Grieving families in Florida were upset to learn that a local funeral director mishandled their loved ones’ ashes.

Elliott Maurice Graham, a 49-year-old overseeing Marion Graham Mortuaries, was arrested and charged with improper preservation of a human body and grand theft. For Pauline Durden’s family, a recent discovery made by state investigators during their investigation “was heartbreaking,” WJXT reported. 

They learned that Durden’s body was still in the mortuary, meaning they never received Durden’s ashes after she supposedly was cremated last year. Officials plan to test the ashes to figure out what it is. Her granddaughter, Johnesha Kemp, likened the ashes to “chalk or kitty litter,” according to the report.

“It’s been tough trying to heal. And just when you think you get to a point where it’s like, he’s starting to feel a little bit better. It’s the wound that’s been reopened,” Nairobia Durden, her other granddaughter, told the outlet. “I did have jewelry that I opened now knowing that it wasn’t a human body in it, and it doesn’t look like ashes.”

Source: “It’s Been Tough Trying to Heal’: Florida Families Accuse Local Funeral Director of Giving Them Fake Ashes, Not Properly Embalming Bodies