STRESSFUL TIMES
Staff at risk every time entering hospital or care home to retrieve someone's body
Local funeral homes have seen a surge in business during the pandemic's second wave, with COVID-19 adding extra elements of stress for grieving families and funeral services staff. Shown here, a funeral procession leaves Families First funeral home on Dougall Avenue on Thursday.
People are grieving.
And as the death toll rises in Windsor-essex, which has one of the highest COVID-19 rates in Ontario, so does the pressure on funeral homes keeping up with demand.
They are grappling with staggering increases in the number of families who need their services in the pandemic's second wave. Some homes see several COVID-19 deaths every day.
Along with those come families who couldn't be with loved ones in the final days due to COVID-19 restrictions, only to learn they can't honour the dead with proper funerals.
“It's heartbreaking,” said Brian Parent, managing director of Families First. “We've had several situations where we've had husbands and wives die within a short period of time of each other.
“There are a lot of families hurting out there and they need support.”
The Windsor-essex County Health Unit said Friday a total of 248 people in Essex County have died from COVID-19. Thirty-nine of those deaths were reported since Sunday.
Scott Maccoubrey, president of the Ontario Funeral Service Association, said few funeral homes in Ontario are under the pressure that those in Windsor-essex are facing.
“There are a couple of hot spots in the province and Windsor is one of them,” he said. “I've been talking to funeral directors in Windsor. They're seeing an increase, that's for sure. But they are very well organized. The funeral directors that I've talked to are very professional and have been able to deal with the increase in volume with really not missing a step.”
Before the pandemic, Parent said Families First arranged about 90 funerals a month. Since Dec. 15, they've had services for 162 people. They're seeing several COVID deaths a day.
Scott Lockwood, CEO of Windsor Chapel, said his funeral homes handled 60 to 70 deaths a month before the pandemic. As of Friday, halfway through the month, they had served 52 families in January. Lockwood said 25 of those were deaths related to COVID-19.
“There's no question about it, we are definitely and clearly in a second wave of the pandemic,” he said. “We certainly have seen some more COVID -related deaths happen this wave as opposed to the first wave.”
In the midst of the climbing death toll, a tragic new phenomenon is taking shape, with spouses dying within days of each other.
“Both COVID -related,” said Parent. “That just doesn't happen.
“But I think we've had three situations in the area, maybe four, where the husbands and wives are gone within a week of each other.”
Even in an industry where death is a daily fact of life, it is taking a toll on staff.
“The most difficult thing for our funeral directors is dealing with families who have been unable to care for their loved ones in their final days,” said Parent. “It's difficult on families and it's difficult to see families suffering like that.”
Maccoubrey said that pain is felt across Ontario.
“It's terrible,” he said. “You're dealing with people who for the most part haven't been able to communicate with their loved ones, especially in those LTCS (long-term care homes) that are locked down. So it's a very stressful situation for them. Emotions are running very high.”
Apart from the emotional stress, Maccoubrey said funeral home employees face physical health risks. They're not on the list of people to get early vaccinations, he said, despite where their jobs take them.
“One of the biggest problems as the owner of a funeral home that I lose sleep over every night is keeping my staff safe and healthy,” he said.
“We're going into the hospitals, we're going into the long-term care facilities to transfer the deceased from those facilities back to our funeral homes. I'm putting my staff at risk every time we go into these places. So it's quite stressful.”
He said safety risks also dictate that helping families arrange services must be done “as remotely as possible.” If a person died of COVID -19, there's a chance someone in their family could have the virus.
“It's added stress again,” he said. “It's just stressful, stressful, stressful. And then, you tell them no, you can't have a funeral for them. The most you could have under the roof of any facility is 10 people, including the clergyman.
“It's stressful for all of these reasons. You're trying to help the family but you're caught with these restrictions, so you're the guy that has all the bad news for them.”
In the hope of easing the burden on grieving families — and tackling the pandemic fallout in general — local funeral homes, long-term care homes, hospitals and the City of Windsor created a “deceased patient roundtable.” They've been meeting regularly since March.
That partnership has resulted in several new protocols, including an expedited process for transferring bodies out of hospitals and longterm care homes, said Lockwood.
“Early on in COVID we did have a protocol where if a death occurred at the hospital, we tried to function within a time frame of three hours for that deceased patient to be brought into the care of a funeral home,” he said. “With the longterm care homes we try to do the same thing within an hour. So the time frames are important.”
Parent said the arrangement has also allowed funeral homes to help people confirm if their loved ones had COVID-19 when they died.
“Sometimes when a person dies, they're still testing and they haven't been able to give the family a conclusive answer,” he said. “With these roundtables, they've been able to share phone numbers and contacts with us so that we can get that answer as quickly as the hospital gets it.”
The pandemic has forced other changes in the funeral industry. With gatherings of more than 10 people out of the question, funeral homes are offering services through platforms including Zoom, Webex and Facebook Live.
“All of us are in this industry because in some sense we have a high level of empathy and want to serve families, and consider it a sacred honour to do so,” said Lockwood. “So when we're working with families, we're having to guide them through not only their grief journey but also to plan for opportunity for them to honour their loved ones in a dignified way in the midst of multiple restrictions.
“Certainly, that can pull on the emotions. But that's what we're here for.”