The ICCM Journal | Summer 2020 | V88 No. 2
41
surreal times Dr Kate Woodththorpe looks at the possible consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on our industry I am writing this over the Easter weekend, as the sun beats down and we receive the news that the PM has been discharged from hospital. We are three weeks into the lockdown and by all accounts the peak of Covid-19 has not yet been reached. By the time you read this I have no idea what will have happened in this extraordinary moment in our global and national history, so what I say here may well be substantially out of date. If the predicted peak goes on for some time, there will be huge pressure on funeral directors and crematoria as they manage a high number of deceased individuals. I suspect PPE will be a big issue in terms of protecting staff when handling recently deceased people who died with the virus. There will be massive knock-on effects for funeral services (if they are not outright banned), for income, for overworked staff. These very human issues will – I hope – be addressed and resolved by the time you read this. The consequences for a population who have not had opportunity to see the dying person, view their body, nor attend a funeral service or any other kind of ritual to acknowledge the death, console others and say goodbye to the deceased will also likely be significant. At the time of writing, the uptake of virtual services or wakes is increasing, which is unsurprising given the ease of phone-to-phone or computer-to-computer video conferencing. But this technological potential excludes a significant number of people who do not regularly access technology, namely those in their 80s and 90s. As a group that will be shielded due to their age, how they will be included in emergent rituals during the lockdown remains to be seen. This pandemic may thus exacerbate social differences and inequities that were already there: for some it will serve to move them faster towards online and alternative mourning opportunities and go some way to normalise direct cremation and/or online funeral rituals. But for others it may be devastating, ostracising and disenfranchising. Given this, what the impact will be on grief, and grief for different groups of people, is less clear. It is being postulated that millions will have PTSD after this pandemic, or complicated grief, or prolonged grief disorder. While I am sure these medical theories resonate for a reason, I am hesitant in over-pathologising a response to an experience. This is an unprecedented moment in modern history, for which no one could have mentally or emotionally prepared. We, all of us, share a collective lack of experience in dealing with the impact of a pandemic such as this one on our everyday lives, or living with the death of someone we know (and even love) from this virus. There is no ‘normal’ right now. What we do know is that one hundred years ago significant turbulence from the effects of World War One, both in terms of human cost but also economically, plus a flu pandemic, meant that how death was handled within families and across a population changed. Pat Jalland has written about this in an excellent book called ‘Death in War and Peace: a history of loss and grief in England, 1914-1970’ and I can’t recommend it highly enough if you want to understand a bit more about how perceptions of death and experiences of grief are shaped by economic, political, and social events. A century ago, such widespread death impacted almost every family in the country, and as a result funerary ritual and emotional expression became quieter, more sombre and solemn, and private. Will we see a similar shift as a result of Coronavirus? Will we see similar public acts of commemoration this autumn? After this pandemic has passed, in 2 years’ time, and in a time of relentless pressure for productivity in the workplace and the liberation of unlimited personal expression online, I hypothesise that there will be a similar societal shift in perceptions of death and grief. There will be a re-invigoration of appreciating the preciousness of human life and the planet; more efforts will be made by individuals to ensure that their bodies are healthy and that their environment is too. Another impact, I suspect, will be a lot of clambering to claim the biggest grief or loss within the pandemic – something which we can see right now in the media as they shine a spotlight on the tragedy of specific individuals who have died – in terms of their age or occupation (nurses and bus drivers to name but two). And finally, I think that there will be public mourning for the deceased of Covid-19, whether that is a day of remembrance or a statue, and acts of thanks for those frontline workers who kept the country going. At the time of writing this recognition has not reached funeral directors and cemetery and crematoria staff; I sincerely hope that you are included within this in the future for what you are doing right now. Dr Kate Woodthorpe Senior Lecturer Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
