Families can’t say goodbye with traditional funerals
During a recent funeral at St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Regina, a family trying to come together for comfort instead had to keep their distance.
Jeff Weafer, who manages Regina Funeral Home, recalled how the pallbearers carried the casket into the church, paid their respects, then made their way back to their vehicles.
Next, eight family members made their way into the church. The priest and cantor made up the final two spots available in the room to abide by the COVID-19 public health order to keep gatherings down to no more than 10 people.
“It was a very large family. They were really struggling with it, because normally there would be a family come together,” said Weafer. “And here only eight could represent the group.”
Funeral services are essentially family gatherings, an opportunity for final goodbyes and paying last respects, and for collectively grieving and finding comfort. But due to COVID -19, what we think of as traditional funerals are unable take place in Saskatchewan.
And it’s taking a toll on those who have lost loved ones.
Weafer said many clients feel as if their goodbyes are left incomplete. He described speaking to the son of one deceased man who was saddened that his father was lost at such a turbulent time.
“The son just said, ‘What a horrible time for my dad to get cancer and die. We can’t even honour my dad the way he really should be honoured,’ ” said Weafer.
At the early stages of the pandemic, when the restrictions were just beginning, Weafer was contacted by someone in Arizona who had booked a private jet to attend a funeral in Saskatchewan. He had to explain that despite the lengths they were going to, they would still not be allowed to attend the funeral because of the requirement to self-isolate after international travel.
Funeral homes are doing what they can to provide clients with some kind of funeral service, but each solution still involves families having to support each other from afar.
Weafer mentioned one new practice that involves balloons with handwritten notes of condolence being tied to chairs in a room, so the family can feel as if they are surrounded by their loved ones, rather than empty seats.
Technology has played a big role in helping families connect. Speers Funeral and Cremation Services has always offered livestreamed services at its chapel, but the company is now also streaming graveside services. A portion of the family is able to physically attend the service. The rest are required to stay in their vehicles, where they can hear the service through an FM transmitter, much like how audio is broadcast to vehicles at a drive-in theatre.
“It’s helpful, but it certainly is no replacement for the real human contact of gathering together and sharing a warm embrace and maybe sitting down to a cup of coffee together and a good visit where you share memories,” said Jeff Christiansen, vice-president of operations at Speers. “Those kind of things are a pretty important part of what we would do together with families normally, and those just aren’t possible right now.”
Pallbearers are another tradition that has been adjusted because of COVID-19. Christiansen said members of the same household can serve as pallbearers, but oftentimes staff will need to fill that role. In those instances, staff members have to wear masks while carrying the casket, as it prevents them from being the recommended two metres apart.
Weafer said the cost of doing business for funeral homes has also increased because of all the additional precautions involved in operations. Revenues have also taken a hit due to families opting for immediate cremations and postponing ceremonies until after COVID -19 restrictions have lifted.
An elected member of the provincial regulatory council for funeral homes, Weafer has not heard of any funeral homes in the province raising prices during the pandemic. Funeral homes are required to register their price lists with the regulator. But he has heard of some waiving prices for live streaming services.
The disruption in funerals is taking an emotional toll on families not just because they are traditions, but because of what they represent.
Charisma Thomson, a lecturer at the University of Regina’s anthropology department, researches funeral rituals in North America. Thomson said funerals are often thought of as a way to honour the deceased, but they’re also about communicating society’s beliefs and values.
“It’s a way for us to reaffirm what it means to be a mother, to be a father, to be a daughter,” said Thomson.
Having a restriction on how many people can attend a funeral is also putting families in difficult situations when it comes to choosing who gets to attend. If someone’s grandmother passes away, how might family members feel if they are not on the list of people to attend the limited gathering?
“If you assume that that’s my grandmother who’s passed away — and she and I had the best relationship out of anybody — but you’re not on the list of the 10, do you then start to wonder, well, maybe that we didn’t have that relationship?” said Thomson.
As for the grieving process, Thomson said the lack of a funeral can cause people to be caught in a state of limbo and prevent them from getting closure.
“One of my friends, her brother passed away in a car accident, and to her it doesn’t even seem real. They’re not able to come together,” said Thomson.
Thomson explained the struggle to follow rituals is happening across cultures. Islamic, Jewish and Indigenous communities are also having to compromise their own death rituals to accommodate public health orders.
So what will the effect of all this be?
Thomson believes these disruptions will lead to people realizing the importance of our rituals around death, and prompt a renewed interest in practising them.
“I suspect that we will see an increase in people being motivated to to have stronger funeral rituals,” said Thomson.
Christiansen expects a lot of memorial services that were delayed to start happening whenever restrictions do begin to lift. Like Thomson, he also believes the pandemic will bring about an increased emphasis on funeral traditions when they can be fully practised once again.
“Those social rituals that surround death and dying in our culture have become, I think, even more important to a lot of people when they’re not able to access them. They realize how important something is when they’re not allowed to do it in some ways,” said Christiansen.