FUNERAL home directors say lengthy delays in autopsies — sometimes spanning two or more months — often result in them receiving bodies that are decomposing, which are harder and more costly to restore for burials.

Sam Isaacs and Son Funeral Home Managing Director Gordon Chuck explained that when bodies are held in cold storage while awaiting autopsy, the cool temperature slows down the process of decomposition but does not stop it entirely. As such, if the bodies are kept for weeks, or even months, some form of decomposition will start to take place.

“A part of decomposition is skin slip, so the top layer of the skin actually comes off the body. There is also dehydration, where because [the body] is in cold storage, the dry air attacks the skin and basically dries it out. You will have crystallisation, hardening of the lips, the eyes, the nose, the ears — and those areas will become dried out,” said Chuck, sharing that these are things he has witnessed as recently as last month.

“We are able to basically work on and restore pretty much anyone, but it makes it that much more challenging. If you have a deceased who died recently and you’re able to start treatment immediately, then you’ll get a much better result because you don’t have to battle all the factors with dehydration and the skin slip, and whatever else may occur. It’s less restoration with those cases,” he told the Jamaica Observer in an interview last week.

“It is very difficult for [the family], because when you lose someone, for the most part, you want to plan the funeral and be able to grieve and to start the funeral process so that you can then start to heal; but having this delay is now adding to their grief because, for that two months or three-month period, they are kind of in limbo. You are not settled.

“Your funeral home does not have care for your loved one, so it’s a difficult situation,” he said, stressing Jamaica’s need for more pathologists to speed up the process.

Marlio Oakley, managing director of Oakley’s Funeral Services, said that delays in autopsies often occur due to the large influx of bodies that have to be taken to the Institute of Forensic Science and Legal Medicine — the government facility that handles matters of interest to the police. These matters, he said, include accidents, murders, or sudden deaths amid suspicion that there was some level of foul play.

He shared that, in one case, a family he worked with had to wait three months before an autopsy could be conducted.

“They [family members] are depressed. To hear tomorrow will be the post-mortem and then the police call you back hours later, or funny enough, you are on the scene, waiting to go in and for your name to be called, and you identify the body, then you are told that, ‘Hey, the pathologist won’t be doing the procedure today again, you have to come back another day,’ it’s a whole lot,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“We have got cases where persons have been in accidents or got gunshots, and they are of a dark complexion, but when I get the person, they are of a white colour. The person was stripped [of their colour], the skin strips and the outer layers start to strip. That involves me doing a whole lot in terms of restoration, to restore the correct complexion of the person with cosmetics and all of that. It can be very difficult at times,” he said.

While he did not state a figure, Oakley said the restoration process is costly for both the relatives of the deceased and the funeral homes.

“We are looking at different applications, in terms of treating the body and in the sense of embalming the body. You will have different types of chemicals that have to be applied. You are also looking at shipping those chemicals to Jamaica, we’re looking at reconstruction and all of that,” explained Oakley.

He added that the cost of storing these fluids at the right temperature is also a factor that can increase the cost. He said his funeral home has waived some fees for grieving families and has offered support in this difficult time. However, not all fees can be waived.

Oakley shared that he has also seen where delays in conducting an autopsy can cause a rift between family members who are already hurting.

“You have family members who cuss and say, ‘If you did send him go foreign this wouldn’t happen, or that wouldn’t happen,’ and then the emotions [come] into play, and that is what I’m concerned about. Sometimes you, yourself, become a mediator because one person jumps up at the other person when they hear the cost to [do] this and the cost to do that,” he shared.

He appealed for more pathologists, stressing that the pain these family members have to endure due to delays is something that can be avoided.

“I’m hoping that this coming year we’ll see more efficiency, similar to a First-World country, where cases like these, within the week or days, we have the post-mortems coming in,” he said.

Another funeral director said that, in some cases, the delays even cause him to lose business.

“Sometimes you will have a family come to you and say they want you to do the funeral, but the delay causes them to shop around, at times. Sometimes a family member may know somebody else who knows a next funeral home, and because of that, they tend to switch on you,” said Napoleon Campbell, director at Vashaun’s Funeral Services.

“Normally, a funeral home does not take a deposit until they get the body, so you just have to pray that you can get the body so that you can get to do business with the family member. You have family members who are in your client base and you have worked with them before and they love how you work so, therefore, you don’t have to worry, but some will leave,” said Campbell.

He shared that last week Wednesday, he received the body of a man who was killed on December 3 last year, two months after the incident that led to his demise. Campbell added that the autopsy on another body of an individual who died on November 22 last year, was not done until January 31.

“It leaves a serious pain on the families who are not getting the chance to bury their loved one as soon as they want to. After you get the body, it takes another two or three weeks before [the body] can actually be ready for the funeral, so it’s a lot,” he shared.