‘We are at the frontline and will help families to get through this’
The way we say a final farewell to a loved one has changed beyond recognition during the coronavirus crisis. But a Londonderry undertaker warns that people may have to prepare for even more stringent rules on wakes and funerals.
Sean Carr, who has run his family business in Derry for over 20 years, says that families who have lost loved ones have been trying to grasp new regulations that have put tight controls on a tradition that has endured for hundreds of years.
“The guidance coming from both the Irish and the British Association of Undertakers is pretty stark — it is basically to prepare the remains for burial or cremation without wakes or funerals. This goes against everything we traditionally do when someone dies — to view the remains, touch the remains, open the house to a wake where hundreds will come and then have a funeral again attended by hundreds of people. All that has gone — for now at least.
“Right now, a lot of people whose loved one did not die from Covid-19 are still holding three-day wakes but restricting the numbers to family only and the same for funerals, but I think that is about to change too.”
Last week Down and Connor Diocese said funerals would no longer take place inside churches.
Sean adds: “In Down and Connor,
when someone dies, they go straight to the graveside and I expect before long that will be the case everywhere.
“That will be very, very difficult for families to come to terms with. As undertakers we are at the frontline and it will be our job to help families through this.”
As the death toll from Covid-19 rises, Sean says that people in his profession will have to come to terms that they too are at risk.
“We will have to be told when someone has died with Covid-19 but it has also been suggested that families do not put a death notice out until after the burial or the cremation to keep people away.
“We used personal protection equipment anyway but we have increased this to include face visors and obviously we already scrubbed and disinfected working surfaces, but it is still a worry that I might contract the virus and pass it on to people in my family.”