Kara Pasap finds herself in the depths of an unexpected grief, grappling with being unjustly robbed of a dignified farewell to her son. Clyde Lonethunder-Pasap, aged 24, passed away abruptly on October 3rd. As a respected member of the First Nations community, Pasap had meticulously planned to accompany her son’s remains from the Speers Funeral Chapel in Regina to their home community of White Bear First Nation, the venue for his wake. Clyde was to be cremated following the traditional rites.
Alas, a bewildering oversight at the funeral home resulted in Clyde’s remains never reaching the ceremony. The harrowing news was relayed to Pasap on her way to the chapel, rending her grief-stricken. In a shocking revelation, she was informed that Clyde had been mistakenly cremated that very morning.
A heartbroken Pasap struggled to comprehend the how and why of this dreadful circumstance. The funeral chapel revealed that an erring staff member had bypassed the stipulated protocol for correctly identifying coffins before their transit to the crematorium.
Clyde’s casket was erroneously shipped to the crematorium, instead of another that was marked for cremation that day, further complicated by the failure in checking the labels with due diligence.
In the First Nations culture, the presence of the body during the service holds paramount significance. The bereaved family had prepared a traditional feast in Clyde’s honour, supplemented with cultural elements like essential items, akin to moccasins, in a travel bag that was symbolically representative of what Pasap referred to as “all the stuff he’ll need up there.”
The shocking revelation of Clyde’s premature cremation necessitated a consultation with other Elders, owing to the unprecedented nature of this situation. The fallout of this incident, Pasap painfully points out, is the inability to grieve appropriately the loss of Clyde, constrained as they were with the lack of a formal bid of farewell to his body.
The regrets and apologies of the Speers Funeral Chapel, while acknowledged, fell short of easing the torment the family was plunged into, alongside the wider community that paid traditional respects to Clyde. The funeral home has responded to this error by revising its procedural checks, which now mandate involvement of two staff members for coffin identifications prior to crematorium dispatch.
The burden of an employee’s mistake weighs heavily on the funeral home, reflected in the assure of disciplinary action served alongside the promise of instituting additional checks and balances. The funeral home, remorseful, acknowledges the profundity of its error depriving the family’s ability to honour Clyde according to their spiritual and cultural conventions.
In an act of penitence and solidarity, Speers has waived off its service fees, and extended a degree of undisclosed support to the aggrieved family. Meanwhile, Pasap remains resolute in her pursuit of justice for her son, committed to staging daily protests outside Speers.
