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A Safe Pandemic Funeral Plan
Sadly, around 3 weeks ago, my family suffered the loss of a loved one. In addition to the shock of our loss, we also had to come to terms with what a funeral service might mean during the pandemic. Here is what worked for us, in detail.
Notification and Funeral Planning
Once the initial wave of contacts were done amongst the family via phone and text, we set out to call all of the extended family and friends and break the news gently. Sadly, in the age of social media, we lost this battle. Instead, the news hit Facebook and people read it there first. We didn’t intend for people to find out the news that way, but we simply couldn’t call everyone in time to beat the wildfire of social media. Mostly, people understood, but a few expressed some frustrations about not being highter on the contact list. Understandable, and regrettable. In the future, I’d suggest asking folks to hold off from Facebook and other social platform posts for a day or so, to give the family time to make contact with appropriate people and spare their feelings. The loss of a loved one is bad enough, but finding out by reading other people’s memorial posts left more than a few people in despair.
The funeral planning process was done very safely. A select few of the family members met with the funeral home and we used a call bridge to bring in other needed members with…