I Run A Funeral Home. It's Never Easy, But This Pandemic Has Been Something Else

Funeral workers like me are used to caring for people who have died, and supporting their loved ones through funeral arrangements. But this year, there has not only been so many more people to care for – everything we know about how we do our job has had to change, almost overnight.

We’ve had to get used to working very differently. Ours is normally a very hands-on, caring role – but now we’re using full PPE when we visit a family home to collect someone who has died and we’re very aware of the impact this can have on grieving loved ones. We’ve had to have very difficult and distressing conversations with next-of-kin about whether they can visit their loved one in the chapel of rest, or how many of their family and friends can support them at the funeral service – and we’ve had to find ways to make very restricted funerals still feel meaningful.

Like all key workers, we’ve also been managing our own concerns about keeping ourselves, each other and families safe as the pandemic has unfolded too. Offerings like Samaritans’ Our Frontline provide free, 24/7 mental health support, resources and guides all in one place for all key workers to get access to the specific support they need in response to the pandemic.

The pandemic has put a huge amount of pressure on our teams and everyone is exhausted. Not only physically, but mentally too. Focusing on both my own and my employees’ wellbeing is something I’ve needed to pay more and more time to as the year has gone on.

Being a funeral director is, of course, not an easy job. You deal with death and grief every single day, and so we make sure we give staff chances to decompress and talk about their experiences. But my goodness, 2020 has been something different altogether. We’ve had to manage the pressure of so many funerals to arrange, under challenging...

Continue reading on HuffPost