A mother who mourned her son’s death and planned his funeral got the shock of a lifetime when she received a surprise text message from him.
Earlier this year, Heather Insley received a call from Ottawa’s Montfort Hospital and was told her eldest son was in a ‘grim condition’.
After driving four fours from her home, she discovered a man lying in a hospital bed whom she assumed was her child, Sean Cox.
"He had the same haircut, same thick hair like my boy did — his long eyelashes,” she told CBC.
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She explained that her 43-year-old son had previously struggled with addiction and that she believed he was dying due to complications related to substance abuse.
After coming to terms with the death of her son, Insley decided that her child’s organs would be donated and that he would be cremated.
"We planned the funeral. I never knew what it would feel like to lose a child, and it was awful,” she explained.
However, after spending days agonising over ceremony details, Insley received a mysterious text message.
She told the news outlet that the IM was from someone who claimed to be Cox and that he was asking for money.
Upon receiving the message, she phoned her husband Bill who claimed someone was pulling a ‘sick joke’. Amazingly, this text wasn’t just a one-off prank though.
The bereaved mother said she received another message a few days later from the same number.
Hoping to catch the perpetrator, Insley rang and asked for her son, whose voice soon barrelled down the line.
Following the messages, the Ottawa police were deployed to track Cox down and he later arrived at his mother’s door.
Speaking about coming face-to-face with the son after four years apart, the Canadian woman said: “I thought, ‘Oh my God, your funeral's tomorrow’.
"I thought, I'm so happy he's alive, but I just went through all that mourning.”
Speaking to the news outlet, Cox said that he felt as if he’d been given a ‘second chance’ at life.
So, if the body in the hospital bed wasn’t Cox then who was it?
Martin Sauvé, Montfort's director of communications, told the aforementioned publication that officials were informed in January that a ‘misidentification of a patient’ had taken place.
"True identity of the deceased patient has since been confirmed. The families involved have been informed," he said via email correspondence.
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“We offer our most sincere condolences to the loved ones of the deceased patient, and offer our apologies to both families involved for the distress caused by this situation.”
Speaking about the mix-up, Insley said: “It was a grave mistake on their part and I blame myself for it ... but I believed it was him without a shadow of a doubt.”
"It was awful to think that I had lost my son, but at the same time, we showed love and everything to the other young man. We never left his side," she continued. "We stayed right with him, just as though he was our own son."
After discovering that the man in the morgue wasn’t her son, Insley gave officials hand prints of the mysterious man so that they could identify him.
The mother added that she thinks the Montford should take similar steps in the future to save others the pain her family have endured.
UNILAD has contacted representatives of Ottawa’s Montfort Hospital for comment.
Ella Scott