The novel coronavirus is affecting the way each of us live our lives, and it's also affecting the way we mourn the lives we have lost.
Laura Lundberg, a funeral director for Iles Funeral Homes in Central Iowa, says recently, it's been much more difficult to help grieving families process their loss.
"It's becoming harder and harder to take care of a family and help them meet their needs with all of the regulations and the rules," said Lundberg.
Lundberg says the recommended guidelines of no more than 10 people in a single gathering has made proper celebrations of life nearly impossible.
"You have way more than ten people in an immediate family, yet you have to limit it to ten," said Lundberg. "So that is one of the hardest things that we have had to do, is tell people that this is it--that’s the limit, that’s all you can have in the building."
To accommodate, Lundberg says some families are choosing to have several "mini" services, each with ten people including the pastor.
Others opt for private viewings, with rotating groups of ten or fewer.
"I step outside the door, they have 10 people in," said Lundberg. "At the end of their time they leave, I go in, I clean, and then the next group can come in."
The system, typically unnatural in American funeral services, is now the new norm during COVID-19. As is monitoring the physical contact during celebrations of life.
"One of the biggest parts of the grieving process is touching those around you, hugging them, loving on them," said Lundberg, who admits that it's taken a personal toll on her.
"I hug almost every single one of my family that comes through this door...so not being able to hug my families and then to tell them that they shouldn’t be hugging their own families, it’s hard."
For these reasons, many families are opting to postpone the funerals altogether.
"Our future list is quite long," said Lundberg.
Yet, postponing funerals presents challenges when it comes to proper burials.
"When you are doing traditional burial, it is not in the best interest to wait," she said.
Lundberg said one of her most sobering moments recently was running across a passage from an interview she came across. The man being interviewed was LeRoy Dunn, after whose family one of the five Iles Funeral chapels is named.
Dunn, when referring to attempting to comfort families during the diptheria outbreak in the early 1900's, said in an interview,
"Instead of being able to suggest the things that they may have and do, I must start in and tell them the things they cannot have and do. And that is very hard there is so little I can do to ease their sorrow."
It's a sentiment that resounded all-too-clearly with Lundberg at this time. Trying to comfort families, yet feeling nearly helpless.
She says the light she looks forward to, is being able to help facilitate beautiful, communal celebrations of life with families again once the pandemic is over.