LONDON (AP) – Funeral Director Hasina Zaman recently helped a family say goodbye to a 30-year-old man who died of COVID-19 on the same day he planned a service for husband and wife, both you lost the virus.
Since the pandemic broke out, Zaman’s phone has rarely stopped ringing, with distressed people seeking help he is not always able to offer.
“Every week I think I don’t have what it takes,” said Zaman, whose Compassionate Funerals company serves a multicultural, multi-believer community in East London. The small company normally arranges about five funerals a week, but COVID-19 has led the number to 20.
“We just do it,” Zaman said. “Literally, just the practical approach and go after it and do it. And it’s not sustainable. It is certainly not sustainable because it is not healthy. ”
Funeral homes are under pressure in many places, but the burden is particularly heavy in the UK, where more than 115,000 people have died of the virus, one of the highest per capita deaths in the world. Funerals, embalmers, and others who deal with death for life often consider the pressure on them to be less important than the pain felt by grieving families. But many are exhausted by the amount of mortality they have faced, and the pandemic is raising awareness that their own mental health also deserves to be taken care of.
Funeral directors across the country describe a heavy burden due to more services, tougher hygiene measures and fewer employees due to illness and self-isolation requirements.
Emma Symons, an embalmer at Heritage & Sons Funeral Directors in north-west London, says her workload has tripled.
“It’s tiring for a few days and it’s really difficult, especially if we have younger people who have died,” she said. “Sometimes it gets too much.”
The parent company Heritage & Sons says that its group of funeral homes in the south-east of England organizes 30% to 50% more funerals than in a normal year. Ben Blunt, senior funeral director at Heritage & Sons, says the rise this winter – which saw the UK see more than 30,000 coronavirus deaths in January alone, although cases and deaths are now declining – has been even worse than the peak last spring.
“In the first blockade, we didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “But after having the experience for the first time and now going through it for the second time, there is that kind of slight fear, that we almost know what is on the horizon.”
Alison Crake was better prepared for the pandemic than most. Before anyone ever heard of COVID-19, she wrote a guide on how to plan a pandemic for the National Association of Funeral Directors in the UK. Crake anticipated some of the stresses a pandemic can bring, including staff absences, lack of mortuary space, and the need to purchase additional protective equipment.
But she says that if someone had described the extent of the death and the disturbances that would follow, “I would probably have gasped at the thought of it.”
Crake, who runs his family’s funeral home in the north-east of England, says the profession has been shaken by places of worship, strict limits on attendance at funerals and other restrictions to slow the spread of the virus, which means that funeral staff families cannot always be saddened by the comfort they want.
Sensitive speaking to a grieving family through Zoom is a new and delicate skill that funeral directors have had to learn. Blunt says it’s painful not to be able to do something as simple as shaking hands with a customer.
“We are professionals,” he said. “But we are also human beings.”
However, Crake says funeral staff, who often see their profession as a calling, may be reluctant to seek help – although some in the industry are trying to change that. The guide he wrote was updated in October, with a greater focus on providing emotional support to employees. Those who struggle can call Our Frontline, a service set up during the pandemic, partly funded by Prince William and his wife Catherine’s Royal Foundation, which provides non-stop healthcare to key workers. Funeral staff was included in this category, along with doctors and emergency services staff.
“We understand that this is the profession we have chosen,” Crake said. “And for many of us, we see it as vocational. We consider ourselves part of our community, and our community is part of us. But it is also necessary to achieve this balance to ensure that this prolonged exposure to trauma does not result in fatigue of compassion. ”
Conservative MP John Hayes, who leads a parliamentary group on funerals and mourning, recently paid tribute to the “quiet dignity” of funeral workers during the pandemic, saying their essential work “often goes unnoticed by those in the corridors of power”.
Zaman is worried about travel and meeting restrictions, which means that families often cannot grieve together. One recent day of the week, mourners sat in the rain in front of her living room, lining up to enter for social distance prayers on the coffin of a young man who had died far from his homeland Gambia. A compliment was handed out on the sidewalk, over the noise of cars and buses.
But she is proud of the way the profession has adapted since the first outbreak. Livestreaming allows friends and family to watch funerals from afar. Thanks to training and protective equipment, she can let Muslim clients wash and wrap the bodies of loved ones before burial, in accordance with Islamic practice.
Zaman says that when families can have this connection and catharsis, you “feel a sense of accomplishment” that makes stress worthwhile.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “Of course. But I take care of myself. … I recover. I have 10 hours to recover after work and at night, then I come back here and continue.”
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Kearney reported from Aylesbury and Bletchley, England.