Son: Funeral Home Buried The Wrong Woman On Top Of My Father

A Texas man learned that the wrong body was buried in the family’s plot. It wasn’t his mother’s body. “I remember the days when she looked like this,” Bruce Lawson said, while looking at a photo of his mother on the cover of a funeral program.

According to KHOU, Bruce held the same program three days ago, when he thought he was saying goodbye to his mother, 81-year-old Edna Lawson.

“We were sending her back home to be with dad,” he said.

When it came time to identify his mother’s body at Mabrie Memorial Mortuary, Bruce said he had doubts.

“I said to her, I said, it doesn’t look like my mom,” Bruce said. “Do you think maybe you have the wrong body? Maybe it’s someone else back there? And she said we don’t make those kind of mistakes.”

The service took place as scheduled and the body was buried. The family believed embalming had changed her appearance.

“You always assume that the funeral home gets the right body,” Bruce said.

Then Bruce got a phone call from Mabrie Memorial, saying they’d found Mrs. Lawson’s body still at the funeral home. He had to go back to the funeral home once again.

“I said now that’s my mother,” he said.

The story gets worse. The other woman’s body was placed on top of his father’s.

“Some other lady was placed on top of my dad, which was a WWII veteran, instead of my mom,” he said. .

Mabrie Memorial told KHOU11 that that lady’s body was exhumed and she will be given a proper burial.

They called the incident an inadvertent mistake and apologized to Lawson and offered to bury his mother, too.

“You don’t want to send the loved ones through that all over again so what do you do?” Bruce said.

He added, “She wanted a spiritual way to leave this earth but it got robbed from her and her spirit.”

The full statement from Mabrie Memorial Mortuary:

“Last week, Mabrie Memorial Mortuary inadvertently mistook the body of Edna Lawson for another person also left in our care. The other body was buried in Mrs. Lawson’s grave site on July 26, 2014, while Mrs. Lawson remained in our facilities, where she currently rests. The other body has been exhumed and will be properly buried. Mrs. Lawson will be buried in her grave site next to her family members within the coming days.

When Mabrie Memorial Mortuary discovered the mix up, we immediately contacted the affected families, apologized for the error, and took all appropriate steps to rectify the situation. We have also taken steps to insure that a similar situation does not happen in the future. Mabrie Memorial Mortuary has been a community partner for over 17 years providing memorial services to and quality healing experiences for families in the Houston area. We deeply regret that the Lawson family had to endure this temporary delay in properly transitioning their loved one and will do everything we can to make the remainder of their experience comfortable.”

I wonder how that apology went: “Hey, we’re really sorry we buried another woman on top of your father.”

There’s  a video at KHOU.

D.B. Hirsch

D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.