The ICCM Journal | Summer 2022 | V90 No. 2
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what we learnt about death care during covid-19 On 23rd March 2022 a national day of reflection took place. A day when we remember the people who have died from Covid-19 over the last two years. At Poppy’s, we had to adapt rapidly to new Covid-19 restrictions and do things differently without losing sight of our values. We had to support our clients to navigate the changes. We worked alongside celebrants, cemetery workers and healthcare professionals, witnessing the huge impact of the pandemic on them. It has been difficult, frustrating, frightening, uncertain and exhausting at times over the last two years. But it has also provided a deeper understanding of the importance of good death care and led to changes and innovations that we can all learn from. The report, ‘British Ritual Innovation under Covid-19’, chimes with much of our experience. So we spoke to Dr Paulina Kolata, one of the report’s authors, to try to understand the bigger picture. When did you start your research and who did you speak to? I didn’t start the research until October 2020. By then, there was a lot of grief, but people were already starting to take a retrospective view. We had dealt with the crisis moment, now people were consciously adapting. At first, it was all about finding a solution in that moment. There was no time for conversation, except a conversation about how to get something done. I spoke to celebrants, funeral directors, religious leaders, and bereaved people. There was such a wide spread of world views, beliefs and values. I really appreciated them giving their time to talk to me, sometimes late at night or on the way to a funeral. I wanted to speak to a lot of people to understand where their context allowed for flexibility and adaptation and when it did not. In the course of your research people shared some really difficult experiences with you. Can you give any examples of the kind of challenges that people working in death care faced during the pandemic? I spoke to a small funeral directors, with only two core staff. Both the staff were vulnerable themselves, so could not provide the care that they wanted to during the pandemic. It was heartbreaking for them. They couldn’t put themselves at risk, but they felt it almost went against their own values of care. In Northern Ireland, guidelines were so strict. Cemeteries closed their gates so that people couldn’t even gather outside around the grave. People spoke to me of the shock of being made to stand outside the gates, watching the funeral on a tiny TV screen. Crematoria and cemeteries were trying to protect their staff, they knew they didn’t have the resources if they all got ill. The biggest frustration that people had across the board was the vagueness of the government guidelines, the way you were left to interpret them for yourself, with little knowledge or support. People were worried about putting their own families at risk. One change that’s been obvious, in every area of life, has been the increased use of communication technology. How did this influence death care during the pandemic? In so many ways, not just through the live-streaming of funeral ceremonies. For example, more people started using videographers and photographers for funerals. One videographer explained to me that often clients don’t want to watch the video afterwards — but they do want to capture the moment, and to know that they could revisit it if they wanted to. Death is traumatic and sometimes we don’t remember what we did while we were grieving.
