A grave undertaking
PRESTON Griffin never sleeps. Not really. Even when he sneaks a nap, his iphone, set at maximum volume, is angled on the pillow, brushing his earlobe. He can’t miss the customised ringtone. The first note blares, and Griffin hops up. A funeral home director is on the line. He listens to the scant details. Someone just died in a nursing home. A hospital. A home. The funeral director tells him if the coronavirus was to blame. Sometimes, it’s a mystery.
It could be 6pm or 3am. No matter. Griffin’s drill begins. He reaches towards the long, organised row of dark coloured suits, shirts, and pre-tied ties hanging on a rack nearby. He gets dressed at Armypace speed. Within minutes, he’s out the door of his West Oak Lane home and into his black Yukon Denali – with a mask, gown, booties, and gloves on the passenger seat, two stretchers and body bags in the back. And he heads out into the night.
Time to collect one more body.
One more life gone.
“It’s not a job for everyone, ” he said. “But it’s a part of life. It’s the end of life. I want to make sure that families know their person is taken care of, that I’ll be gentle with their loved one.”
Almost all funeral directors know Griffin as the dapper, softspoken, sensitive, slender guy who represents them in life’s darkest hour. And families who encounter him, even in their grief-soaked fog, remember him fondly. Because the pandemic has robbed families of traditional funerals, even in non-coronavirus deaths, Griffin often becomes the face of their final goodbye.
“I didn’t know Preston personally but I remember him because he was just so nice to us,” said Elaine Mann, whose mum, Daisy Hill, died from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 88 on the night of April 29.
At 10.30pm, the house on Wingohocking Street in Philadelphia’s Logan neighbourhood was packed. Hill had 10 children, nine surviving, 45 grandchildren, and more than 60 great-grandchildren. Two of Mann’s brothers wanted to help
Griffin wheel their mum’s body to his truck. Griffin agreed. “I have no problem with that, ” Griffin recalled telling them.
“He does that all day, every day,” Mann said. “He made it look easy.”
The last responder
Griffin, 42, a single father of two and staff sergeant in the Army reserves, had grown accustomed to his “jump and go” mortuary transport job. But since the pandemic, the number of pickups has tripled. “It’s constant,” he said. “I’m so busy, I don’t have time to think.”
But when he takes a moment to reflect, he feels vulnerable like most in America these days. “It makes you think about your life,” he said. “That it’s short, and unpredictable.”
Before the pandemic, Griffin almost always met the family of the dead wherever the end came. “You could tell so much about how someone was loved,” he said. “Sometimes, people grab me by the arm and tell me, ‘Please don’t take him away.’ I end up putting the person back down so they can be with their loved one for five more min
utes or so. I can’t rush them.”
But those face-to-face meetings haven’t happened for about two months, because relatives are not permitted inside nursing homes or hospitals. “It’s weird,” Griffin said. “I walk into a room and there’s no family. Just a person. No one could be there for these people – husbands, wives, kids – nobody is there when they pass. They’re alone and that really hurts me.”
One morning early this month was unusual. Two pickups, neither coronavirus-related. “Surprisingly, ” he said. Either way, Griffin, dressed in a charcoal grey suit, takes the same precautions, treating each case as though it might be infectious.
Griffin disinfects all his equipment at the end of each job. For the second trip, he pulled into The Hearth at Drexel, an assisted living facility in Bala Cynwyd. He slipped inside, wheeling the stretcher. About 15 minutes passed.
Suddenly the door opened, and nurses and relatives of the deceased stood near the exit door in a semi-circle, their eyes sombre and teary above their masks. Then Griffin appeared, wearing a yellow gown, mask, gloves, and booties, pushing the stretcher with the 88-year-old man inside a body bag, with a colourful blanket on top.
Griffin inched toward his truck, as if he were guiding a military funeral procession.
His pace was deliberate. While first responders work at a frantic pace to save lives, Griffin, a last responder, always takes a slow walk away.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen a family at a nursing home in two months, ” he said, before taking the man’s body to West Laurel Hill Funeral Home. “I’m glad they were there. They know I’m taking care of their loved ones. I like the family to see me. I feel as though there’s a mystery when they’re not here.”
Later that afternoon, a Hearth employee called West Laurel Hill Funeral Home and left a message: The person who picked up the body was “absolutely wonderful”.
The story of Daniel and Valerie Zane is one of love. They met by accident on a blind date in 1947. Another friend was supposed to show up, but couldn’t make it. Dan was the substitute. They were married 71 years.
As a young man, Dan joined the Army and fought in World War II. He survived the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate Nazi concentration camps. He later went on to practise law in Manhattan. Val worked as a medical administrator. She was a master bridge player, an avid reader who loved the arts, Broadway music, and the latest fashions. They raised two daughters, Nancie and Robin, and had four grandchildren.
Last year, Nancie and her husband moved her parents to the Philadelphia area to have them close. Valerie had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease and dementia for several years.
They lived in the Quadrangle, a senior living facility in Haverford. She lived in the skilled nursing unit with lots of medical care, and her husband in an independent living apartment.
“My Dad couldn’t sleep, though,” Nancie said. After learing that Valerie would call out his name all night long, he began staying by her side for hours until he was sure she was sound asleep.
When the lockdown went into effect, Daniel could no longer go back and forth between the two units. So he moved into an apartment in the nursing unit so he could continue to be with his wife every day. Soon after, a nurse who worked in Valerie’s room tested positive.
Valerie was deteriorating, though not from the virus. “The last time he came to her room, he was feeling exhausted and had a cough, ” Nancie said. Valerie became unresponsive. Daniel tested positive for the coronavirus and deteriorated fast. A hospice nurse, in a mask, face shield, and gown, held up Daniel’s cell phone so Nancie,
Robin, and their families could say goodbye to their parents. In separate rooms, they were both unconscious.
“My Dad sacrificed his life for her. He never stopped loving her, but he did not want to die, ” Nancie said. “This isn’t the story of two older people who know it’s their time. My Dad was totally devoted to her, but he was looking forward to being out in the sunshine, going to a park, seeing my sister.
“He had said to me, ‘You learn how to go on and live your life.’”
Valerie died peacefully about 3pm on April 15. She was 91.
Griffin transported her body to West Laurel Hill Funeral Home. Two days later, after midnight on April 17, Daniel died. He was 94.
It’s his calling
Ellen and Marshall Griffin Jr don’t quite understand how their only child, Preston, can do what he does. “This type of work, it’s a gift, ” Ellen said. “He has that gift. It’s amazing. I know I couldn’t do it . ... It’s his calling.”
Griffin doesn’t see himself that way. “I’m just a regular Joe,” he said. Griffin knows his parents worry. He texts and calls them every day. But he hasn’t seen them in two months. His mum is 65. His dad is 68.
“I fear for them,” he said. “Their immune systems are weaker than mine.” Griffin hasn’t seen his children, ages 14 and 15, much either.
“I can’t see my family and I’m working so much,” he said. “I wouldn’t have time to see them, anyway.” Even with hundreds of jobs under his belt, some stick with him. One happened at the Penn Valley home of Susan Weiss and Lisa Sands on March 29. Sands had just died from cancer at 52. She had wanted to be home, with Weiss, her partner of four years, until the end. Sands had worked in learning development at Vanguard.
Before Griffin arrived, Weiss asked her neighbours if they would feel comfortable coming over to be with her, promising to stand six feet apart. Of course, they said.
When Griffin arrived, like always, he expressed his condolences. Then Weiss told him she had an unusual request. Would it be OK if, while he was wheeling the stretcher outside, they took a moment of silence and sprinkled pink rose petals on top of the body bag that she’d covered with a blanket? Griffin was fine with that.
“It was amazing. Really touching,” Griffin recalled. “I felt so honoured to be a part of it.” This time, as he wheeled the stretcher outside, he paused at each step. Anything to slow the walk. – The Philadelphia Inquirer/tns