My Patient Passed Away?!?

Here about two weeks ago I received a message from one of the staff ladies that I needed to see her in regards to one of my patients. The note mentioned that my patient had unexpectedly passed away. The news was a huge surprise and quite a saddening moment for me, from a dental school standpoint she was a wonderful patient that was pretty reliable; for those of you that don't know that much about dental school patients, reliability isn't always the easiest quality to come; for another reason she appeared to be quite healthy at all her visits. Anyway, I met with the staff lady that spoke with my patient's son that reported the sad news. We did the things we needed to do at the school to prevent future staff or students from reminding the family by future calls in regards to the patient of record. We talked a bit and decided that it would be kind gesture to send a cared offering our condolences to the family. The staff member went out and purchase a card and then she, I, and several faculty members signed and offered our support to the family. That was that, so I thought.
You see, today while I was attending to a different patient I noticed on my computer that I had just received a message. I stopped and took a quick peak to see was the news might be; I usually try and check those messages fairly often and rapidly because they generally contain important information regarding patients or the clinic. To my surprise the title of the message was the above mentioned patient's name. I thought that odd and figured it was just a note regarding her funeral or something of that nature. Adding to my surprise the message stated that my patient had called and was wondering about her appointment that was scheduled for the next day. The secretary with whom she spoke told her that she didn't have an appointment on record and that I would get back with her. You can imagine the surprise I had as I read the message. The card and paper work I had previously mentioned above all came back to me. I couldn't help but think of my patient's thoughts when she received our card and condolences in the mail. I did some checking with the staff that originally reported she passed away and she actually showed me an obituary. I called the patients emergency contact number to see what was up and her daughter answered and proceeded to tell me that her mother was home but wasn't feeling well and was in bed with the flu. I'm still not sure what to think of the whole senerio, but the only thing I can think of is the staff confused my patient with another patient with the same name.