LONDON (AP) – Funeral director Hasina Zaman recently helped a family say goodbye to a young man in his 30s who died of COVID-19, the same day she was planning a service for a husband and wife, both of whom were also lost from the virus.
Since the pandemic hit, Zaman’s phone has rarely stopped ringing, with relatives seeking help she can’t always provide.
“Every week I don’t think I have what it takes,” said Zaman, whose company Compassionate Funerals serves a multicultural, multi-religious community in East London. The small company normally organizes about five funerals a week, but COVID-19 has increased the number to 20.
“We’re just doing it,” said Zaman. “Literally just a hands-on approach and go for it and do it. And it is not sustainable. It is not sustainable at all, because it is not healthy. “
Funeral home staff are under pressure in many places, but the burden is especially great in Britain, where more than 115,000 people have died with the virus, one of the highest per capita death tolls in the world. Funeral directors, embalmers, and others dealing with death for a living often consider the pressure on them less important than the pain of the bereaved. But many are exhausted by the sheer amount of deaths they have faced, and the pandemic is raising awareness that their own mental health is also worthy of attention.
Funeral directors across the country describe a heavy burden due to more services, stricter hygiene measures and fewer staff due to illness and self-isolation requirements.
Emma Symons, a balm star at Heritage & Sons Funeral Directors, northwest London, says her workload has tripled.
“Some days it’s relentless and very difficult, especially when we have younger people who have died,” she said. “Sometimes it gets a bit too much.”
Heritage & Sons’ parent company says the group of funeral homes in South East England organizes 30% to 50% more funerals than in a typical year. Ben Blunt, a senior funeral director at Heritage & Sons, says this winter’s wave – with Britain recording more than 30,000 coronavirus deaths in January alone, although the number of cases and deaths is now declining – is even worse than the peak from last spring.
“At the first lockdown, we didn’t really know what to expect,” he said. “But after having had the experience the first time and now going through it for the second time, there’s that kind of slight fear that we almost know what’s on the horizon.”
Alison Crake was better prepared for the pandemic than most. Before anyone ever heard of COVID-19, she wrote a guide to planning a pandemic for Britain’s National Association of Funeral Directors. Crake anticipated some of the tensions a pandemic could create, including staff absence, a shortage of morgue space, and the need to purchase additional protective equipment.
But she says that if anyone had described the scale of the coming death and disruption, “I would probably gasp at the thought of it.”
Crake, who runs her family’s funeral home in the North East of England, says the appeal has been shaken by shuttered places of worship, strict restrictions on attendance at funerals, and other restrictions to slow the spread of the virus, which means that The funeral staff cannot always grieve families the comfort they desire.
Speaking sensitively to a bereaved family above Zoom is a new and delicate skill funeral directors have had to learn. Blunt says it’s painful not being able to do something as simple as shake hands with a client.
“We are professionals,” he said. “But we are also human.”
Still, Crake says funeral directors, who often view their profession as 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 more emphasis on providing emotional support to employees. Those struggling can call Our Frontline, a service set up during the pandemic, funded in part by Prince William and his wife Catherine’s Royal Foundation, which provides 24-hour mental health services to key workers. In addition to doctors and care providers, this category includes funeral workers.
“We understand this is the profession we have chosen,” said Crake. “And for many of us we see it as vocational training. We see ourselves as part of our community and our community is part of us. Yet it is equally necessary to find that balance to ensure that this prolonged exposure to trauma does not lead to compassion fatigue. “
Conservative lawmaker John Hayes, who heads a parliamentary group on funerals and bereavement, recently paid tribute to the “ quiet dignity ” of the funeral directors during the pandemic, saying their essential work “ often goes unnoticed by those who to be in the corridors of power ”.
Zaman is haunted by the restrictions on travel and gatherings, which often prevent families from grieving together. On a recent weekday, mourners stood outside her drawing room in the rain, taking turns entering for socially detached prayers over the coffin of a young man who had died far from his native Gambia. Eulogies were echoed on the sidewalk over the rumble of cars and buses.
But she’s proud of how the profession has adapted since the first wave of the outbreak. Live streaming allows friends and family to watch funerals from afar. Thanks to training and protective equipment, she is able to have Muslim clients wash and disguise the bodies of their loved ones before burial, in accordance with Islamic practice.
Zaman says when families can have that connection and catharsis, “you feel a sense of accomplishment” that makes the stress worthwhile.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “Sure. But I take care of myself. … I recover. I have ten hours to recover after work and at night, and then I come back here and carry on.”
Kearney reported from Aylesbury and Bletchley, England.