Man in N.J. nursing home was buried before his family even knew he was dead

Thomas E. Comer and his granddaughter, BriannaCourtesy of Brianna Comer

By Ted Sherman

Thomas E. Comer’s final hours are a mystery to his family.

In fact, they never even knew the 88-year-old retired machinist — who lived out the last four years of his life at the Bayshore Health Care Center in Holmdel — had died from COVID-19 on April 13th until long after he was buried.

“Somebody could have told me something,” said his son, David. “He was my dad.”

His father, who suffered from dementia, was under state guardianship because of financial necessity, Comer said. But neither the state nor the nursing home reached out to contact his family after the Irish expatriate succumbed to the coronavirus.

“I understand what’s going on,” he said of the crisis in the state’s nursing homes that has killed more than 6,200 people in an outbreak that has taken 1 in 12 residents. “But they couldn’t spare me five minutes?”

Bayshore Health Care has reported the deaths of 21 of its residents in the outbreak. Another 119 residents tested positive for COVID-19.

Comer first learned of his father’s death after his daughter called the nursing facility to find out how he was doing.

“We had not heard anything. We knew they were overwhelmed, but I had this false sense nothing would ever happen to him,” Brianna Comer recalled. “The woman who answered the phone said she could not find him.”

Then she was told he had expired.

“I went, ‘what? When did he die?’”

“Oh, I can’t tell you that,” a staff member told her. “You’re not on the list.”

“Who is on the list?” she asked.

“I can’t tell you that either,” the staffer said.

It was not until she Googled her grandfather’s name that she discovered he had been sent to Laurel Funeral Home in West Keansburg following his death.

“We were told by the funeral home that he was already buried, against his wishes of being cremated, and they also attempted to contact my father, but they were only given an outdated phone number by the nursing home,” Comer remarked.

Funeral home officials said they tried calling the number given by Bayshore, but got only a click and no answer when they reached out. “That was the only phone number we had,” explained Kathleen Sperling, whose family owns the funeral home.

Brianna Comer said her father updated his phone number four times with Bayshore Health Care, giving it to nurses who directly cared for her grandfather, the nursing director, and the front desk.

“We visited frequently, always bringing a small black coffee, jelly donuts and occasionally a bottle of Guinness,” she said. “There was no reason for anyone in the facility to assume he was not wanted or loved.”

She said it was clear that no one bothered to update his file.

Hackensack Meridian Health, which operates Bayshore Health Care, said in a statement they followed state laws governing how notifications are to be made.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Comer family. This is undoubtedly a sad situation and it’s understandable the process would be questioned. When an individual passes at a nursing or health care facility, a guardian or next of kin is notified,” the statement said. “If the individual is under the supervision of the Office of Public Guardian, this would be the entity that would receive appropriate notifications related to private health information — including death. Privacy laws prohibit the sharing of health protected information unless designated otherwise.”

The Office of the Public Guardian is administratively located in the Department of Human Services, but not part of it. Acting Public Guardian Helen Dodick said they do not discuss specific cases. But when an individual protected by her office passes away, she said the assigned care manager — or depending on the hour, the on-call care manager — notifies the family.

“If the staff cannot reach the family through the notification numbers provided by the family, staff will then try multiple means of finding the family, including working with the nursing home, funeral director and doing Internet searches,” she said. “The office — as part of its mission to aid, empower and protect New Jersey’s older adults who need assistance — does everything it can to contact families.”

Comer, a retired Passaic County Sheriff’s Officer, said it would not have been hard to find him.

“They could have called the Holmdel police and given my name and they would have found me in minutes,” he said.

Born on September 2, 1931 in County Mayo on Ireland’s west coast in the town of Westport, Thomas Comer was a proud Irishman who never lost his brogue, said his granddaughter.

“He never got sick. He always said he had Irish immunity,” Brianna Comer remembered. “When we got sick, he said we weren’t Irish enough.”

She said he loved math and loved chess and for some reason, dogs always seemed to love him.

He was a veteran of the Royal Air Force, where he was an air traffic controller. He followed his parents and siblings to the United States, arriving here in 1958, but never became a naturalized citizen. While he talked about returning one day to Ireland, he never did. He was afraid to fly, Comer said. He settled in Orange, and lived for 40 years in Passaic, working as a machinist before his retirement. He later moved to Union Beach.

In recent years, however, it became clear he would need nursing care.

“My grandfather suffered from dementia and would frequently leave the house and disappear on walks, no matter the weather,” said Comer. “Due to overwhelming costs of nursing homes, we sought help from the state by making him a ward of the state with a social worker to place him in a home where he thought he would be safe and monitored.”

The family is now trying to obtain his medical records in order to find answers regarding what happened to him and locate his belongings.

“I would have just appreciated his few effects,” said David Comer. “Some pictures. The wristwatch my son gave him. It’s just a $10 watch, but it was his.”

Survived by his older son John, of North Carolina, and youngest son David, of Keyport, he left behind 7 grandchildren and 3 great- grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife, Eileen, and a son, Steven. He is buried at Bay View Cemetery in Leonardo.

“It was a direct burial,” said Sperling. “Our funeral director did say prayers there, which is normal if there is no family there.”

For now, the pandemic has prevented David Comer from going to his father’s grave.

“No one’s allowed to visit,” he said. “They said you have to wait.”

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Man in N.J. nursing home was buried before his family even knew he was dead