LA familys been visiting empty grave to mourn their mother for 4 years after headstone mishap at cemetery: lawsuit

Grave error.Loved ones who spent years grieving their beloved family matriarch at her Los Angeles burial site were horrified to learn they had been visiting an empty grave the whole time due to a misplaced headstone, according to a lawsuit and reports.The family of the late Hasmik Demirchayn – who fled oppression from the Soviet Union in the 1980s for a better life in the US – spent the past nearly four years coming to grieve, pray, celebrate birthdays and even put up a decorated Christmas tree at an empty plot that had a headstone with her name, according to local reports. Marine, Hasmik’s middle child, has been overwhelmed with guilt and shame for visiting the wrong gravestone, she tearfully recalled to NBC4 Los Angeles.“When she passed, I thought, ‘At least, we have given her a peaceful, respectful place to rest.’ But seeing her memorial tablet placed on the wrong grave, it felt like losing her all over again,” the daughter said.

“We were just talking to an empty spot.”After Hasmik Demirchayn died of a heart attack in 2021, her children buried her in one of the plots that the family had purchased in 2008 at the Hollywood Hills location of Forest Lawn Memorial Park.Since then, her children have come to visit the gravesite and commemorate a woman they described to NBC Los Angeles as the “perfect mom.”“For a year, I was there every weekend, taking her flowers, and sitting and talking to her,” Marine told local station.It wasn’t until this April when the children had to bury their father, who had been happily married to his wife for several decades, that they realized there had been a terrible mistake.Chris, Hasmik’s son, told KTLA News that during his father’s funeral service, a mortician confessed to him that his mother’s headstone was above an empty plot, while her body was buried in a plot with no marker. The gravestone had been placed in “space 1,” while the beloved matriarch was buried in “space 2,” one plot over to...