PERRYHAWKIN -- If John R. Higgins Sr. hadn't been undergoing physical therapy that day in 1995, he would have been to his own funeral -- twice.

His wife, Irene, has two death certificates to prove it. Well, three if you include the one for April 2003, when he was buried.

In 1979, following a stroke, doctors gave him less than a year to live. Paralysis on the left side atrophied his arm. In 1989 the former letter carrier of 26 years from Cranford, N.J., was told by physicians that his left leg had to be removed well above the knee.

Higgins was adamant he didn't want the limb amputated. Ironically, he was in a similar predicament years earlier when, as legal guardian for his aunt, he was called upon to sign forms giving doctors permission to remove her leg. She refused. Gangrene set it. She held firm, and Higgins opted to follow her instructions. She kept the leg, but she died. Now he faced the same dilemma.

Knowing what killed his aunt, Higgins finally agreed to the procedure -- at the last minute.

So began an odyssey for husband and wife.

Bad enough to lose a limb, but his wife was worried about more about his suffering once it was off. "Phantom pain," she said, "is terrible." It is the sensation of intense pain -- from missing limbs.

While working at the Good Fairy Doll Museum in Cranford, N.J., Irene's employer, "a psychic and fortune teller," urged her to have her husband's leg buried to make sure he didn't suffer phantom pain. Ironically, Irene's job at the doll hospital was to put arms and legs back on dolls. "I just thought, he had so much pain with the stroke and all, and if there was any chance we could eliminate the pain, we'd do it."

A strange request

"I'm not a kook," she said. If anything offered a bit of hope to ease his pain, she reached for it. "Even if it were purely psychological on his part, if it worked, it worked."

Irene decided to bury the leg.

Before she discussed it with Higgins, she did some legwork of her own.

She called a funeral home. Yes, the director said, they would be happy to help. They would bury the leg. All she had to do was buy a cemetery plot and obtain a death certificate.

When she told the doctors of her plan, they refused to relinquish the leg. "The doctors, I think, felt we wanted the leg as part of a malpractice lawsuit. Maybe they thought I was a nut."

"It was a big rigmarole, they didn't want to let that leg go," her son Jack said. "The doctors said they had never heard of anything like this before."

Her husband, overhearing pieces of the conversation-argument at the hospital, caught only the part about the funeral home and cemetery. "Just about scared the life out of him when I said I was going to buy a cemetery lot. He said he decided to get better," she said, smiling.

"It was a complete turnaround for him. The very next day he was eating -- I guess he changed his mind and wanted to live."

"When she told me what she wanted to do," Jack recalled, "I said 'What? I have never heard of such a thing, What do you mean you are going to bury the leg?' "

He wasn't the only one who thought it was bizarre.

"I went down to the funeral home to make the arrangements for the leg," he said. "They told me it was one of the most 'unusual' requests they had handled."

The lot and coffin cost her $650.

As for the necessary document, it reads "Death Certificate for the left limb of John R. Higgins, age 57."

Irene's other children took the odd news in stride.

"Jack was the worst, he said he thought I was nuts," she said "I told him 'I'm not, and I'm going to do this.' "

"I thought the whole idea was batty when I first found out about it," he said, "but she was bound and determined to do it."

"If you could see people who suffer with phantom pains, if burying the leg eliminates that for them, what's the big deal?" his mother said. She was scared and worried that he would suffer "terrible, horrible" phantom pains like other people she knew had experienced.

Discharged in time

At the cemetery, a priest conducted a brief ceremony over the small Styrofoam coffin that held Higgins' leg. Higgins (who was just discharged from the hospital) watched from the car as his wife and daughter, Debbie, attended the service. "I wanted to be sure they said they (the funeral home) were going to do what the said they were going to do," she said.

"He loved telling the story about how he attended his own funeral," she said with a smile as tears welled in her soft green eyes.

Yet there was more.

Within six years of the left leg amputation and funeral, the right leg was of no use either. It was being destroyed by gangrene and poor circulation. Now, at age 64, it had to be removed.

Another death certificate, Styrofoam coffin and graveside service. The leg was interred in the same plot.

By early February of 2003, Higgins probably suspected his time on Earth was drawing to a close as the two planned on moving to Perryhawkin, several miles outside of Princess Anne, to join their son. "If we're moving to Maryland, what about my legs?"

Irene phoned the funeral home for guidance.

She reassured him. "The funeral home said they would take your legs up and put them in the coffin with you."

In the midst of moving to Perryhawkin in April of this year, Higgins died. He was 71.

Another call to the funeral home, not so much about the traditional arrangements, but Irene needed help on getting the legs back.

The funeral home told her she would need exhumation approval from the court. More red tape. The lady at the funeral home asked Irene where in the plot were the two legs buried.

"At the foot of the grave, of course."

All three children and wife had to sign an approval document for the exhumation.

"They dug them up and put them in the coffin with him," Jack said, "just before they closed it the last time at the funeral."

"What was sort of funny about this," Irene said, "is that after the first leg was buried, the funeral home would send me a Christmas card and calendar, but it was always addressed Mrs. Irene Higgins. Their records showed a Higgins buried, but it didn't say just for a leg. They thought he was gone."

Through it all, Higgins bore his burdens with characteristic humor. He chuckled at seeing the holiday cards for his "widow."

"Whenever we rode by the cemetery, he'd say 'Hi, legs,' " she said.

"Friends wanted to know, 'How did you go to your own funeral?' He loved telling the story," she said.

"Even when I saw him in the coffin, I said it didn't look like him because his mouth was closed. He was always laughing and talking, always happy," his widow said.

"I was so happy when he healed well from the first one (leg amputation) without any pain. It did work for the second one, too. He never had a single phantom pain ... I don't think it's hoodoo, maybe just a psychological thing," she said. "I still haven't heard of anything like this."

And people can't believe the story about the man with three death certificates who attended his own funeral, either.

"People think its pretty unusual, remarkable, even wild," Jack said.

It's a Halloween story John R. Higgins Sr. would have loved to tell.

Reach Brice Stump at 410-845-4653 or bstump@salisbury. gannett.com.