“I only ask God to help me”: Texas funeral home crushed to death as US COVID number approaches 500,000 | Wider image

“It’s just a mental taxman,” Pryor, 59, who runs a small funeral business with his wife Almika, told Reuters earlier this month.

The total number of coronavirus deaths has overwhelmed many US funeral homes. Some family-owned businesses have faced a number of devastating cases, with some seeing the same number of deaths in a few months that they would normally endure in a full year, said Dutch Nie, a spokesman. of the National Association of Funeral Directors.

“Most funeral home managers know it’s a 24-hour, 365-day career, but you’re just not used to working every day in those hours,” Nie told Reuters.

The pandemic has brought about profound changes in the way Pryor should function. Overcrowded hospitals want their bodies removed quickly. It was difficult to find trained personnel, crates and protective equipment. And every day brings a multitude of phone calls from families in distress and suffering.

Because the virus showed no signs of adherence and deaths increased during the summer and fall, workers exhausted from the Pryority Funeral Experience fell ill while others gave up.

“People give up because they can’t handle it mentally,” he said. “I pray, Lord, – just give me strength … I want to run right now, to be honest … I’m worried about my breakup, so I ask God to help me.”

Sometimes the stories he hears at work haunt him.

Just like the one he was told when he answered a COVID-19 call last weekend in The Woodlands, a suburb of Houston.

A 30-year-old woman had just died from complications caused by the virus, some time after doctors performed a C-section to save the lives of her twins as her condition deteriorated.

The next day, Pryor had difficulty processing the tragedy, one of hundreds of thousands that marked a year of deep losses across the country and around the world.

“I slept with him last night and I hate that, you know, when you take him to bed,” he said.

Pryor said he was never as busy as he was during the pandemic. The deaths managed by the funeral home in 2020 were more than double what they would see in a normal year.

January was a terrible month. Even though hospitalizations in Texas fell 10 percent last month from a 36 percent increase in December, coronavirus deaths rose 48 percent, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county data.

“I manage and give up on people because I can only do so much,” Pryor said.

Its staff of four full-time and eight full-time employees feels the tension, he said.

Packers and others who come in direct contact with the bodies and are at greater risk of contagion have been hard to find, Pryor said. And the crates are few because of the pandemic. Earlier this month, Pryor’s uncle drove four hours from Dallas to deliver eight of them.

The job is so consuming, Pryor said, that there is little time left to complete the most essential personal tasks, such as cooking or spending time with his son in 10 years.

While caring for those who had lost loved ones in his community, Pryor’s family faced their own pain. The virus took his nephew and uncle, while his wife lost her cousin and aunt to COVID-19.

Pryor grew up in Texas, the youngest of six and the only one of his siblings who did not attend segregated schools. His first brush with the funeral business was in the late 1970s, when he would help illiterate members of his community with their mail and bills at the local funeral home in the first month of the month.

“I clung to helping people when they needed help the most,” Pryor said.

Ever since he started his own business in 1984, celebrating life even in death has always been a focus of his profession, he said. But the coronavirus pandemic turned everything upside down, making it even more difficult to help people in the pain process.

In late January, Pryor and his team handled funeral arrangements for Gregory Blanks, a 50-year-old COVID-19 victim who ran a heating and air conditioning business in the Houston area. He was a big fan of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

Under current infection prevention restrictions, only a limited number of family and friends were able to attend the funeral at San Felipe Community Cemetery, where a preacher spoke at a table lined with baseball caps for Cowboys and other Texas teams. .

Dressed in a face mask with her husband’s company logo, Blanks’ wife, Lila, watched solemnly as some of Pryor’s workers lowered the coffin into the ground.