With social distancing and stay-at-home orders, people can no longer gather for funerals. But funeral homes can still prepare bodies for burial or cremation.
Funeral homes say under worst-case coronavirus estimates, the death rate in the US will increase by some two-million people this year. This estimate is 66 and 80 percent above normal.
"We may have to wait until this pestilence passes to gather for the service at which we tell the stories that we want to tell each other about the life of the person who’s died," Thomas Lynch with Lynch and Sons Funeral Directors in southeast Michigan.
Lynch said families have been understanding and typically say they’ll hold a gathering to celebrate their loved one’s life, after coronavirus restrictions are lifted.
"We don’t want to be together even though we want to be together," he said. "We just have to wait and see what happens through this terrible pandemic."
