Los Angeles, United States.
A corpse in the rest room and embalmed bodies in the garage is part of the normality in Boyd funeral home, a small family business in Los Angeles, is so saturated with COVID-19 victims that it is starting to reject customers for the first time in its history.
“Last weekend I sent 16 families that I couldn’t serve,” says owner Candy Boyd. ‘It’s sad. But that’s the way it is now. ‘
One in 10 residents The country’s second-largest city has been infected since the start of the pandemic, and last week nearly 300 people died every day as infections intensified.
The phones don’t stop at Boyd’s reception, but callers don’t get an answer. The overwhelmed staff are now telling customers to just show up and get in line.
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Is even becoming phone calls from desperate families from other countries, more than an hour by car. Many hospital morgues are also full, with local coroners using refrigerated trucks to receive victims. Some cemeteries warn against waiting lists of two weeks.
“Things are getting more and more out of hand,” says Boyd. During AFP’s visit this week, a box with a small flower wreath occupied the employees’ break room. He had been there for a week.
“This room is our lunch room, but we have to use this room as a box room,” explains the owner. “We’ve done the services, but the cemetery is so busy we have to keep them here until they have time to bury.”
Bodies in the garage
Like much of South Los Angeles, the Westmont neighborhood is home to predominantly black and Latino working-class communities living in densely populated households.
These areas have been particularly affected by the pandemic, with death rates two to three times higher than those of nearby communities.
The cold store at Boyd’s funeral home has been constantly full. Two weeks ago, Boyd brought in carpenters to build two large wooden structures in the company’s garage to store embalmed bodies.
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“He didn’t even have a chance to actually finish it because we needed these (to store),” he says, pointing to the bodies wrapped in bags lying on the shelves. “I never thought I had to build that, even in my wildest dreams.”
Some funeral homes have reported a chest shortage due to a lack of wood, although the Boyd supplier keeps track of orders as long as they are placed well in advance.
“Nightmares”
Concerned that her five employees contracted the virus at the start of the pandemic, Boyd initially refused to accept COVID victims. “I had nightmares. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep,” he recalls.
Since then, Boyd has developed security protocols and is now comfortable with the influx, although she insists that “it’s not about money.”
“It’s about helping families,” he says. “It takes its toll on me every day, I have to deal with this,” adds Boyd. “And I have to keep an unmoved face, because I have to be there for the family.”
Sometimes customers are people you have known personally for a long time. Other times Boyd meets families who still refuse to wear masks or respect physical distance, even as they go through the paperwork to bury their loved ones.
“The numbers don’t lie, it’s true, it’s real,” Boyd said of the disease. The number of cases in California has more than doubled to 2.8 million since the beginning of December. “If you don’t take it seriously,” he warns an AFP journalist, “you could be one of the people on my last row.”