r/nottheonion • u/TheMirrorUS • 19h ago
Kentucky funeral home sued after mixing up cremated remains and giving one family soil instead of ashes
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/kentucky-funeral-home-sued-after-878062102
u/skaliton 18h ago
the soil part is the most confusing. Like as a cursory glance the average person isn't going to know if the ashes are from a cremated body or grabbed from the fire outside but I'm pretty sure anyone would know the difference between ashes and dirt
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u/malphonso 14h ago
The "ashes" you receive are more ground bits of bone than what you think of as ashes from a fire. The retort chamber with the body gets anywhere from 1600-2000⁰F (871-1093⁰C) and the only thing leftover from that is bones and other mineral heavy products that couldn't be vaporized.
Kitty litter is closer to cremains than either soil or ashes.
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u/Jaxsdooropener 19h ago
I'm just gunna leave this here as a suggestion to the fact that it probably wasn't an accident. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4vnrZkBn5tKJRqqUYRg81k?si=-NBvsPXvTv-BuWM3gIcI1w
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u/rd_rd_rd 16h ago
oh shit I just realized they could make so much moey by selling dead bodies to medical school or whatever and gave families random ashes, although they should be smart enough to give them ashes instead of soil.
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u/Alaishana 9h ago
Afaik, medical schools have all the bodies they need. There's no money in this. You got to line up to have your body taken for free disposal.
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u/Couldnotbehelpd 2h ago
Medical schools are not gonna risk buying illegal bodies from undertakers. It’s not the 1700s that would be fucking insane if they did that.
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u/BadgeOfDishonour 15h ago
Mix up. Soil. Uh... what, do funeral homes often have large sacks of soil next to cremated remains? Is Home Depot in the funeral business these days?
Is there any reason why the crematorium would have a sack of soil in it? Sure, if the funeral home has grounds, it may have a bag of soil in a shed somewhere. But I assume they aren't cremating people in that shed. And they probably aren't storing their gardening supplies in their crematorium.
Also this:
...the funeral home did not have the facilities to perform cremations on sight...
I am really glad they can't flash-fry a body at a glance.
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u/malphonso 14h ago
It's not uncommon for funeral homes to partner with a third party crematory.
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u/BadgeOfDishonour 14h ago
That is not the point. The point is that there is no scenario where a crematorium would have a bag of soil in the same room as cremated remains. It would be like opening a jar of mayonnaise and finding it full of motor oil. It's nonsense. They aren't in the same space, so they are not mixed up at any point in time.
It's fraud, or a wildly implausible explanation. Those are the options. "Mix up" implies an accident, which is completely unbelievable.
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u/malphonso 14h ago
I'm with you there. The only stuff stored in my crematory are the items necessary for cremation. It's also silly on its face. Cremains look nothing like soil, and there's no reason to place soil in an urn
This is 100% fraud. Whether it's by the funeral home or by the crematory, I'm not certain.
I was replying to your quote from the article regarding the home offering cremation but not having the equipment on the premises.
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u/BadgeOfDishonour 14h ago
Ah I see what you were responding to. What I was pointing out was the word Sight. "Site" was the word they wanted. They do not have the facilities to perform a cremation on "sight" or "at a glance".
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u/ceciliabee 17h ago
Having held a bag of cremains, it's insane that anyone would be brazen enough to try and pass off soil. If this was genuinely a mixup, there need to be new regulations to ensure all employees have functioning brains.
Although, the US is currently about to do a deregulation dump so I doubt this will happen. Enjoy the burning dumpster fire.
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u/OrangeBug74 12h ago
20 years ago there was a crematorium in northwest Georgia that got behind on cremations. Rather than repair the problem equipment, bodies were simply left outside. Plastic bags of QwikCrete or bonemeal were sent to families. It went on a very long time with not idea which bodies belonged to which families.
A prison sentence followed for the operator
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u/blackout-loud 4h ago
Asked for her mother in an earthen vessel but got Mother earth instead
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u/SokkaHaikuBot 4h ago
Sokka-Haiku by blackout-loud:
Asked for her mother
In an earthen vessel but
Got Mother earth instead
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/SheriffHarryBawls 10h ago
Does it matter? It’s ashes. For all u know, those grandma’s ashes u released into the ocean were a buncha old porno magazines
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u/pichael289 18h ago
There's alot of shady shit that goes down after death, official corners and medical examiners are in very short supply and funeral home owners are often rolling in money.