‘Please cremate my mom’: Daughter hits out at funeral home for no ashes, 2 months after burial
WAS NOT CREMATED: Mother Margaret White of Wetton. Picture supplied
A woman from Ottery claims a funeral home has given the family secondary trauma after it failed to cremate her late mother.
According to Yvonne Prins, her mother was supposed to be cremated but that never happened, “because we were conned by Jonathan van der Heever, the owner of JV Funeral Services”.
“My mother [Margaret White] passed away in her sleep on 18 March and wanted to be cremated,” Yvonne explains.
“Every time I called him or asked him when we were getting my mother’s ashes back he spun a story.”
She began doing her own investigation, only to discover that her mother was never cremated.
“I started to get suspicious and did some phoning around only to find out that my mother is still lying in a storage facility in Ottery,” a shocked Yvonne explained.
She claims that her mother’s body was kept in a freezer from March 18 until May 8.
“This is heartbreaking as a family,” she says.
“We are so disappointed in the treatment my mother received from JV funeral services.
“We as a family wanted to have her cremated at another place but because JV Funeral Service hasn’t paid storage fees for her body, we couldn’t do that.
“Not once did Jonathan explain to me why my mother hasn’t been cremated, he’s full of stories and lies.”
Yvonne says that they had to pay extra money to release the body and for another cremation to take place.
When the Daily Voice contacted Van Der Heever, he claimed that load shedding was to blame.
"All businesses are being affected [by load shedding].
“I did fulfil the obligations of the contract; in fact, I gave her a R1 200 payout that she was not entitled to towards a bus.
“The reason why the crematoriums ran behind is because there was stage 5 and 5 load shedding in the last month. I don’t blame the crematoriums because it is out of our control.
“I had the body for four weeks after Drakenstein and Maitland couldn’t help me so I made an alternative arrangement with an undertaker in Port Elizabeth at extra cost,” he explains.
But Yvonne said that none of this was communicated to her family, and while she will receive her mom’s ashes next week. has warned mense to stay away from Van Der Heever.
“He cannot be trusted. I do not know how he sleeps at night.”