LONDON (AP) – The funeral home Hasina Zaman recently helped a family bid farewell to a 30-year-old who died of COVID-19, on the same day she planned a ceremony for husband and wife, both of whom were also lost to the virus. .
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Zaman’s phone has rarely stopped ringing, with mourners looking for help that she is not always able to provide.
“I don’t think I have what it takes every week,” said Zaman, whose company Compassionate Funerals serves a multicultural and religious community in East London. The small company usually organizes about five funerals a week, but COVID-19 has raised the number to 20.
“We just do that,” said Zaman. “Literally just a practical approach and just go ahead and do it. And it is not sustainable. It is definitely not sustainable, because it is not healthy. “
The funeral home staff is under pressure in many places, but the burden is especially heavy in Britain, where more than 115,000 people with the virus have died, one of the highest per capita mortality rates in the world. Funeral directors, embalmers and others who live on death often find the pressure on them less important than the pain felt by bereaved 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, stricter hygiene measures and fewer employees due to illness and self-isolation requirements.
Emma Symons, an embalmer for Heritage & Sons Funeral Directors in northwest London, says her workload has tripled.
“Some days are relentless and very difficult, especially if we have younger people who have already died,” she said. “Sometimes it really gets a little too much.”
The parent company of Heritage & Sons says that its group of funeral homes across southeastern England is organizing 30% to 50% more funerals than in a normal year. Ben Blunt, senior funeral director at Heritage & Sons, says this winter’s peak – which saw Britain record over 30,000 coronavirus deaths in January alone, although cases and deaths are declining – was even worse than the peak last spring.
“At the first block, we didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “But having gone through the experience for the first time and now going through it for the second time, there is a slight fear that we almost know what’s on the horizon.”
Alison Crake was better prepared for the pandemic than most. Before anyone had heard of COVID-19, she wrote a guide on how to plan a pandemic for Britain’s National Association of Funeral Directors. Crake anticipated some of the stresses that a pandemic could bring, including staff absences, lack of mortuary space and the need to purchase extra protective equipment.
But she says that if someone had described the scale of death and disturbance that would come, “I probably would have choked on the thought.”
Crake, who runs his family’s undertaking in northeastern England, says the profession has been shaken by closed places of worship, strict funeral attendance limits and other restrictions to slow the spread of the virus, meaning the funeral staff mourning families cannot always cause the comfort they desire.
Speaking sensitively to a bereaved family through Zoom is a new and delicate skill that funeral directors had to learn. Blunt says it’s painful not to be able to do something as simple as shaking a customer’s hand.
“We are professionals,” he said. “But we are also human beings.”
Still, Crake says the funeral home, which often calls his profession a calling, may be reluctant to seek help – although some in the industry are trying to change that. The guide she wrote was updated in October with a greater emphasis on providing emotional support to employees. Those struggling can call Our Frontline, a service created during the pandemic, partly funded by Prince William and his wife, the Royal Foundation, Catherine, which provides 24-hour mental health support to key employees. Funeral personnel were included in this category, alongside doctors and emergency personnel.
“We understand that this is the profession we have chosen,” said Crake. “And for many of us, we see it as a professional. We consider ourselves part of our community and our community is part of us. But, in the same way, it is necessary to obtain this balance to ensure that this prolonged exposure to trauma does not result in compassion fatigue ”.
Conservative lawmaker John Hayes, who leads a parliamentary group on funerals and mourning, recently paid tribute to the “silent dignity” of funeral directors during the pandemic, saying that their essential work “often goes unnoticed by those in the corridors of power”.
Zaman is distressed by restrictions on travel and meetings, which means that families often cannot suffer together. On a recent weekday, mourners stopped in the rain outside their office, taking turns to enter socially distant prayers over the coffin of a young man who died far from his native Gambia. A compliment was made on the sidewalk amid the noise of cars and buses.
But she is proud of how the profession has adapted since the first outbreak of the outbreak. Livestreaming allows friends and family to attend funerals from afar. Thanks to training and protective equipment, it can allow Muslim customers to wash and wrap the bodies of their loved ones before burial, according to Islamic practice.
Zaman says that when families can have that connection and catharsis, “you feel a sense of accomplishment” that makes stress worthwhile.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “Certainly. But I take care of myself. … I recover. I have 10 hours to recover after work and overnight, then I come back here and continue.”
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Kearney reported from Aylesbury and Bletchley, England.