Family Grieves Twice As Funeral Home Cremates Loved One Days Before Viewing

The Hollis family will not get an opportunity to say goodbye one last time.

A Detroit, Michigan family is grieving the loss of a loved one, Rhonda Hollis. An employee of the funeral home cremated Rhonda’s body before her homegoing service. The Hollis family is filing a lawsuit against Fisher Funeral Home in response to the employees actions, Detroit 7 reported.

Attorney Ivan Land will represent the family in what they claim is a breach of contract, negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Rhonda’s daughter Saijae Hollis is baffled by the turn of events, not knowing how the Hollis family went from planning a, Dec. 16, viewing to not having a body to view.

“I’m supposed to be at a viewing looking at my mom and I can’t,” Saijae stated.

“It doesn’t feel real.”

The deceased’s mother, Kathy Fisher, was the first to receive the shocking news after being contacted by Fisher Funeral Home four days before the scheduled viewing.

“We got the call on December the 12th that Mr. Mike Fisher had said that her body was cremated that day and I questioned him — how could her body be cremated when we didn’t have the service yet? And he stated that one of his staff accidentally had her cremated,” Kathy said.

Fisher Funeral Home provided a written statement to Detroit 7 that reveals the cremation happened eight days before schedule. The funeral home expressed its regret and assured the public the irrevocable mistake will not happen again:

“We are aware of some of the reports on social media and appreciate the opportunity to clarify the facts of what happened in this very unfortunate situation. Because of a mistake, a person who was supposed to be cremated after a memorial service was cremated before the opportunity for loved ones to gather for a service. We immediately apologized to the family and understand why they are upset. This is not reflective of the care that we provide to our community and we deeply regret that this has occurred. We have served Southeast Michigan for nearly 70 years. Nothing like this has ever happened before nor will it again.”

The deceased’s daughter shared that the families priority was to make sure Rhonda received special care and a proper send off before her cremation.

“We were hoping that we would be able to give her, her last homegoing and actually make sure she looked pretty and just send her off and the family could say their final goodbyes and we could cope from there, but it didn’t happen like that.” Saijae said.