Rest in pieces (too soon?)

It’s customary for the family to go to pieces at a funeral, but at a recent memorial service it was the deceased. FOX News reports:

A New York family is stunned and outraged after the city medical examiner sent the body and organs of their 82-year-old relative to the funeral home in separate shipments.

Because of the mix-up, the body of Rhoda Callwood was buried last week in Westchester County with her body lying in the casket and her organs next to her in plastic buckets, according to Funeral director William Curran, of John F.X. McKeon Funeral Home in the Bronx.

Curran, who describes the situation as a first in his two decades as a mortician, claims that Callwood’s family requested two autopsies after her death. The first autopsy was performed at New York Presbyterian Hospital, the second by the city medical examiner. But when the coroner took possession of the body for autopsy No. 2, it was missing its organs. Investigators were dispatched to the hospital to retrieve them the next day.

After performing its own autopsy, the M.E. sent the remains to the funeral home in separate shipments.

“I am so confused with everything going on, I don’t have time to mourn,” Glenda Callwood, the daughter of the deceased, told reporters with WABC.

The family has since lawyered up and plan to have the organs tested to ensure they are in fact Callwood’s.

In the video of the news report that follows a member of Callwood’s family is shown at the funeral, telling mourners that she liked to laugh. One hopes that wherever the old woman is, she is having a good chuckle over this mixup.

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