Delight as urn containing son's ashes found

Ngairena Hibbs holds the ashes of her son Todd Campbell, died in 2011, aged just 22. Photo / Christine O'Connor/Otago Daily Times

When Ngairena Hibbs answered her phone and heard her daughter on the other end in an emotional state, she thought the worst had happened.

But after a few seconds, it became apparent her daughter, Mira Meek, was sharing the best news she had heard in a long time.

Earlier this year, Hibbs made a heartbreaking appeal to the public after she lost her son's ashes.

The Mosgiel resident thought the small copper and silver urn was accidentally placed among items she had given to the Mosgiel Hospice Shop when she moved house late last year.

Inside the urn were some of the ashes of her son, Todd Campbell, who died as a result of epilepsy when he was 22.

To her great delight, the urn turned up recently in a drawer at her daughter's house.

Hibbs said the misplacement of her son's ashes was very distressing at the time.

For her, it was like losing a small part of him again.

"In my mind, I had accepted the fact that he had gone."

She said the urn was discovered when her daughter decided to start writing a journal about the Covid-19 lockdown.

"Underneath her journal in her bedroom drawer, she found my son's little trinkets, including his tiny wee baby urn of ashes.

"She was so thrilled to find them that she rang me up, crying her eyes out. I could hardly understand her.

"I was very happy when she told me the news."

The only question that remained was: how did the urn end up in her daughter's drawer?

"I know for certain that the trinkets and the urn were the last thing I put on the front seat of my car when I left my old house.

"Somehow, my daughter must have picked up the box and taken it to her house. Why that happened, we don't know. We don't understand.

"Perhaps it was the stress and confusion that comes with moving house."