Kansas City, Mo. ? The dead driving the dead.

That’s the simplest way to describe the plight of Frank Jansky, a 75-year-old Kansas City man who drives a hearse part-time.

For months, he existed in a virtual purgatory. Even as he lived and breathed, the Social Security Administration seemed to think he was no longer alive.

Jansky was traveling in England in September and October; he returned home in November to find his checking account mysteriously depleted and a letter from Medicare denying payment for diabetes treatment.

“Our records show that the date of death was before the date of service,” the letter read.

Social Security officials had taken back electronic deposits they made for Jansky in August and September and cut off payments for the succeeding two months.

He had died July 8, they determined.

Jansky needed to convince the Social Security Administration he wasn’t as lifeless as a passenger in the back of his hearse. He appeared before an agency representative in the flesh, carrying his passport and driver’s license.

He was told to expect to be resurrected — on paper at least — within two weeks.

Jansky returned two weeks later. Two more weeks, he was told.

John Garlinger, a spokesman for Social Security, said the mix-up appeared to be in New York, where Jansky had lived for decades before moving to Kansas City in 1990.

A funeral home or family member apparently mistakenly reported Jansky’s death, Garlinger said. The error could have been as simple as a funeral home worker wrongly typing in a Social Security number.

Jansky’s formal rebirth came Monday, when the money owed to him was deposited in his account.

Jansky said he could find some humor in the situation, but it was fading.

“It was funny,” Jansky said. “But it’s not funny.”