched frantically. I finally found the urn beneath a big tree, with two familiar figures standing nearby.
As I got closer, I saw that Yara was holding my daughter’s ashes.
“Cody, do you think Bean would like it here?” Yara asked softly.
Cody answered gently, “If you picked it, Yara, she’d love it.”
Yara nodded, and then, to my horror, she started pouring out the ashes and replacing them with the ashes of a dead teddy bear!
My heart sank. I hadn’t even had a chance to properly memorialize my daughter, and now her ashes were being desecrated!
I couldn’t let this go on. I screamed, “Stop it!”
I rushed over, grabbing the urn from Yara and tossing the teddy bear’s ashes away. I knelt down, carefully putting my daughter’s ashes back into the urn.