Dad learns son is alive 11 days after burying him
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare to outlive their child, and for Frank J. Kerrigan, that nightmare came true last month.
On May 6, the 82-year-old was contacted by the coroner in Orange County, California, and delivered the heartbreaking news that the body of his homeless, mentally ill 57-year-old son, also named Frank, had been found. He offered to formally identify the body, but was told his son had already been identified through fingerprints.
Six days later, the family held a funeral costing over $26,000, attracting more than 50 mourners from around the country. Then, on May 23, Frank Sr.’s world was rocked once more. The body he had buried – the body he had believed to be that of his son – was in fact someone else entirely.
“Your son is alive,” a friend told the grieving father.
“Put my son on the phone,” Frank Sr. demanded. “He said, ‘Hi Dad.’”
According to the Orange County Register, the coroner had somehow misidentified the body.
“When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them,” Frank Sr. later said. “If he wasn’t identified by fingerprints I would have been there in a heartbeat.”
“We thought we were burying our brother,” Frank Jr.’s sister, Carole Meikle, told AP. “Someone else had a beautiful send-off. It’s horrific. We lived through our worst fear. He was dead on the sidewalk. We buried him. Those feelings don’t go away.”
Image credit: Andrew Foulk/AP.