As she was shopping at the discount store, the blue, heart-shaped ornament caught her eye. So she purchased it for $2. But weeks later, as she held a flashlight up the trinket she saw spots, gray masses hiding inside the corners of the ornament and realized it was ashes.
Buying items second-hand is sometimes a risk. In our consumeristic society, we feel the need to buy all the time. But there are still plenty of second-hand finds that still have a lot of life to give. They are full of heart, of mysterious pasts, and most of the time these stories go undiscovered. We can only guess as to what they are.
Sometimes a mark or some feature of an item will hint at its past, but not reveal the explanation.
Priscilla Bailey of Massachusetts bought an ornament at a local thrift store this year for $2.99. She liked the way it caught the light and sparkled when it was moved.
“Right now it’s hanging up there when I do my dishes. I sometimes stare at it,” Bailey said.
“Right up here on the top, right across the top, it looks like angels or Vikings,” she stated. “They look like little angels, and there’s all this work down here. It’s really beautiful.”
Well, as it turns out, this ornament isn’t normal. Bailey looked at the ornament more carefully after she bought it, and saw that there could be something inside.
After hanging it in a position where it would catch the light, Bailey saw something move inside. She got a flashlight to get a closer look, and she was amazed.
“It’s small. The two spots in it are small, the size of a golf ball,” she said. The heart was filled with a powdery substance.
Bailey believes that the ornament is someone’s urn, complete with their ashes inside. Now, Bailey and her daughter, Kat Bartlett, are making it their mission to find the owner.
“At first I got spooked, for a second,” Bailey explained. “But then, it’s been in the house all this time — a couple of weeks now — and it needs to find its owner!”
“It’s beautiful,” Bartlett added. “It must have a story, so that’s my goal — to find out where and who this belongs to.”
While Bailey hopes that the owner of the ornament will come forward after the news coverage, she’s going to continue to use it as a decoration for the time being. “There it sits — my spooky little friend,” she said.
“It’ll be fun seeing what happens and hopefully someone comes forward and says yes that was my grandmother or grandfather,” Bailey said. She still hasn’t opened it out of fear of spilling the ashes inside.
“I just thought it was pretty, so maybe it was meant to come here,” Bailey added. “Who knows?”
Hopefully with all the attention this story is getting, someone who knows something will be able to step forward and share its secrets.
https://youtu.be/3SaJtY7J3ME