With restrictions easing and coronavirus infection numbers dropping, funeral directors and clergy members are seeing a noted rise in requests for funerals and memorial services, and they anticipate demand will only increase as restrictions around gatherings are relaxed.
Traditional funerals and burials were cancelled, cut back or moved online during the pandemic, with the state placing limits on the number of people who can gather and where. But Danvers-based funeral director C.R. Lyons said people recognize the value of those familiar rituals.
“And so here we are, a year later, and some folks are saying, ‘I need this funeral’,” Lyons said.
Lyons is president of the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association, which represents 2,000 workers. He said the number of abbreviated funerals during the past year was staggering. With the arrival of 2021, many families who may have had modified funerals are looking to schedule one-year anniversary memorial services.
“We've got numerous scheduled already throughout the spring,” he said.
The Rev. Willie Bodrick II, senior pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, said the people typically bind together in times of grief, but that wasn't possible when the coronavirus took root.
“Many of the restrictions kept people apart,” he said. “It really put an added layer of trauma on families. It really exacerbated the grieving experience.”
At the peak of the pandemic, the state dictated that no more than 10 people were allowed at a graveside service, no congregational singing was permitted and funeral staff had to integrate technology for Zoom and live streaming funeral services. Now, as restrictions on gatherings ease, people who could not gather for funerals and memorial services are making plans to come together to mark their loved ones’ passing.
There’s no hard data on how many people intend to hold some sort of gathering or ceremony. But anecdotally, people in the funeral business, as well as people who lost loved ones, said families need something to help them grieve.
Laurie Beaudette of Springfield is planning a memorial gathering around the one-year anniversary of her father’s death.
“Oh, he wanted a graveside service,” said Beaudette, whose father died of COVID-19 on April 14, 2020. “We're going to have a ton of roses, and we're going to have Taps.”
Beaudette’s father, James Mandeville, was an 83-year-old Navy veteran who died at the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke. State lawmakers are investigating possible reforms at the home, where more than 70 veterans died from the virus. Two former leaders of the home are facing criminal charges.
Her father's death was devastating for Beaudette. She was unable to be by his bedside when he died, but a physical therapist was there, and she is grateful for that.
“Obviously, my dad would have wanted me there, you know, but at least he had somebody,” she said.
Dorchester resident Tina Chery plans to hold a memorial service for her mother, 79-year-old Zoila Weddborn, a Honduran immigrant and nurse assistant at Boston Medical Center, who died from COVID-19.
Chery said that, with some guilt in their hearts, the family held a modified funeral service. But they hope to hold something more traditional on May 7, the one-year anniversary of her mother’s passing.
Chery is president and CEO of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, where families and communities impacted by murder, trauma, grief and sorrow can go to heal and grieve. She founded the institute after her 15-year-old son, Louis Brown, was murdered in 1993.
Chery said people deal with sudden and tragic death differently and that this pandemic has impacted not only individuals and families but entire communities.
On March 20, a community memorial is planned in Dorchester for the approximately 1,000 people from Chery’s neighborhood who have died from COVID-19, she said.
Bodrick said that from the sorrow of the pandemic, he finds encouragement that communities have come together, and that better days are ahead.
“Joy does come in the morning,” he said. “There will be joy again.”
