A death with no funeral. Weddings with no guests. Proms with no dancing. Graduates with no convocation.
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A Death With No Funeral
Posted on April 5, 2020 by Salty
My sister died last week. Not only is the death of a close relative a surreal experience for all of us, but death in the age of COVID-19 takes that to a whole new level, and it’s something I want to talk about today… how the social norms of things like wakes and funerals get pushed aside when the Stuff Hits The Fan (SHTF).
Before I go any further, we don’t know the exact cause of her death, but it most likely wasn’t COVID-19. She had been “in a bad way” (as we say in the country) for a long time, and her passing was not a shock.
One other note, some of you may have seen some contributions by my OTHER sister, Mammy, here on 3BY. The one who “passed” (again, as we say in the country) was our middle sister.
In his brilliant book “Into Thin Air”, Jon Krakauer wrote “readers are often poorly served when an author writes as an act of catharsis” and I agree with him wholeheartedly, yet I’m going to do it anyway and ask forgiveness from the readership as I ramble on to an eventual point.
Things definitely change when the SHTF
Mammy and I both loved our sister, but we also knew that she had a stubborn streak a mile wide.(To be fair, Mammy and I both do as well, as did both of our parents… it came to us naturally).
Whereas Mammy and I both became preppers without the knowledge of the other (how we found out each other prepped is worth an article on its own, it’s quite funny), but our middle sister had zero interest in anything but the present.
That may be because she was badly afflicted with multiple sclerosis in her late 30’s, or it may be just her way. She simply would not accept the fact that a societal collapse could happen, and just ignored it.
Mammy and I decided, logically, to provide mutual support for each other since we live a distance apart… We stock supplies for each other in our respective homes, are available for bugout, store firearms for each other, she and her husband enjoy shooting at the gun range with us, etc.
But what to do about our middle sister and her equally unwilling to prep, but beloved, husband?
In the end
In the end, we realized that we did not have the resources to do more than offer them a home and food if the SHTF, so that became our plan.
As it turns out, it wasn’t necessary because the collapse that we worry about didn’t happen in her 61 years on this Earth.
The call
I got the call at work, just as I was heading into a meeting with the boss to go over our plans for having our workforce mostly work from home.
In normal times, when a close family member passes, we would notify our boss that there’s been a death in the family, and that would instantly trigger (at my company at least) five days of bereavement leave. That leave can be divided up however it is needed to deal with family affairs, funeral arrangements, visitation, the funeral service, graveside service, reception, etc.
Again, these aren’t normal times, and I am a mission critical person at my company. It won’t surprise anybody to learn that I am the person who wrote our corporate pandemic plan, and I am the person in charge of making sure that:
There are times where you just can’t say “I’ve got to go home now”. This was one of them.
- Every employee whose job doesn’t involve being in the buildings can work at home
- Every person who must be in the buildings to work is isolated
- Dealing with interfacing our company software and hardware from remote locations while maintaining 100 percent cyber security
- A whole lot more.
I told my bosses that my sister had passed and that I would have to take a few non-business phone calls, and then I press on with the job at hand.
Funeral arrangements in the age of COVID-19
My sister lived and died in Illinois, which was under a “stay at home” order limiting all gatherings of any kind to a max of 10 people. In other words, no funeral (well, not as we know them to be).
Mammy and my passed sister’s husband met with the funeral director and planned a small, private service to be held in the funeral home. Mammy called me and advised me not to attend, since not only was there a limit in the number of people, I live in an entirely different “health zone”. She said “It’s not worth the risk”.
I never in my life imagined that I would not go to my own sister’s funeral service when I was perfectly fit and healthy to do so, but that’s how it played out. Ten people (including the funeral staff) just isn’t very many.
Having said that, after the COVID-19 danger has calmed down, we will of course have a REAL memorial service for my sister to celebrate her life, one with more than 8-10 loved ones in attendance. We don’t know when, but it will happen.
Death during a societal breakdown
During the current COVID-19 lock down, we have many societal changes but as of today (April 4, 2020) we don’t have anything close to a “breakdown”.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t been some rioting in some streets somewhere, because we’ve had riots for a lot less reason in the past.
Dealing with death during a full societal breakdown is something we need to look into more as a community, because not only do we need to keep ourselves safe from disease, we need to remember that the people dying our our friends, our neighbors and our loved ones, and we aren’t going to want to just dump them in a hole in the back yard.
I don’t have any answers on this, but it’s something that I’m going to start looking into.
We press on
There’s nothing really to do but press on, so that’s what we do.
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