Death on COVID-19's Terms: A Personal Account
Sophia Ceccucci, Investigative Journalist
February 10, 2021
Amid the chaos brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have forgotten to address how some seemingly normal experiences have changed. Death is not something new or foreign to most people; many have lost a loved one and grieved. During the lockdown, it turns your life upside down and makes you understand the realities of the pandemic in new ways. This article will explore how the lockdown procedure and social distancing measures have impacted the process of dealing with death, grief, and planning a funeral.
The first thing that was different about losing somebody during a lockdown instead of “normal” times was the experience in the hospital. Most hospitals in Ontario have some form of restrictions on visitors. In my loved one’s region, patients could only have one visitor while they were “actively dying”. When a patient is “actively dying”, they are in the final stages of the death process and are estimated to only have three more days to live. Although the term “actively dying” may seem a little bit disturbing, doctors need to be able to classify this, especially at this time, to allow friends and families of patients to say their goodbyes.
The one family member limit was a necessary restriction for social distancing purposes, but it forced families to choose who can stay with the dying person. This was a difficult decision to make for us, and it could be harmful to peoples’ grieving processes depending on religion and spirituality. My family chose a person with enough physical stamina to sit in the hospital for long periods, the mental capabilities to be able to watch somebody they love die, and the immune system strength to allow for them to recover if they contracted COVID-19 while in the hospital. It was a decision that none of us took lightly, especially because of our Catholic faith.
Grief extends past the hospital, however. In the past, when somebody I knew passed away, people would gather and console each other in a large group before the funeral. During COVID-19, this was unsafe, so my family relied heavily on technology to communicate with our loved ones. The need for strength within our tight circles was more necessary than ever. Many people I know offered their support and their condolences through kind messages and phone calls; however, human contact like hugs was something that I truly missed.
Funerals themselves have changed a lot since the beginning of the pandemic. While we were planning the funeral for my loved one, one of the biggest challenges we faced was the limit of only ten people to a room This required us to plan time slots for each of our extended family members to visit the funeral setting. What this meant in practice was my family having to call each person individually to tell them not only the story of our loved one’s death but also the amount of time that was allotted for them to attend the funeral. The reason why this change heavily impacted my family that in the traditional Catholic funeral setting, a group of close family and friends stood with those grieving for the entire time, and other attendees were able to offer condolences to each other and the family of the deceased at their convenience. Instead, we could only schedule forty people total, with only ten people in the room at a time.
Beyond that, the pandemic also changed our mourning processes because it was unsafe to provide people outside of your household “bubble” with hugs or any form of physical touch to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Physical touch is one way that many people show love and offer support, and dealing with something as difficult as losing a loved one without that type of support was a strange experience for me. It added additional meaning to peoples’ words and actions and allowed me to explore and appreciate verbal connection with others more so than before the pandemic.
Lastly, the religious aspect of the funeral was very different. My family has a very strong Catholic faith, and attending a traditional Catholic funeral service with only nine family members and a priest was strange. Normally at Catholic funerals, there is a mass performed by a priest with a packed audience inside a church, but this service was very intimate. Although it was a very special thing to experience with only a few others in the room, it was also difficult because I knew that so many more people wanted to have this moment in person. For those who were unable to attend the service in person, the funeral home sent out a link to a live stream for them to watch from home. Teaching my elderly relatives how to live stream a mass was something of a challenge, and I can only imagine how strange it was for them to watch the funeral service of a loved one through a screen.
In the end, the death of a loved one is something that not many of us ever see coming, nonetheless a pandemic. These two situations have intersected in my life, changing my grieving process and making me more thankful for those in my household “bubble”. It is strange dealing with death in this way, but at the end of the day, we need to keep each other safe. I understand that I am not the only person who has had to deal with this type of heartbreak over the past year, but I wanted to shed some light on the difficulties of this experience because they are valid and real. This past year has been incredibly difficult for all of us, but dealing with death in this way is something that I would not wish on anybody.