For families mourning the loss of a loved one, funeral services can be a vital component of the grieving process, said Allen Dave, owner and president of Allen Dave Funeral Homes and Crematorium in Spring.
“The visual component [of a funeral service] is the reality that a death has occurred,” Dave said. “As a funeral home, we can't take away their pain, but what we can do is have responsibilities that guide them through the steps.”
Guiding families through grief has become a lot harder these days, according to Dave, as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is forcing funeral services to take extra precautions in operations. In addition to more frequent sanitization of event spaces and requiring staff to wear medical masks, Dave said it has been especially difficult to enforce state-mandated social distancing measures and limiting memorial and viewing services to ten people or less.
“Last week, we had a service, and we asked those 10 people to sit every other row in the chapel, in order to allow them to have the 6 feet of space in between,” Dave said. “But that's very difficult because you mean to tell me that ... children can't be there next to their mother, giving her a hug, giving her a kiss, just holding her hand [at] a funeral service? That's pretty hard for us as funeral directors to tell a family they can't do that.”
