When a loved one dies, it's not terribly uncommon to take their ashes, or some other reminder of them, out to see and do things they loved in life.
It should go without saying that rule number one when doing so is... don't lose the ashes.
Stan Blade, age 39, absolutely did not follow that rule when he took his father's ashes to the beach in Essex, England in a Tesco shopping bag. The ashes were in a wooden box within the bag.
The day didn't go as planned as father son time at the beach turned into a 9-hour pub crawl.
Blade explained his stepmother was not happy when he confessed he'd lost his father, particularly as she told him not to take the ashes out of her home.
"I came home, and my step mum asked ‘where is your dad?’ She was not pleased with me at all, and I do not blame her.”
Blade explained his father had a good sense of humor and would have enjoyed the trip to the beach, or at least the trip he had originally planned for them.
“My dad was a really funny bloke and he would have absolutely loved the idea of me riding a roller coaster with his ashes by my side."
"He had a good sense of humour, so I just wanted to do something to pay tribute to that as I haven’t visited my hometown in a while."
"The idea was to take him to the beach and go on the bumper cars and get an ice cream, you know all the stereotypical things you do at the beach."
"But I ended up bumping into friends and getting drunk along the seafront.”
When Blade realized his father's ashes were missing, he went back to where he'd last seen them.
When he couldn't find them, he posted to social media for help.
“I convinced my step-mum to do a TikTok. I thought it would be funny—put him in the dodgem cars, put him in the big wheel, give him a kiss-me-quick hat and a stick of rock and stuff. She didn’t want me to do it but I did it anyway.”
His step mother was not impressed.
She told Blade:
“I told you not to take them to the seafront. All you want to do is do things on TikTok.”
You can see the TikTok here:
The comments were not especially kind.
Most people had an issue with how Blade handled his father's ashes.
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Blade's father, Stephen Jewitt, died 12 years ago.
Blade had been visiting his stepmother when he decided to take his father's ashes. It is unclear what Blade's motives were, other than making TikTok content.
According to the Mirror UK, on Saturday morning a garbageman found his father's remains on his rounds.
The wooden box the ashes were kept in was discovered sitting on a garbage can, minus the shopping bag they had been carried in.
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