COVID-19 has changed many aspects of life, including the way people mourn the loved ones they have lost. Due to Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention guidelines, funerals, wakes, viewings and burials have had to adapt.
Maintaining social distancing while still addressing families’ wants and needs during funeral services has become a new challenge for mourners, family care specialists and mortuary employees.
Oakdale Mortuary Family Care Specialist Lynn Chase said that it is hard for her and many other employees to say no to families due to CDC guidelines. Many services have been modified or removed completely amidst the pandemic.
“It’s changed a lot,” she said. “Basically, it’s not just instructions from the CDC; what we can do has changed and what people look for has changed,” Chase said during a phone interview.
Changes came rapidly over the summer as many families, including the family of Adrian Jones, struggled to arrange and rearrange his loved one’s funeral this summer. The planning began during the reopening of California, but the funeral was set during the second mandated lockdown.
“We originally had a venue in Santa Monica with 500 people in attendance, but as things got progressively worse we had to change our location to the grave site and only have 40 people in attendance,” he said.
Switching from traditional services and burials has been a hard adjustment for mourners. Families have been forced to come to terms with difficult decisions by transitioning to celebrations of life.
“We had to change our arrangements in two days and it stressed everyone out; it was kind of a nightmare trying to get everything together,” Jones said in a phone interview.
Although celebrations of life were typically used by people who opted for cremation instead of a burial, many people had to abandon traditional church funerals and explore virtual options, online obituaries, home viewings and outside services.
“We offer outside venues on the property and at the grave site,” Chase said. “Churches have also been open to hosting a limited number of people inside or conducting outside services as well.”
Virtual options are also becoming more popular. “We also offer live streams that are Facebook linked in order to keep people safe and still have all the people the family chooses in attendance,” Chase said.
The live streams were able to ease the families somewhat, as everyone could attend the funeral service while complying with social distancing protocols. The Jones family had one of their family members stream the service and post it to their Facebook page.
“The biggest struggle for us was not being able to have the funeral we wanted after the lockdown began again, but I thought it was great we were able to live stream it,” Jones said. “It helped to know that everyone could still attend in some way.”
Celebrations of life provide a positive, meaningful service while complying with CDC guidelines. This allows the families to celebrate and mourn their loved ones even when the services they want are unavailable.
“The casket (of a traditional funeral service) symbolizes the loss and the celebration of life focuses on keeping the person in their life,” Chase said. “They (families) are embracing what comes forward instead of what was lost; it helps them move forward.”
