Posted on 11/13/2007 6:11:11 AM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Funerals are emotional enough without red-tinged liquid pooling underneath the casket.
That’s what the survivors of an 84-year-old Portland woman said they witnessed, and they claimed the image forever tainted what should have been a celebration of a wonderful life.
Jean McCurdy described her mother’s last days as peaceful, with her slipping away as the last of her five daughters rushed to her bedside.
"My sister from Florida had only been there about a half-hour, and she went into a coma," she told News 8.
Days later, at Portland’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the gathering to celebrate Helen Glazier’s life was anything but peaceful.
McCurdy explained, "All of a sudden, I was … looking underneath her casket and seeing this fluid."
She said the reddish fluid pooled, then streamed down the church’s marble floor.
"Of course, when you see something like that and you see the color, what are you going to think about?” McCurdy asked. “You're going to think about blood."
McCurdy and her four sisters are blaming Portland’s Conroy-Tully Crawford Funeral Home, which was hired to embalm Glazier’s body and prepare it for burial. They said they believe something went terribly wrong.
"Nothing like this has ever happened to us before, ever," said Fred Moore, an attorney for Conroy-Tully Crawford.
While he agreed that something went wrong, he insisted it does not make his client liable.
Earlier this year, the sisters filed a complaint with the State Board of Funeral Directors, which was dismissed, according to Moore, whose client still cannot explain the mysterious liquid.
He said, "To this day, I don't think anyone -- not the state board, not us, not anyone else -- knows what caused that, that fluid that was dripping out. It could have been water that spilled out at some point, if somebody knocked over some flowers."
McCurdy said she doesn’t buy that explanation and hopes the lawsuit results in an apology and a refund of the $11,000 cost of the funeral.
Moore said he hopes to reach an out-of-court settlement in the case.
The old "mistakes were made" bit.
No one verified at the time if the liquid was coming from the casket itself or something nearby? Who cleaned it up and what was their assessment of it? Sorry, but even with the funeral home’s lame excuse, I don’t think the family can prove anything was dripping out of mama.
Seems to me that nobody ever identified the liquid, yet the funeral director gets sued. The level to which this society has sunk never fails to amaze me.
That’s a bad place to stash a bottle of altar wine.
My buddy digs graves in a very nice Cemetary for a living. He’s told the story of a buried VERY large (fat) ex-firefighter. Once his wife passed away his family wanted the mans body exhumed to be buried in another cemetary.
The man was buried in a metal casket, As they were lifting the casket from a dolly to a table the bottom gave way and the guy fell to the ground like 50 rotten pumkins. My friend Mark said it was the most heinous, Grossest thing he ever saw in his life. Apparently he splashed all across the room.
Wouldn’t you know that something like this would happen in Oregon?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.