BUTLER COUNTY — Last wishes possibly denied.
A Butler County woman said a cemetery is burying her mother in the wrong plot, our sister station at WCPO reported.
“Last words to me was that she loved me,” Lily Arisah just said goodbye to her mother.
Now she wants to honor her mother’s last wishes of laying her to rest at Butler County Memorial Park.
“That’s all she ever talked about. Was being buried at the head of her mother when she died,” Arisah said.
That’s what Bertie Smith-Watkins paid for back in 1977.
A plot for her and another beside it.
But decades later Arisah said Bertie’s last wish won’t be granted.
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She will be buried at the head of her stepfather, something Bertie expressed she didn’t want.
“There’s a personal reason why I don’t want her at the head of him,” Arisah said.
But Bertie can’t be buried in the slot she wanted because they already buried someone else there.
The cemetery told Arisah that the plot was bought from the old owner and he should have never sold it.
In an email to WCPO the cemetery said while there’s enough space under Bertie’s stepfather, the space under her mother’s plot is too small.
“I told them well you will be seeing my lawyer if my mother is not buried at the head of her mother,” Arisah said.
Bertie is set to be buried on Friday and Arisah said she wants a solution before then.
“I have lost sleep over it,” she said.
The cemetery said they want one too, suggesting they could move Bertie’s grave as close to her mother as possible.
Arsiah worries for the sake of her mother’s last wishes, that may not be good enough.
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