COVID-19 Has Disrupted Grief Too
By Kaelyn Forde
The coronavirus pandemic, which has already claimed the lives of more than 316,000 people, is transforming the ways we grieve. The virus’s contagiousness has led hospitals to bar visitors, even for dying patients. Social-distancing guidelines have made holding traditional funerals and sitting shiva impossible. Families may not be able to see or touch their loved ones’ bodies before they are buried or cremated. As families around the world grapple with this new reality, death doulas are stepping in to help. Here’s how.
“Just 10 weeks ago, death was still a taboo subject to many, but now the pandemic has brought death and our own mortality to the forefront of everyone’s lives,” Lizzie Neville, the chair of End of Life Doula UK, told me last month.
Neville and her fellow end-of-life doulas are assisting families via Zoom and have set up a free support line for anyone affected by death and dying during the pandemic, COVID-related or not. The doula’s work involves helping individuals and families plan for death and asking a patient what matters to them, where they would like to die and how much medical intervention they want. And they’re available for those “experiencing distress, fear and anxiety whilst in isolation and who just need to be heard,” she added.
Because many of the prescribed rituals around death can’t be performed, end-of-life celebrants – people who officiate funerals – are helping some families write their own. Holly Pruett is an Oregon-based community death educator who has compiled a list of resources and ideas to celebrate the life of a loved one during the pandemic. Mourners can take turns sharing stories in a round robin via video or email, or pledge to share a synchronized ritual offline at home – lighting a candle, reading a poem, saying a prayer or speaking a person’s name out the window at the same time. A solo walk, a homemade shrine or envisioning an in-person memorial service in the future can all bring comfort as well.
Engaging with the physical objects a person loved, including food, can also be healing. “I know of one group of friends who dressed up, each cooked the same meal and gathered together over Zoom to have a remote wake,” Neville says. But, however you choose to celebrate the life of a loved one, she says, “There are no rules. You should honor the life of the person who dies in the way that feels right to you.”
This is how NYC is burying the dead during Coronavirus
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