A Quebec family arrived at a cemetery to attend the delayed burial of its matriarch only to find that the wrong body was waiting for them.
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Lucia Pannunzio remained unburied for four months because of a labor dispute at Notre Dame des Neiges, the largest cemetery in Canada. Her daughter-in-law, Felicia Costantiello, told the Montreal Gazette that family members noticed that the coffin did not look like the one they had selected so they checked the name tag.
Peter Biello, the deacon who was to conduct the burial service, discovered that the name was familiar. He had just come from that woman's grave site.
Cemetery officials say that the other burial, which had been scheduled a half-hour earlier than Pannunzio's had not taken place because mourners were late. They also said that cemetery workers make a final check of name tags after burial services and before lowering coffins all the way to prevent mix-ups.
But the Pannunzios think they should check first.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to check the name tag with the gravesite before the service," Tony Pannunzio said. "I'm upset. Thank God we saw it."