CONWAY, S.C. (WBTW) — After waiting for nearly a year, a Conway, South Carolina family still hasn’t received their grandmother’s ashes in the mail.
Mikayla Eckler is holding onto what’s left of her “Nana” after a year of frustration.
“It just makes me upset because she deserves so much better than this because she was an amazing person,” Eckler said.
She is demanding answers from the United States Postal Service (USPS) after waiting nearly a year for her grandmother’s ashes. Charlotte Diane Dillion was in Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend her nephew’s funeral when she died from cardiac arrest. She was 69-years-old.
“The only option was for my mom to put her on a morphine drip and let her go peacefully,” Eckler explained. During her final moments on March 14, 2020, Eckler was by her side.
It was at the start of the pandemic when it all happened and the family couldn’t wait weeks for her to be cremated. So her family came back home to Conway hoping to have been reunited by now.
April 1, 2020 is when Eckler expected her grandmother’s ashes to be delivered. After days of waiting, the family started to worry.
“This is not my Amazon package that you have lost. This is my mom. This is our kid’s grandmother,” Eckler’s mom said.
The last tracking notification from USPS was March 30, 2020, which said her ashes were either arriving or leaving the Tulsa mailing facility. Now left only with family photos and fond memories, Eckler refuses to give up.
“No one in my family has closure from this and I think it’s just very heartbreaking,” Eckler said.
Monday, officials at the USPS in Tulsa said there is now a nationwide search in every facility. When asked why that wasn’t done sooner USPS told Eckler: “We didn’t feel it was necessary because our internal records show it arrived in Conway.”
The USPS facility in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina did not immediately reply to a request for comment from NewsNation affiliate WBTW.