Pandemic changes the way we grieve
Services smaller, and many staying away
The pandemic has altered the way people mourn, perhaps permanently, but funeral directors are grateful that, so far at least, the second wave of the pandemic has not brought the horrors of the spring, when people were dying of COVID-19 in nearly overwhelming numbers.
Now, people can hold wakes and funeral services, either at the funeral home or in a house of worship, though they may have to limit the number of people attending. Other changes that are now regular parts of services include livestreaming services, larger graveside services and discouraging hugs.
“Last year was the most families that we’ve assisted, ever,” said David MacDonald, president of the Wallingford and Yalesville Funeral Homes, as well as president of the Connecticut Funeral Directors Association. Lately, the calls have been increasing again, though not at the rate of the spring. “We went from 50 in two months” to four in two months during the summer, he said. “Literally seven weeks ago, it turned right back on,” he said.
Last Sunday, he received five calls for COVID-related deaths. However, “in this wave, it’s not all nursing home-related [but] every family we seem to be dealing with now has someone who has to be quarantined.” That has led to funerals being postponed.
Masks and livestreams
The coronavirus, more prevalent in the community, has had an effect on many more funerals, even those in which COVID has not been the cause of death. Funeral directors have learned how to keep families and friends of loved ones, as well as staff, safe, with limited capacity, masks and velvet ropes to remind people not to hug grieving family members.
Matthew Adzima felt the restrictions of the pandemic first-hand when his brother-in-law, Timothy Morrissey, died in September. Morrissey worked at the family’s Adzima Funeral Home in Stratford for 26 years. While Morrissey, who was known as Boomer, did not die of COVID, the restrictions meant he could not have the wake and funeral he would have had, Adzima said.
“He was a wake-goer, he was a people person, and it would be kind of ironic that a guy like him couldn’t have it,” he said.
The family followed Morrissey’s wishes. “I want a Mass and if it’s 70 people so be it,” Adzima said Morrissey told him. “It was hard. It was hard for us as a family. We’ll have a big picnic or party” when it’s feasible.
Adzima said he limits viewings to 25 people, but that more are able to attend graveside services.
“That’s really what’s been comforting to people,” he said. “People brave the cold for the 15 to 20 minutes. I see a lot of air hugs. … We’ve had some families give eulogies at the grave … They wanted to capture that crowd. Really what you lose is felt with the fact you can’t embrace each other,” he said.
The pandemic has meant that many people have died in the hospital or nursing home without family being able to visit, whether or not the deceased person had COVID. MacDonald said a few of those who planned a cremation, “maybe having a private visitation and then having the church part public,” have changed their plans and held a public viewing, “because they hadn’t been able to visit the person for an extended period of time.”
Tania Bourdeau Porta, owner of Cornell Memorial Funeral Home in Danbury and Brookfield Funeral Home, said the restrictions on mourners helped her get through the worst of the pandemic.
“The spring was just like nothing we’ve ever experienced before,” she said. “In a six-week period, not only did I spend unbelievable amounts of money on masks that we couldn’t get” but, if they could have had funerals, “I don’t know that we would have been able to handle the volume. … It’s like a blur even now.”
In order to avoid contact with others, “in the spring we were doing many of our arrangements virtually,” Bourdeau Porta said. “It was really hard not to have that personal connection with the family. You have that bonding that takes place in that hour or two hours with the family.”
The restrictions have affected everyone, even if they or their family have escaped the disease, she said. “We have many victims of the coronavirus, and most of them never contracted the virus.”
Bourdeau Porta’s funeral homes offer livestreaming and even give the family an iPad on the way to the service to connect with those who can’t attend. She said putting services on Zoom has taken some getting used to. “I was always a little hesitant that having a deceased person on camera seemed not quite right to me. But now I’m so grateful to have that opportunity because it’s allowed us to have people feel involved in this process.”
Bourdeau Porta said she believes the pandemic has made people appreciate her role more. “I feel it’s opened people up to seeing the real value to funeral services,” she said. “Grief is always so personal. We’re about trying to protect the family from anything unpleasant. We’re trying to help them.”
The pandemic has also brought her fellow funeral directors together. “We really have banded together to support each other,” she said. At the beginning, “You felt like you had this tornado around you, and you were supposed to hold things up and you didn’t know how to do it.”
Early on, Bourdeau Porta started a private Facebook group, “Funeral Directors vs. COVID-19.” “I think in three days I had 500 members,” she said. “There’s people in that group I think from the U.K. Those first few weeks there was incredibly good information on that.”
Howard K. Hill, who owns funeral homes in New Haven, Hartford and Bloomfield, is adapting to the pandemic, like others, with livestreaming, ultraviolet lights in the ventilation system, distancing and masks.
“The funeral industry as a whole is one that is kind of slow to make change,” Hill said. “Our business is more open to change, so we’ve been livestreaming for over 10 years.”
Despite the pandemic, he said, “people still feel a need to be a part of a ceremony. It’s absolutely not the same but you still have something.”
While some families are “fatigued [and] want to get things over with,” others want to honor the life of the deceased. “There are people who really, really, really embrace the celebration and they still want to celebrate, regardless of the restrictions,” he said.
One way people have done that is to hire a horsedrawn hearse, provided by Allegra Farm in East Haddam. “This is a way for
them to say I do my absolute best for [my] loved one,” Hill said.
Another outcome of COVID, Hill said, is “we have been experiencing a major uptick where people are preplanning. They don’t know what the future holds, so they are preplanning their services and paying for them as well.”
As a Black funeral director, Hill said he can’t ignore the reality that, while Blacks will turn to whiteowned funeral homes, the opposite is not true. It’s an issue for him that long predates the pandemic.
“Yes, we are busy, and in my opinion we should be busier, but we have this challenge,” he said. “My story is about my community that I serve and the ills that we experience on a daily basis.” Bringing the issue into the open is “the essence of serving my community. This is my ministry,” he said.
‘Just different’
Sebastian Lastrina, who owns Coughlin-Lastrina Funeral Home in Middletown, said the lack of a personal connection, forced by limitations on gatherings, has been difficult to accept for many.
“What’s missing is, you have caskets, you have calling hours, you have clergy, home services, church services, things like that, but one of the most important things about someone’s funeral is having the support of friends and family close by,” Lastrina said.
“In my view, sympathy cards and letters of condolences to friends and family do not take the place of a hug, a kiss, shaking hands, being there for support physically,” Lastrina said. “It just doesn't cut it.”
He still offers open-casket viewings for those individuals who died as a result of the coronavirus, but said he maintains strict protocols. Mourners are kept six feet from the casket, even if the deceased did not die of COVID, Lastrina said.
Albert DeLucia, owner of Porto Funeral Homes in East Haven and West Haven, said, he too has seen more COVID deaths recently after a few months of very few cases. At least families can have more people attend wakes and services now. In March, “The family would come in, view the body for an hour and then go directly to the cemetery,” he said.
However, he is seeing more COVID deaths. “In March and April … I think we did 28 COVID cases, then it slowed down where we didn’t have a COVID case for months, and now it’s picking up again,” with six in the last three weeks, DeLucia said.
He hasn’t had to worry about large numbers at viewings, though. “It’s just that people aren’t coming out to pay their respects like they would. They’re definitely staying away;
there’s no doubt about it. It’s just different,” he said.
“We’re not counting people coming in the building because there’s no one coming in the building. There’s no lines coming out the door,” DeLucia said. “I actually think they’re staying away more now than they did when this first came out.”
Susan Cook, who with her husband, Tim Cook, owns Cook Funeral Home in Torrington, said the pandemic “makes a difficult situation in losing a loved one more intense.” A chapel in their building can accommodate 50 people under the state’s restrictions but, like DeLucia, Susan Cook said, “People are still afraid to come out.”
She said they are “doing everything we can” for families but, “We have a responsibility to our staff also. Our staff is like our family.”
While services are more normal than they were in March, when there was a limit of 10 people allowed in the funeral home, including staff, it’s still not easy for families, Cook said. “They’re doing the best they can. All the bells and whistles have been taken away. You can’t touch anything,” so there are no prayer cards or register book available. Photos are mostly digitally projected rather than in a collage.
Tim Cook is the mortician, while Susan Cook handles a lot of the business and other tasks. “It’s a lot of customer service. It’s a lot of just being kind to people,” she said.
Faith
Adjustments have been made in religious services as well. The family may be seated beforehand, rather than walking in with the casket, and will leave last, with the people exiting from the rear first.
Luncheons also must be
restricted to 25 people in a restaurant or 10 in a home, according to state rules.
Even though St. George Roman Catholic Church in Guilford can safely accommodate more than the 100person limit set by the state, the Rev. Stephen Sledesky, pastor, said he prefers to keep the numbers small.
“What we’ve been encouraging families to do is to think about having just immediate family, rather than opening it up to a large group of people,” he said. “We also offer the opportunity for the family to livestream the Mass.”
When someone has died who will draw a larger number to the Mass of Christian burial, people must make a reservation online, as they do for Sunday Mass, in order to keep to the 100-person limit.
Some people have chosen just to have graveside services, Sledesky said. If there has not been a wake, “what I do is I beef it up a little bit,” he said. “I do what I would do if I were celebrating in the funeral home. There would be readings and some additional prayers and an opportunity for people to speak.”
The Rev. Peter Adamski, pastor of St. James Roman Catholic Church in Stratford, said he can have up to 90 people in the church, which normally accommodates 650. That’s worked so far, he said. “Thank God we haven’t had one of those tragic funerals,” that attracts a large crowd, he said.
Besides pews being closed off and marked to keep people distanced from each other, Adamski said, “everybody who enters that building, we have to have their name and phone number” in order to do contact tracing if there’s an exposure to the coronavirus.
Adamski hopes the dark days of last spring won’t return. “It’s been a year that no one could have imagined,” he said. “I still recall in April I had a mother and son contract COVID and the son passed.” At the funeral home across the street, “I’m in an N95 mask and inside the refrigerator doing prayers over this body and I have an iPhone there so the mother and sister can listen in.”
It wasn’t his only emotional moment. “A few weeks later, the five funeral parlors that are around my church … rented a refrigerated trailer,” and Adamski was called over to bless those who had died. “When I went over and opened the door, there were 22 bodies in that trailer. It’s a sight I can’t unsee,” he said.
Jonathan Green is a funeral director at Abraham L. Green and Son Funeral Home in Fairfield, which follows Jewish traditions of a closed casket and burial as soon after death as practical. “So far, none of the synagogues have opened their doors to having services,” so all of their services have been at the graveside, he said.
He advises limiting the number of people, even outdoors. “Just because you’re allowed to have say up to 150 people in the cemetery, it’s still not advisable behavior,” Green said. “The idea of gathering together is still a very risky idea.”
Keeping people from embracing the grieving family is difficult. “They sort of forget themselves. Your instinct is to physically comfort someone and give them a hug,” Green said. “You certainly don’t want to police someone at a funeral.”
He said most families are having small burial ceremonies, and “when the world comes back to normal, they will plan to have a larger memorial service where everyone can gather again.”
“It has to be a fact that there’s a lack of closure,” Green said. “Under normal circumstances it happens.”
Having gone through the first phase, when no one knew what was ahead, funeral directors are having an easier time coping with rising numbers now. Like hospital workers, morticians and their staffs always have relied on gowns and gloves to prevent infection. MacDonald resorted to buying personal protective equipment online or wherever he could find it, because suppliers limited what he could get.
Some changes are likely to remain after the pandemic has subsided, such as livestreaming funerals and wakes. “I think that type of technology will be here to stay,” MacDonald said.