A Colorado mom recently shared a bizarre and darkly hilarious incident involving her late father’s remains in a TikTok video that’s now gone viral, racking up over 2.4 million views. What happened? Let’s just say “grandpa’s ashes” became the unexpected centerpiece of a parenting story straight out of a sitcom—or maybe a horror movie.
Monica Long, a single mother of three from Colorado, explained that the chaos began when she stepped away for just a few minutes to use the bathroom while prepping for a birthday party. During that short span, her two mischievous toddlers—ages 3 and 2—managed to wreak havoc. Upon returning, she found them covered in what she initially thought was white dirt, smearing it gleefully all over themselves, the floor, and basically anything within reach.
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“I had no clue what it was at first,” Long recounted. “I vacuumed it up like it was just some random mess.” But the unsettling truth surfaced days later when she noticed that the container holding her father’s cremated remains—his urn—was empty. That’s right: grandpa’s ashes had been spilled, spread, and possibly consumed during the toddlers’ escapade.

“They got PawPaw!” Long exclaimed in her TikTok, clutching the now-empty urn. She then added, “And I vacuumed him up.” The revelation left her in a mix of horror and disbelief, though she later speculated with a grim sense of humor that her boys might’ve eaten some of the ashes. “One of them had the urn cap in his mouth,” she admitted, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “Jesus Christ. F–k.”
The toddlers’ escapade bore an eerie resemblance to a scene from Meet the Parents, where a family pet mistakes grandma’s ashes for a litterbox. In this case, though, the little troublemakers climbed their way to a high shelf where PawPaw’s ashes were stored, unscrewed the urn—probably using their teeth—and had their dusty little adventure.
“I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Long admitted, though she did find some comfort in knowing that her father—an Army veteran, educator, and lover of humor—would likely have found the incident amusing. “He would’ve definitely gotten a kick out of this whole ordeal,” she said in a follow-up video, smiling through the absurdity of it all.
TikTok commenters were quick to chime in, turning the bizarre mishap into a moment of communal laughter. “I’m sorry, but I snorted when you zoomed in on what’s left of PawPaw,” one person commented. Another added, “I don’t know PawPaw, but I bet he’s laughing his tail off about this.”
In a bittersweet twist, Monica reassured her viewers that not all of her father’s remains were lost to the toddler tornado. Some of grandpa’s ashes are safely buried at a veterans’ cemetery in Texas. And when she informed her stepmother, lovingly referred to as MawMaw, of the incident, she got an unexpectedly reassuring response: “Don’t worry—we have more PawPaw.”
While this ordeal might be every parent’s worst nightmare, Monica has managed to find humor in the chaos. “They’re just getting into everything these days,” she said, shaking her head. The memory of her dad, though, clearly lives on—not just in his ashes, but in the laughter and chaos he continues to inspire, even posthumously.
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