Hey, there’s only so many ashes from one person to go around, ya know?

And that’s what this Reddit user is dealing with in regard to her late friend.

Is she doing anything wrong?

Let’s see what’s going on here…

WIBTA if I don’t share my friend’s ashes with her family five years after her death?

“I have a dilemma that I would like some objective opinions on. This is a conflict between me going out of my way to be considerate and me feeling that the people involved do not deserve my best effort.

My very best friend passed away of a brain tumor five years ago. We were friends for 34 years before she passed, I knew her family well, and they knew me.

I was her medical person, with her every step of three years of treatment. Her mother was already in cognitive decline, and wasn’t a great parent even before that. I think her brother saw her twice in those three years, even though he lived locally.

She did all the work for her friend…

The brother also did nothing to ease my friend’s burden of caring for their mother. Her father passed away while she was in treatment. She had one niece who kept in touch with my friend and me, but the niece lived out of state and was not a reliable help.

Most of my contact with niece consisted of her calling me to sob about how she wanted to do more, and couldn’t.

When my friend passed away, it was on me as the medical power of attorney to make the final arrangements. I found a medical donation site that would allow her body to be used to study her illness, and would cremate her and return her to me.

I knew that this would be what she wanted (she had been in clinical trial for her treatment, in order to help others).

All of this was happening in the very early days of 2020. We couldn’t have a traditional funeral or memorial of any kind. It was so painful to go through this loss without the ability to gather with the people who loved her and remember her.

When her cremains were returned to me, I held a small, friends-only memorial to inter some of her ashes on property I own, in a place she loved. The friends who came also took some of her ashes with them.

She has a problem…

This is my dilemma: I still have some of her ashes left. I could easily scatter the rest of the cremains on my property. Or, I could try to track down her brother and niece and ask if they want her ashes.

I think if I was as loving and generous as my friend was, I would reach out to her family.

Here’s the thing, though. In the five years since her passing, not one person in her family has reached out to me. NOT ONE asked what became of her body, was there a memorial, nothing.

At least one memorial (not my gathering, someone else’s) was posted on my friend’s Facebook page, with an open invite to anyone who wanted to come.

They didn’t.

Do I owe it to them to reach out?”

This is what readers had to say on Reddit.

This person said she’s NTA.

Another individual agreed.

This Reddit user weighed in.

This person spoke up.

And this reader had a lot to say.

This sounds like a pretty sticky situation…

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