Mother felt her toddler’s memories had been ‘chucked in the bin’ after items were removed from grave

A mother has been left upset and angry after precious items on her son’s grave were put into a skip.Kayleigh Coffey is disappointed with the actions of West Norfolk Council after memorable Christmas items on her son Jac’s grave at the Gayton Road Cemetery in Lynn were thrown away last Monday.Jac died in 2018 just before his sixth birthday after being diagnosed with a rare brain tumour three years previously.

Each year, Kayleigh puts festive decorations on his grave. This time, she lightened it up with two trees, snowmen, Santa figures and other ornaments – but noticed they were missing.The missing items also included a Christmas tree that some friends had brought back from a trip to Lapland as Jac “never got to travel”.Despite her frustrations, the borough council has insisted that removing items from graves is standard practice – and that owners were given advance notice as early as November. Kayleigh said: “Whenever we go somewhere we always bring him back little mementos to put with him. The little Lapland ornament had gone and we could not find it.”

She spoke to workers at the cemetery and at the crematorium, who she says were “very apologetic about the situation.“Apparently they were under the instructions of the crematorium to dispose of all Christmas items on the grave,” Kayleigh said. “When I rang the council I cried, because it was all of Jac’s memories and belongings.“It is like his memoirs have just been chucked into the bin.“In the end, the workers had to empty and search through the skip for all of the belongings to retrieve them.” Kayleigh managed to retrieve most of the items, apart from the tree from Lapland.She added: “The workers are absolutely great with what they had done as they had to scoop through a skip, but I do think it is really disrespectful taking off a child’s grave.“I don’t see what harm little Christmas ornaments are on there. Even if it’s all year round, they are just little ornaments.“For all they know, Jac could like Christmas. They do not know my circumstances as to why I have not been round to get them. “They said there was a notice on the notice board but it’s green with moss and you can barely read it.”However, the borough council has said it gave adequate enough warning for items to be removed from graves.A spokesperson for the authority said: “In common with councils across the country, every year the borough council removes items that have been placed on graves in its cemeteries.“We have been doing this for many years and remove around six tons of material annually. “We usually do this in early January but in response to feedback from the public, this year we pushed it back to later in the month to give people more time to collect items that had been placed on graves over Christmas; we started collecting on January 20.“We did our best to make sure people were aware and had plenty of notice – we put signs up in our cemeteries in late November and also sent a notification in our resident newsletter.”