Half-dressed body upsets deceased's family

WESTERN BUREAU:

A FAMILY in St. Elizabeth is left shocked and distressed after the body of their great grandmother, dressed only in undergarments, was presented for burial on Sunday.

The management of Brown's and Sons Funeral Home, in Black River, St. Elizabeth, has promised to compensate the family of an 87-year-old woman, as the body was not prepared for burial as they had agreed.

The funeral was disrupted on Sunday afternoon when the body arrived at the church half-dressed and in a different casket than the one that was selected and paid for by the family.

Grace Hosang said the body of her great-grandmother was dressed in only a brassiere and a scarf when it arrived at the Salvation Army Church in Quickstep, St. Elizabeth. She told The Gleaner that the casket was dirty and appeared to have been used before. "The inside of the casket was dirty and looked as if it was dug up, ...and how could they expect people to view her body half-naked," Ms. Hosang said.

According to her, initially the funeral directors did not respond when the family queried the whereabouts of a US$200 gown which the family had given to them to dress the body for burial. Outraged family members sent the body back to the funeral home for proper dressing and a new casket.

The scheduled 2 o'clock funeral service finally got started at about 4:45 pm, when the body was returned to the church dressed in the gown that family members had bought, and lying in a new casket.

"They just told us that they found the dress. We had to rush through the programme because it was raining and we wanted to get it done before nightfall," Ms. Hosang said.

Ian Brown, an assistant manager at the funeral home, said yesterday they would be making some reimbursement to the family. "We will be dealing with it in the proper way, and we are going to give them their money back," Mr. Brown told The Gleaner yesterday. He did not say what caused the mix-up.

Mrs. James was finally laid to rest at the family plot in Quickstep.

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