DEESIDE, Trelawny — Family members of the late 64-year-old Lascelles Ferguson have commenced arrangements for a second thanksgiving service for the retired National Water Commission (NWC) worker next Saturday, following a foul-up by workers at a funeral home which resulted in the burial of the wrong body here two Saturdays ago.
“The funeral will be taking place hopefully next Saturday (October 6), that is the goal. I can’t stay much longer I have to return to work in the United States. But so far it is definitely next week,” Orville Ferguson, brother of the deceased who resides in America, told the Jamaica Observer.
The error by the funeral home workers resulted in the interment of 89-year-old Melvin Innis, instead of Ferguson, at the public cemetery in Deeside, Trelawny. Both deceased men were natives of the Deeside community.
A memorial service for the life of Innis was held at the Baptist church in his community yesterday after his body was exhumed and buried at a family plot late Friday night.
On Friday, Orville Ferguson slammed the funeral home for making such a nenormous mistake with the two bodies.
“The guy (Innis) is 89, my brother is 64. How can you mistake such an older man for a younger guy? This is a monumental mistake!” he fumed.
Managing director of Reynolds Funeral Home, Rennie Reynolds, told the Sunday Observer that as a result of the colossal blunder, three workers will be given marching orders.
“I am going to take decisive disciplinary action against all of the persons who work in that area because we have been operating for over 25 years now and it is the first something like this has ever happened,” Reynolds said.
“I give my sincere apologies for the family members and friends of the two deceased, but I can assure you that strong measures will be taken against three persons there, including a secretary, an attendant, and a mortician. They will be losing their jobs,” he said.
The eerie drama started unfolding during the middle of last week when members of Innis’ family visited the funeral home and could not locate his body. The mix-up became evident when they were shown a body which they immediately recognised as that of Ferguson.
Meanwhile, although accepting that his workers were at fault for the embarrassing mix-up, Reynolds pondered how most of the over 1,000 mourners, including family members and friends, who attended the thanksgiving service at Deeside New Testament Church on September 22, failed to recognise that the wrong body was in the casket.
“That funeral had over 1,000 persons and I understand that one person said him don’t look like the man (Ferguson). But there were family members taking pictures and everything, looking at him and still said nothing. It kind of appalled me. I can’t understand,” Reynolds deliberated.
But Orville Ferguson disclosed that a daughter of the well-loved, retired NWC worker raised the issue at the church, but she was given an assurance by a funeral home worker that it the body was that of her father. The funeral home worker reportedly claimed that the deceased’s facial appearance might look different because family members failed to deliver his dentures on time.
The livid Orville Ferguson also had an issue with the absence of a tag on his brother’s body at the morgue.
“When I went there yesterday (Thursday) I asked a female worker to properly tag my brother so this misunderstanding does not reoccur. The lady turned to the garbage bin and tore off a piece of cardboard box, wrote his name on it; pushed a pencil through the cardboard to make a hole, got a piece of string and tied it to his finger,” the brother of the deceased man complained.
“I spoke to about three workers and they were all referring to him as the Deeside man. I don’t expect them to recall all the names, but I wonder if this is how you tag people. You had two men from Deeside, what if there were 10 men from Deeside? What would happen then?” he asked.
In the meantime, Reynolds, who noted that he made sure he was at Friday night’s exhumation of Innis’ body, said he was satisfied that it was still in a state in which it could have been taken to the church. However, health officials insisted that it had to be buried immediately.
“To bring a closure to this matter it was this (yesterday) morning I left. The exhumed body, it could be shown (in church)… the body is still intact because it was fully balmed, no stench, nothing at all, but medical people said it couldn’t be shown. I begged but because of the medical procedure that they have to follow [the body had to be buried],” he said.
Meanwhile, Innis’ brother, Wesley Innis, whose five-year-old grandson Jace Jones drowned along with a raft captain recently in the Martha Brae River in Trelawny, lamented that he is going through a rough phase in his life.
“It seems as if I am salt,” he joked.
One man was more than 20 years older than the other, isnt that very noticeable?