An 82-year-old man is suing a Mississippi funeral home that he says refused to cremate his husband.

John “Jack” Zawadski and his nephew John Gaspari filed the lawsuit against Picayune Funeral Home in March.

According to the complaint, the funeral home backed out of a verbal agreement to provide final services for Robert Huskey, 86, last year. After a faxed-in form identified Zawadski as Huskey's husband, the company allegedly told the nursing home where Huskey died that they did not “deal with their kind.”

“It was devastating,” Zawadski told the AP. “It was like losing an arm and throwing in the garbage.”

The men who met in 1965 married in Picayune on July 17, 2015, shortly after the Supreme Court found in Obergefell that gay men and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry.

The funeral has denied the claims, saying in a court filing that the lawsuit “was filed without substantial justification, is frivolous, and is groundless in fact and law.”

Gaspari said that he took on the funeral arrangements to spare his Uncle Jack and thought everything was taken care of when a nursing home staffer called to inform him that the funeral home refused to take Huskey's body.

“I was just kind of in shock – What? What are you talking about?” said Gaspari, who scrambled to find alternative arrangements from Denver.

“My uncles didn't travel much without each other, and kissed each other good night each and every night. They never went to bed angry with each other. And something like this happens,” Gaspari said.

Lambda Legal is representing Zawadski in the claim, which seeks damages for breach of contract and emotional distress. Lawyers cannot claim discrimination based on sexual orientation because Mississippi does not have such a law.