With the shocking treatment of some rest home residents back in the headlines, The AM Show's Duncan Garner has shared his own upsetting story.
- Auckland rest home investigating claims of disturbing abuse of elderly patient
- Auckland rest home allegedly left man's body for daughter to find
Garner's father died seven years ago, nine months after being diagnosed with cancer. He passed away at Mary Potter Hospice in Wellington.
"I lay on the floor of the hospital half asleep, but next to his bed, as he slipped away," Garner wrote in a column for RadioLIVE in 2014.
"My Dad was my best mate and he went too early."
While the hospice staff "respected" his father, the same couldn't be said for the funeral directors who came to collect his body.
"[Hospice staff] took him down into this area where the funeral home comes and picks you up behind these closed doors, but some of the door had been left open," Garner told viewers and listeners of The AM Show on Monday.
"I was looking to see who had come and got him, and I saw these two guys arrive, funeral directors, to pick him up - and they started laughing. I felt really uneasy about it. They were joking about it.
"This is their business - they just pick up another body and take it - but this was my dad. What were they laughing about? Seven years later, I still want to know why they were laughing about him, or what. What was the joke?"
Garner said sometimes it's all he can think about.
Newshub.
