Family ‘devastated’ when memorial necklaces vanish
WALKER, Mich. (WOOD) — As two Grand Rapids parents mourn the loss of their son, they say their hearts are being torn open again when his ashes vanished from their car, apparently stolen.
“This is reopening the wounds that have not gone away yet,” Rodney McFall, Jaysen McFall’s father, said.
Jaysen McFall, a father of three, died in late February after a battle with depression. He was just 25.
“It was tough when Jaysen passed away because he left three kids behind: a 3-year-old son, a 2-year-old daughter and a 6-month-old son,” Rodney McFall said.
He said his son’s smile was contagious.
“Anybody that would ever describe Jaysen to you is he had a great smile and he always flashed it,” McFall said.
Last week, he had his son’s cremated remains put in 11 necklaces with pendants shaped like crosses and fishing urns.
“The trinkets were fishing hooks because his favorite pastime was fishing,” McFall said.
He planned on sending the memorial necklaces to his son’s children so they would have keepsakes to remember him.
“This will be the only thing his kids have left of him,” McFall said. “Little piece of his body. This is it. This is all they’ll have left other than the memories.”
He got them last Thursday and left them inside his truck overnight at a hotel north of Grand Rapids. When he came back the next morning, they were gone. He said all 11 trinkets inside a bag containing funeral home paperwork were stolen.
“There was stuff all over the seat,” McFall said. “They had gone in through the truck and took everything out.”
McFall said he locked the truck, but one of the door’s locks is broken and doesn’t automatically lock. He believes any thief must have gotten in through that door.
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Police have warned that car break-ins are on the rise across Kent County. In this case, it left McFall without a piece of his son.
“That’s sacred to us,” he said. “That’s his body, you know?”
After News 8 talked to the family Monday morning, they said they got a call from the funeral director in the afternoon reporting someone left four of the 11 memorial necklaces nearby at the Hampton Inn off Alpine Avenue in Walker. The family says the four that were recovered have been damaged and seven are still missing.
The family hopes whoever took them returns them or leaves them at a police department.
“It’s just devastating that this happened because this is all we have left of our son,” McFall said.
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