Some comfort for those in grief as funerals enter the green phase
Funeral home directors have experienced a sense of relief as southwestern Pennsylvania pushes forward in the green phase of Gov. Tom Wolf’s pandemic reopening plan.
In the red and yellow phases, directors were forced to limit funeral gatherings to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Now, there is little to keep grieving families from a sense of normalcy at funeral homes, although church and cemetery services are still up in the air.
“Being in the green phase, we’re pretty much back to where we were,” said John Lester, the president of the Allegheny County Funeral Directors Association. “The only thing we have to work with is, different churches have different rules.”
Based on guidelines set by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, funerals in a church building can hold up to 25% capacity at the discretion of the pastor and in keeping with social distancing protocol. Mr. Lester said because each pastor can choose whether to make a church available for memorial Mass, he and his colleagues must call ahead to see if they be accommodated. Some are open to it, while others are not.
Cemeteries also have their own restrictions, even in the green phase. Allegheny Cemetery in Lawrenceville, for example, is holding burials and interments without interruption. However, all services will take place outdoors with a limit of 25 people, according to the cemetery’s website.
“A lot of our funerals in Western Pennsylvania are looking at not just our funeral homes, but also churches or places of worship and cemeteries. And they have their own restrictions,” said Dan Bekavac Jr., a director at Bekavac Funeral Homes, which has locations in the Mon Valley area. “What we can control is our funeral home visitations and services.”
Those services are mostly unrestricted in the green phase.
Some funeral directors are enforcing social distancing by keeping chairs apart, while most recognize that it’s unrealistic to tell families they can’t shake hands or hug while grieving. Masks are recommended, but not mandated everywhere.
Robin Young, the funeral director for Young Funeral Home in Butler, said pen after pen was thrown away as people signed the guest book during one visitation.
In terms of attendance, funeral homes that were open during the yellow phase can now operate at 75% capacity, Mr. Lester said. Homes that were closed during the yellow can operate at only 50% capacity, like all other businesses across the state.
Still, that’s far better than what funeral homes had to work around in the red and yellow phases. In the red, visitation and remembrance services were
capped at 10 people, including funeral home staff. In the yellow, the limit was 25 people — a workable number, Mr. Lester said, but not ideal.
Some families moved forward with visitation services under those restrictions. Tom Martin, the funeral director of Martin Funeral Home in Butler, said most of the families he served opted for small gatherings in the red and yellow stages as opposed to biding their time until the green phase.
“It’s hard holding off your grief, not knowing at the time how long this is going to be,” Mr. Martin said. “If you wait, you have to relive it.”
“We had a family we served 2½ months ago that wishes they could have had a public visitation, but they were disappointed knowing they had to grieve without friends or neighbors who were unable to come in,” said Kevin Kunselman, funeral director at Hill & Kunselman Funeral Home in Beaver County. “It definitely complicated the grieving process for the families.”
With that in mind, some families opted to wait. That created a manageable, yet noteworthy backlog, one that, as of mid-May, reached 150 to 200 families in Allegheny County alone. Mr. Lester said the backlog figure has been largely unchanged, and it will take a couple months to get through it.
Sandy Duke, funeral director of Pittsburgh Cremation & Funeral Care in Peters and Robinson, said she has a “stack of folders” on her desk for families who, throughout the red and yellow phases, wanted military honors at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies.
The cemetery, a federal facility in Cecil, Washington County, run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, just recently re-introduced committal services. According to cemetery director Ed Hajduk, the facility was restricted to direct burials from March 23 to June 8. On Tuesday, it started to allow limited family members to the committal shelter for an interment and military honors, Mr. Hajduk said.
Families who had a loved one buried without military honors during the red and yellow phases will be offered committal services later this summer, he said.
The family of William J. Walker was one of the first in weeks to have committal services at the cemetery. Mr. Walker, an Air Force veteran from South Park who died on June 5, was buried Thursday. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, eight family members were allowed inside the committal shelter, while 16 waited outside, all wearing masks.
“It was pretty tight because between me, my mom and our five siblings we had seven. It was almost to the limit,” said Mr. Walker’s son, Michael. “But there would have been a lot more people if we were able to have everyone come.”
Mr. Walker’s son also said the family wanted to have a memorial Mass at Nativity Catholic Church in South Park, but Ms. Duke told him the church wouldn’t be “amenable” to a service at the time.
Despite the roadblocks and guidelines, the situation is better than it was just a month ago.
“It was hard to tell people that you can’t see your loved one,” Ms. Young, the Butler director, said. “It was bad.”
“We were still wearing our masks as a staff. We’re asking people to wear masks and social distance. But we’re much closer to back to normal than we were,” Mr. Bekavac, the Mon Valley area director, said. “That’s for sure.”