Don’t lose that body!
by Mortuary Transport Expert ~ April 1st, 2008. Filed under: Stay On Your Toes.The following story is a perfect example of why it’s important to have a paper trail starting from where the body was picked up. While the reason the family believes they don’t have their fathers’ remains is based on a complaint from an employee, this should never happen any any state. The case of the many noncremated bodies in Georgia a few years back should be a lesson to everyone nationwide.
If this is not a major concern to you or your employees, you should question why you got into this business in the first place.
After 82 year-old Ed Van Every passed away four months ago following a long illness, his son Steve wanted to fulfill his father’s last wish. Van Every says “To have his body cremated and to deliver the ashes to a favorite fishing hole of our mother’s in Florida, my mother is at this hole,”
But their father’s remains are not.The ashes the family received from Mark Seepe’s Jackson crematorium may not be Ed Van Every’s.
Last November after he died, an employee with the funeral home filed a complaint with the Mississippi State Board of Funeral Service alleging that Van Every’s family was given someone else’s remains, and that his body had not been cremated.
Now the family is very upset that the funeral service board has not given them answers to their concerns about how his remains were handled.
“Shock and dismay at the fact that we’re looking at the way the matter is being dealt with,” he says.
Van Every says while his parents may be together spiritually in heaven, their physical remains may not be untied here on earth.
Once the matter is settled, Steve says the family plans to transport the contents they were given and symbolically spread Van Every’s ashes in the Florida lake in order to get a small measure of closure.
They have filed a lawsuit against Mark Seepe, claiming he was negligent.
Should there be some rule about whistle blowers showing some kind of substantiation, or did this employee do the right thing?
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