RIP Poppy: Lake Stevens renter finds missing ashes in garage

LAKE STEVENS — Jake Graham lost his mom in 2010. Fifteen years later, a stranger in Lake Stevens found her.

What’s up with that?

When Anissa Tibbits rented a home in Lake Stevens, she expected the usual move-in remnants: maybe a paint can in the garage or rusty garden tools. Instead, she found a box of cremated ashes.

The Neptune Society label offered a name: Poppy Graham.

Anissa tried tracking down family. No luck. So, shortly after midnight on July 15, she turned to Facebook:

“This is going to be an odd post, but I’ve run out of options,” she wrote. “Somehow — I’m seriously not sure, please don’t ask — a box of human ashes was left in the garage by someone who used to live here. She’s in no way related to the previous tenants, so they didn’t want to take her. I’d like to return her to her family.”

She added one condition on whoever came forward to claim Poppy.

“All I ask is that you tell me the date she passed or her birthday, since it’s on the box. I don’t want her going home with some weirdo.”

Cue the magic of social media with a dash of insomnia.

At 3 a.m., Everett resident Heather Callan was scrolling Facebook when the post popped up. She didn’t know Anissa or Poppy but felt compelled to help.

“I decided to do some digging,” Heather said.

Within hours, she connected with Jake Graham.

Poppy Graham, his mom, had been gone nearly half of his life. She died in Renton on Nov. 4, 2010, at age 46. He was 17.

“She was a loving, caring parent. She put up a fight until her last days,” Jake said.

After Poppy’s death, Jake, the baby of the family, lived with an older sister in Snohomish. Later, she moved out of state. Jake, now 32, built a life in Puyallup, where he works as a countertop resurfacer and is raising a family of his own.

“I kept asking my sister where our mom’s ashes were,” Jake said. “She told me our mom was safe and not to worry.”

Then came the Facebook post.

Jake woke to five texts of screenshots from friends who saw the post and a message from Heather Callan.

“Imagine waking up and finding that out,” Jake said.

He raced to Lake Stevens to Anissa’s house.

Turns out his sister had once stored a stack of boxes at the home, then occupied by a friend. By the time Anissa moved in, only a few boxes remained. Most mementos were gone — but Poppy was still there.

“The previous tenants gave me a vague story about how she got there, and more or less told me it was up to me to decide what to do,” Anissa said.

She wasn’t about to scatter someone’s loved one without trying to find the family. As the busy owner of Lavender Beauty Studio in Snohomish, she set a deadline. If no one came forward by the end of summer, she’d take the ashes to Mount Rainier.

“It’s a beautiful area for a final resting place,” she said. “And it would be easy for her family to visit if they ended up reaching out after I had already scattered her ashes.”

Instead, thanks to Facebook, Poppy found her way home.

“For years I’ve been looking up and down for my mom,” Jake later wrote. “Today, I’m happy to say she’s back home with me and the grandbabies.”

The comments poured in:

“Welcome home, Poppy. To Poppy’s loved ones — best reunion that ever was.”

“Anissa, thank you is not even close to enough.”

“My heart skipped a beat. My tears gently rolled down my cheeks. This was the most incredibly thoughtful post I’ve ever read.”

“You got that momma back to her son. You are a blessing!”

For Anissa, the reunion brought closure.

“I knew I wouldn’t feel right until she was back where she belonged,” she said. “Family is everything to me. The idea of someone being separated from theirs, even after death, just didn’t sit right. My family calls my great-grandpa ‘Poppy,’ so this really hit close to home.”

For Jake, it was relief.

“It’s like my mom’s finally home and can be here with her son, her daughter-in-law and some of her nine grandkids,” he said. “As of right now, our mom is staying with me until we can afford to get keepsakes for the grandbabies and until we all can sit together and talk about the rest.”

When Heather tipped me off to this story, I felt an immediate connection.

My mother-in-law’s ashes are in my garage.

Mary Reno Brown, my husband’s mom, died in 2000, a few months before we left Indiana. With no family plot or relatives left there, she came with us. First to Colorado, then to Washington.

In Colorado, “Grandma Brown,” as our kids called her, was tucked away in the linen closet.

Five houses, two states and 25 years later, she’s still in the same box. Still waiting for my husband to decide her final resting place.

Our 100-year-old house in Everett doesn’t have a linen closet. So Grandma Brown dwells in the garage.

Cremated ashes can be memorialized in all kinds of ways: planted with a tree, scattered from a ferry, pressed into a vinyl record, turned into jewelry, inked into tattoos or launched into space.

I don’t know where I’ll end up when I bite the dust.

But at this rate, there might be two Grandma Browns parked in the garage.

Got a story for “What’s Up With That?” Hit me up at reporterbrown@gmail.com or 425-422-7598.