Where's Grandpa?

My grandfather wearing his Shriner's fez,
whose whereabouts are also unknown.

Today, April 6, was my paternal grandfather's birthday.

Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr. was born April 6, 1903 in Mount Holly, Burlington County, New Jersey.  He died January 23, 1995 in Niceville, Okaloosa County, Florida.

When I thought, "Where's Grandpa?", the first thing that came to my mind was the humorous link on Steve Morse's One-Step Website.  But that's actually looking for your great-grandfather.

What I'm really thinking about when I ask that question, though, is where is what's left of my grandfather.

I know from my grandfather's death certificate that he was cremated.  So what's left of him are the cremains.

But I don't know where they are.

When Grandpa died, he was married to his third wife, Adelle Cordelia Taylor.  She was the only person he was married to during my life; they married the year before I was born.  Adelle was a very quiet woman, and Grandpa pretty much controlled her life.

About a year or two before he died, Grandpa had a stroke.  Adelle couldn't care for him, because she was about 80 years old at the time.  So Grandpa was moved to a rehabilitation facility in town.  Adelle didn't drive, so she could only visit when someone took her there, which wasn't often.  She was left sitting at home most of the time.  I'm sure she went to church quite a bit, because it was just across the street, but I don't think she did much else.  Her niece visited Grandpa every day and helped with his physical therapy.  She may have been living in the house with Adelle during this time.

But then Grandpa died.

My Aunt Carol, Grandpa's youngest child, asked me one day if I could find out what happened to her father's cremains.  So I started trying to figure it out.

The death certificate doesn't state who received the cremains, only which company handled the cremation.  I started there.

And learned that the facility that handled Grandpa's cremation no longer exists.  I found the name of the company that bought its business, but the new company didn't get (maybe didn't bother to get?) all of the records from the old company (or at least that's what they told me).  So they couldn't tell me what happened to Grandpa's cremains.

And the trail stopped there.

I'm thinking, "Aren't there laws about this?  Doesn't someone have to keep track of where these things go?"

But it was several years after the fact that I started looking for this information, and by that time Grandpa was already lost.

My best guess is that Adelle probably received the cremains.  After settling Grandpa's estate, she moved about 20 miles north of Niceville to Crestview, to live with her nephew.  I know that she brought a bunch of Grandpa's papers and photos with her, because another aunt was given those several years later (see the next paragraph).  So it's a reasonable guess that she brought the cremains with her also.

A little more than five years after Grandpa died, Adelle passed away in Crestview, on May 25, 2000.  And a few years after that, Adelle's nephew contacted my Aunt Dottie to give her all of my grandfather's papers that Adelle had kept.  If he had the cremains, one would think he would have offered to give those also.  But if they weren't in an urn and were just in a plain box, maybe no one realized what they were and they were tossed out (which is why I need to label the little urn that has some of my father's cremains in it, so it doesn't suffer that fate).

I am still very disappointed that I couldn't answer the question "Where's Grandpa?" and return his cremains to my aunt.