A family in Washington State had a doubly disturbing shock at the funeral of a man recently, when they found out that not only was the wrong body in his casket, dressed in his clothes and with a photo of the man’s wife tucked inside, but he’d been cremated as well — and he was terrified of being cremated.

“This makes me feel like he was treated as a number, not a person,” his daughter tells KIRO-TV of the mix-up, which the family didn’t discover until the funeral. The body in the casket also had a plastic bag over his head.

“I turned around and said to myself three times, ‘That’s not him, that’s not him, that’s not him,” his son said. Apparently the man in the casket died in hospice care around the same time as their father.

The family learned a 97-year-old man died in hospice care at the same time as their father.

Officials with the hospice care where the man spent his last days say the body mix-up happened after the funeral home took his body, but that company wouldn’t comment for the news station.

“On that level of mistake, there is no excuse. I just can’t believe that that can happen,” one of his sons said.

We’re not sure which is worse — the fact that there was a bag over anyone’s head, wrong body or no, or that someone set against cremation ended up getting cremated anyway. Not to mention how the other man’s family must also be feeling as a result of the switch.

Family opens casket, finds wrong dead man [KIRO-TV]

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