Saying Goodbye During COVID
As I am writing this, the United States has already lost over 124K people to COVID-19, and our numbers are only increasing. Other countries are concerned that the US has just thrown in the towel. Honestly, I’m pretty worried about that myself. This is no longer just a New York City issue. What is worrisome is that just as New York didn’t learn from other countries, the rest of the US isn’t learning from New York’s mistakes. States are not shutting down, despite increasing numbers. Remember those flatten the curve graphs we were all looking at two or three months ago? Well, our new plan is to set the country on fire and hope for the best. So far so good in NYC, right? We just sacrificed our weakest. I fear for places like Florida, which is known to be a state people go to retire. Yet, they are remaining open.
One thing we can maybe all agree on is that we will all feel the impact of COVID-19, and there is a good chance we will all lose someone we know to the virus. So far my count is two. I pray it stops there.
What I have heard from most people is that funerals have been canceled, drastically reduced in the number of attendees, held over Zoom, or postponed. People are trying their best to mourn in the safest ways possible.
Since I don’t think too many people have experienced a COVID funeral in the heart of the pandemic, let me give you some insight. My father-in-law, Sol, passed away to COVID at the end of April. We live in Brooklyn and it was the heart of the pandemic and the lockdown. You can read all about what happened here, but for focus sake, let's stay with the funeral. First, my father-in-law is Jewish. There is a strict rule that Jewish people are supposed to be buried within 24 hours. Yeah, some funeral homes told us that we might have to wait as long as a month. I have heard longer wait times from some of my friends who have lost people. This was just not an option.
While we are not Hasidic, we live in a Hasidic neighborhood, and Sol is a Holocust survivor. The Hasidic Jews look out for their own. So, we were able to work with a group that was able to get him buried in a little over 48 hours, this was a COVID miracle.
I don’t know how many funerals you have been to. I had never been to one, to be fair, only viewings, but this was nothing like I expected. First, because of the virus, we were never able to properly say goodbye to Sol, only over FaceTime. My husband was never able to verify the body. Everyone involved was overwhelmed and in a rush. Too many deaths to handle.
We arrived at the cemetery on a sunny Tuesday. It would have been a day Sol would have liked. We were not allowed into the office. All the paperwork and details were managed with us hanging around our cars. There was a hearse, I guess for appearances, since Sol was in a simple wooden box inside the van the Rabbi was driving.
Once the bills were paid, we drove to the grave site. On an unfinished road, about 100 feet from his grave, we were told to stay in our car. Once a group of men took Sol and wheeled him away from us, the Rabbi called us over, shoved some prayers (all in hebrew — which I don’t read or speak) in our hands, and started swaying to the prayers. It all happened so fast, and we were so far away from Sol, as we stood shell-shocked on a dusty road trying to understand what was happening. My husband asked me to document the experience, since only him, his best friend, and I, were able to attend. It would be nice for the rest of the family to have something. The Rabbi was not a fan of me documenting. Halfway through the prayers, my husband realized that they had taken his father, he didn’t get to see him at all, and that these prayers were going to only be said away from the wooden box while it was being lowered into the ground from a distance. He didn’t even know if it was his father in that box. He abruptly stated such, interrupting the Rabbi. The Rabbi rushed through the rest of the prayer and took us to the grave, the workers having already left. My husband had mentioned that he needed to see his father before he was buried. He needed to confirm it was him and say goodbye, just like his father had to do for his wife. This is unheard of in the Jewish religion. Sol had been wrapped and cleaned, he wasn’t to be disrupted, but COVID. But COVID is like the new excuse for everything these days, but in this case it was very real. We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. We didn’t even know if there was a body in that box, let alone Sol. But it was already in the ground.
The grief found us breaking into the wooden box and unwrapping my father-in-law. My husband held his father’s head one more time in his arms. The Rabbi, to his merit, let us be. The whole “ceremony” and prayers lasted maybe ten minutes on the side of a road. Then we were abandoned to look at the hole in the ground that would be the final resting place for Sol. My husband couldn’t really speak. He just grabbed handfuls of dirt and started to cover his father, as his friend and I stood helplessly on the sidelines. No one came to help. There was no end. No closure. But it was a beautiful sunny Tuesday, and I know Sol would have smiled up at the sky as he joined his wife, once again, this time in the heavens.
