Being the director of a funeral home in Zachary, Louisiana, means that sometimes your neighbor calls when they see cars in the parking lot, asking, “Who died?”
Zachary, a suburb of Baton Rouge, has a population of about 18,000.
George Joseph “GJ” Charlet III and his three brothers own one of the two funeral homes in Zachary. During the coronavirus pandemic, they found their business – like many other funeral homes in small towns across America – witnessed the disaster closely and personally.
The business has been in the Charlet family since her grandfather and brother opened it in the 1940s. Charlet is one of three funeral directors at the Charlet Funeral Home. He grew up 20 miles north of Zachary, behind another funeral his family owns in Clinton, Louisiana, which was damaged by the historic floods of August 2016.
Because he was raised in a funeral home, Charlet knows how to prepare for the worst. He was taught from an early age to fill the petrol tank on the body before the local high school ball, where there were deaths resulting from drunk driving accidents.
But even Charlet was unprepared for the Covid-19 pandemic. “In the first two months, it was really scary, because there wasn’t a lot of guidance on what to do,” he said. A small amount of body bags meant that some bodies had to be wrapped in sheets.
According to the Louisiana Department of Health, there were 552 covide deaths in East Baton Rouge Parish, where Zachary is. The parish has had an average positivity rate of 10% in the last six weeks. Over the same period, an average of 13% of those tested for Covid-19 in the two census areas that make up Zachary were positive for it.
There have been several deaths in the community because of Covid, but it did not overwhelm the funeral home, Charlet said. It normally handles about five services a week. But since Thanksgiving, Covid’s death toll has risen, he said. The funeral home provides services for some of the deaths at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. There were 16 deaths of prisoners from Covid-19 in prison.
Charlet has a hard copy of an essay called Always Go to the Funeral by Deirdre Sullivan in a cut file she wants to read at her funeral. “People need that ritual to say goodbye,” he said. “You have to acknowledge someone’s death.”
But his 80-year-old uncle recently caught Covid and he is very ill. If she dies, Charlet doesn’t want her mother to go to the funeral. “I just want people to be more attentive and take advantage of writing a letter of condolence,” he said. “It’s a strange place for me to be. It is counterintuitive to my livelihood. “