PLANTATION, FLA. (WSVN) - A Plantation family is searching for their loved one’s ashes, which went missing from outside of their home.
The ashes of 93-year-old Shirl Stout’s late husband Roy disappeared on Thursday. The two were married for 30 years when he died in 2006.
“It was heartbreaking to me because there will be other things I can lose and ‘OK, it’s gone,’ but something like that is just too heartbreaking, much too heartbreaking,” Stout said. “When I discovered that it was gone, it just broke my heart.”
The family said Roy raised Stout’s daughter, Stephanie Crossley.
“He just took care of us, was a great, wonderful father,” Crossley said. “I loved him very much.”
Roy was a U.S. Marine who served during World War II. When he returned home from the war, he took comfort in gardening, so when he died, the family got creative with his ashes.
“When the funeral home showed us the sundial urn, it just seemed a real special place. It seemed like him,” Crossley said.
They placed the late Marine’s ashes in a sundial and kept it outside of a window, where Stout could visit him every day.
“I can even walk out there with my walker and kind of feel like I’m talking to him,” Stout said.
The family believes the sundial urn holding Roy’s ashes was either accidentally thrown away or possibly stolen. They added their neighbors recently moved, and when the cleaning crew stopped by the house to pick up what was left behind, his ashes may have been mixed up with their neighbors’ items.
“I don’t think they might have known who was inside, what was inside,” Crossley said.
Crossley visits everyday to take care of her mother, but her biggest need is emotional and will require help from the community.
“We will get Roy back. You know we will,” Crossley said to her mother.
“I’m just hoping it comes right back, comes right back,” Stout said. “That will make me very happy.”
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