RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – A Rutland woman says more than a year after her mother’s death, she learned the urn she got from the funeral home was empty.
“Grieving never goes away. It’s a horrible process,” said Bridget Bushey of Rutland. “So, to make somebody go through this again, somebody should be in jail for doing something like this.”
Bushey and her family lost their mother, Tisa Farrow, a former actress and beloved nurse in Rutland, last January.
After payment issues, Bushey said the former director of the Clifford Funeral Home demanded money to release Farrow’s remains, and finally did weeks after Farrow’s death.
“At the time, I was grateful. I was like, thank god it’s finally over, she’s home. I can finally like stop this nightmare,” Bushey said.
But the past came back to haunt her again in March when she received a call from the new owners of the Clifford Funeral Home telling her they had her mother’s ashes waiting for her.
“This is not a mistake you make with somebody in this instance and she said, ‘No, I’m looking at your mother’s ashes,‘” Bushey said. “And I’m like, ‘I have her home, she’s been home for 14 months.‘”
But after opening the urn, they found it empty.
“Because I was such a mess that my husband had to go and have them, you know, I couldn’t do it because I did this once. I couldn’t do it again,” Bushey said.
It’s something Vermont Funeral Directors Association President Tom Harty says he’s never seen before.
“We get told stories that have come up where somebody may have placed something in an urn that wasn’t the ashes, that wasn’t the remains, but I have never heard of an empty one,” he said.
Harty says businesses they help have steps in place to prevent something like this from happening.
“There’s a ton of things we do and check and double check, and even if you were distracted or interrupted, that’s not something you’re gonna not notice an urn is empty,” he said.
Even though Bushey has her mother’s ashes now, the pain remains.
“She’s like my best friend in the whole world, so this has been really hard,” Bushey said.
WCAX News reached out to the former director of the funeral home at the time, Brent Garrow, but had not yet heard back when this story was published.
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