‘It’s heartbreaking’: how coronavirus pandemic is changing funerals, grieving and ways we say goodbye to loved ones

In many places, funeral ceremonies have become brief affairs involving just a priest, a funeral home employee and a single loved one

Some cemeteries aren’t allowing any graveside services at all, and funeral homes have had to adapt, letting mourners drive by or streaming burials online

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A funeral affected by the new rules put in operation to combat the coronavirus outbreak takes place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the US. Photo: AP

Published: 5:00am, 25 Mar 2020Updated: 5:00am, 25 Mar 2020

Tucked deep in the obituary for Charles Recka was an announcement that a Mass celebrating his 87 years of life “will be held at a later date”.

Such notices are increasing amid the coronavirus pandemic, as an untold number of burials around the globe go forward with nothing more than a priest, a funeral home employee and a single loved one.

While in some places, bodies of people who have died from Covid-19 are stacking up at hospitals and people are buried quickly in the clothes they died in, Recka’s death from an unrelated long illness tells a different story: one of families whose grief just happened to arrive amid a pandemic that has them terrified to even share a church pew with loved ones, let alone hug them.

Recka’s daughter, Dawn Bouska, sees no choice but to prevent her twin 11-year-old boys and their 14-year-old sister from getting any closer to their grandmother than the other side of the window at the senior living centre where she lives.

Arrington Funeral Directors show a sign requesting visitors to use hand sanitiser and maintain social distancing amid the coronavirus outbreak, at their funeral home in Jackson, Tennessee. Photo: AP

“I don’t know if these kids are carriers, but I can’t risk losing my mum,” says Bouska, 52, of Naperville, Illinois. “At the time she needs to be hugging these kids more than ever it’s unsafe to do so.”