Edna Lawson died on July 19, and she didn’t make it to her funeral. Her body was mixed up with that of another dead woman, who ended up buried in the plot next to the 81-year-old’s husband. Her son, Bruce Lawson, knew that the body he identified was not his mother, but a worker at Houston’s Mabrie Memorial Mortuary worker didn’t believe him. “I said to her it doesn’t look like my mom,” he told KHOU. “Do yo 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.'”
Apparently, they do.
Mabrie mistakenly switched up the bodies, and convinced Lawson that the dead woman was his mother. He and the family went along with it, believing that her facial features were skewed during the embalming process. A funeral was held for Pentecostal Missionary Baptist Church last week.
The next day the funeral home called about the error, Edna’s body was still in the back of the facility. “You always assume that the funeral home gets the right body,” he said.
After a second go-round, Bruce was able to confirm that the body was his mother. Mabrie released a statement apologizing for the swap. “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 statement read. “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.”
Bruce feels that his mother has been victimized. “She wanted a spiritual way to leave this earth, but it got robbed from her and her spirit,” he said.
— Photo: KHOU
