Grey’s Funeral Home, Templemore Improving our service and helping the community during difficult times
C
ovid 19 brought serious changes to the funeral business to which we all had to quickly adjust. Funerals very quickly went online, and we were blessed to have high speed broadband and a very good website, which enabled us to expand our existing live stream service. We already had been live streaming funerals for years and just needed to improve the quality of our service, which thankfully was sorted very quickly. To help in any way we could, we started to broadcast religious services for the various churches in our area, making full use of the excellent facilities which are available here and which made for busy Sunday’s as we scheduled and adjusted to suit each different religious ceremony. Once this was in place and working successfully, we decided to broaden our horizon and recorded some local musicians performing in our very tranquil garden setting, this was inspired by the other voices serious broadcast on national television and proved to be a very big success, with solo artists only at first and, as the restrictions lifted, eventually social distanced bands and to finish a concert by our local pipe band, recorded in the open air. These were all broadcast, attracting an audience of over 30,000. At Christmas, our annual memorial tree service, which normally attracts very large crowds, had to be held differently. We opened our funeral home for two days allowing people to visit maintain social distancing and place a card on the tree for their loved one. Some used email to relay a message to us, which we then printed and put on a card on the tree for them. Our service again was live streamed and included representatives from the local churches and a live performance
by a local choir, again attracting a massive viewing audience. Our 1st project this year was to try to turn the funeral home green for Saint Patrick’s Day, I once again called on the expertise of Thomas Bourke, director of Premier AV productions and passed on the challenge, which he very kindly accepted. We needed to hire in a hoist and it took several days of planning and perfecting, but eventually our home turned green, mission accomplished. We had hoped this would lift spirits a little in such difficult times, with no parades or celebrations of Saint Patrick’s Day. Our efforts proved very popular, with constant drive by visits to our premises, a massive social media following and interviews on local radio stations and newspapers. On Easter weekend we held our annual motorcycle easter egg run, where we collect easter eggs and bring them to Crumlin Children’s hospital, usually under serious motorcycle escort, but in the last two years, unfortunately our gatherings have been curtailed, however the easter eggs are still delivered to the children, which is the most important thing. Hopefully we have another big project in the pipeline, which I will be able to report on soon and our new website is almost ready to launch, moving forward in any way we can, even during difficult times.
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