Two sisters were already in a state of grief as they were reeling from the loss of their beloved mother. But they found their heartache compounded when they could not even tell where their mother’s body was for a while because of a horrible mixup. The two sisters arrived at the funeral home for their mother’s viewing on September 7, 2021. However, when they opened their mother’s casket, they could not even recognize the dead body inside.
Both the sisters, Jennetta Archer and Jennifer Taylor, could tell that the woman, whom they had never met before, was dressed in their mother’s clothes, according to NYP. But it was clear to them that the body did not belong to their mother, Mary Archer.
What was even more strange was that the staff at the funeral home in North Carolina tried to convince them that the person, lying lifeless in the casket, was actually their mother. “We just couldn’t understand how this could happen,” Jennifer said. As they peered into the casket, it was an obvious mistake to the sisters because even the clothes seemed far too loose for the woman’s body.
“There’s no similarity in the person,” said Jennetta. “Their size was way off. When the first person had the clothing on, she was swimming in the clothes because she was so small compared to my mother.”
Without wasting any time, Jennetta and Jennifer informed the staff at the Hunter’s Funeral Home that it was not the body of their mother lying in the casket. At first, the staff denied any mistake on their part, but when they later went to the funeral home’s embalming room, they found Mary Archer’s body still lying there.
“For this to play out like that, it’s just embarrassing,” Jennifer added.
Finally, the staff switched the two bodies, and the correct corpse was placed in the casket before the service began. Despite the error being rectified, Jennetta and Jennifer believe that the distressing blunder was not properly addressed.
“No one addressed it immediately,” said Jennetta. “It would have been a different situation if they had just come upfront and addressed it immediately to show that yes, they did, they made an error.”
The sisters also maintain that they did not receive a proper apology or a phone call from the funeral home after the incident.
“What do you do to prevent something like that from happening?” said Jennetta, questioning the actions of the funeral home. “Don’t they have a chart per person and treat them like a customer or a patient or whatever you want to refer to them as so that you don’t have them mixed up?” The funeral home apologized to the sisters and added that this was the first incident of its kind to have taken place at the Hunter’s Funeral Home in 40 years.
North Carolina sisters find dead stranger wearing their mother’s clothes in her casket https://t.co/5kg0xTb3NQ pic.twitter.com/vMyySFarjJ
— New York Post (@nypost) September 26, 2021
Image Source – Hunter’s Funeral Home
