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Funerals

Carole Ganzenmuller, right, with her brother Richard Spence at an event a few years ago. Photo from Ganzenmuller

In September, Richard Spence, 64, of Selden, died of a heart attack.

Stunned by the loss, the extended family confronted the difficulty of planning a funeral during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We felt we had to be strict. My mother is 91, so we were diligent in who was coming and who was not able to come.”

— Carole Ganzenmuller

Carole Ganzenmuller, Spence’s sister, knows firsthand the suffering and difficulty the pandemic has created for mourning families. Ganzenmuller works as a funeral director’s assistant at East Setauket-based Bryant Funeral Home, where she and the staffs at so many other funeral homes on Long Island and around the country grappled with restrictions on the kinds of personal support people could normally provide after the loss of a loved one.

“We couldn’t do the normal funeral,” Ganzenmuller said. “We felt we had to be strict. My mother is 91, so we were diligent in who was coming and who was not able to come.”

Indeed, she said many of the extended relatives from out of state couldn’t attend the funeral for Spence, who served in active duty for the Navy for four years and as a reserve for two years. He was buried at Calverton National Cemetery.

While the family did have visitation and used Zoom, Ganzenmuller said they didn’t “go through the normal process.”

She said her children, who are in California and were on lockdown, knew they couldn’t attend.

“We didn’t want that many people around my mom,” Ganzenmuller said.

Telling people not to come was a “very hard thing to do” as it cuts the grieving process and the goodbyes become more complicated, she added.

The grandchildren couldn’t embrace their grandmother, which would have provided the customary comfort
and support.

Ganzenmuller’s family has had several members play active roles in serving the country through the armed forces. Her late brother William, who died at the age of 43, served in the Air Force, while her oldest brother Gary is a Marine veteran who served in Vietnam. Her late father Robert was in the Merchant Marine.

“We hang an American flag with great pride,” she said.

Sad as it was for Ganzenmuller and her family to lose Spence this fall, she recognized that they had more opportunities to grieve her brother than people who lost loved ones in the spring of 2020, during the earlier part of the pandemic.

In some cases, Ganzenmuller recalled how she went to a cemetery on her own, bringing a casket without a family along.

“I was going to Calverton where the families could not attend the funerals,” she said. She said the “Hail Mary” prayer on behalf of the families when she brought the deceased to the cemetery.

The increasing number of deceased people Ganzenmuller bought to the cemetery or the crematorium made her feel as if she were “in a war zone.”

“I felt a little blessed that my family was allowed to have what we had.”

— Carole Ganzenmuller

Ganzenmuller’s family had an honor guard for her brother, and the flag was presented to her mother.

“It’s very special,” she said. She has thought of all the people who couldn’t receive that honor. In fact, she said some religious officials didn’t feel comfortable entering the funeral home, so those services occurred outside.

“What was a normal ritual was no longer a normal ritual for people,” Ganzenmuller said.

The pandemic changed the way people could grieve and could say goodbye.

“I felt a little blessed that my family was allowed to have what we had,” she said. “I’m sure the healing process was tougher” for people during the early months of the pandemic, regardless of what caused a close friend or family member to die.

Through all the funerals, some of which continue for COVID-19, Ganzenmuller appreciated how the staff at Bryant Funeral Home and in the industry as a whole pulled together as a team.

“We’re saying to ourselves, ‘There’s hopefully light at the end of the tunnel when masks will come down and people can grieve in a normal way,’” she said. “They want to hug their family, they want to cry on them — and not give the elbows anymore.”

Funeral service personnel at one of the Moloney Funeral Home locations wait for family to arrive for a drive-thru viewing, one of the ways to give mourners a chance to say last goodbyes during COVID-19. Photo from Moloney Family Funeral Homes

They worked considerably longer hours, sometimes alongside people who came to help from other parts of the state during a time of need. They buried their own family members, sometimes urging out-of-state relatives to stay where they were. They counted the number of people who entered their funeral homes, making sure they complied with changing rules about the number of people allowed at the time.

Below, a family gathers under an outdoor committal tent at one of the Moloney Funeral Home locations awaiting the completion of the cremation for their relative. Photo from Moloney Family Funeral Homes

And, as with many other businesses, funeral directors maneuvered through the challenges of procuring personal protective equipment and supplies during the difficult and tragic early months of the pandemic.

Funeral homes, which have sometimes been described as the “last responders,” have had to react to changing state regulations, protecting the families of those who come to pay their final respects — and their own staffs.

During prepandemic times, “we might have had three or four wakes at one time,” said Fred Bryant, president of East Setauket-based Bryant Funeral Home. “That doesn’t happen now.”

Bryant converted three rooms into one large room, which made it possible to have 50 percent of their capacity.

Sergio Benites, managing partner at Bryant Funeral Home, said the business has allowed between 80 and 90 people at a time in the facility.

Like other public gathering places, funeral homes initially could have up to 10 people. Over time, as the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths declined, the state, through Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) office, relaxed regulations, first increasing the limit to 33 percent of capacity and then raising that to the current 50 percent.

Even with the higher capacities, funeral home directors have sometimes asked people to wait for someone to leave the facility before allowing new people to enter.

“It happened more than several times,” said Michael Connell, who runs the M.A. Connell Funeral Home in Huntington Station which was started by his grandfather in 1923, five years after the Spanish flu pandemic. As with many other funeral homes during COVID-19, M.A. Connell has had mourners wait in line in the parking lot.

“When we reach our number, we make an announcement inside,” Connell said.

Indeed, funeral directors have received guidance from several organizations during the pandemic.

“It is encouraged that folks paying respects keep the time in the chapel to a minimum,” wrote Michael Gorton Jr., president of the Nassau-Suffolk Funeral Directors Association, in an email. “Pay your respects, offer condolences, have a comfortable conversation and be considerate of those who may be waiting to come in and pay respects. Because of capacity limits, there could be people waiting outside the building.”

During the worst of the pandemic, Gorton, who is a licensed funeral director at McManus-Lorey Funeral Home in Medford, said funeral directors from outside Long Island came to the area to help.

“The governor’s office allowed us to ‘deputize agents’ and allow nonlicensed people to help us with transfers as long as they were under the direct supervision of a licensed funeral director,” Gorton added.

“People are tending to come and go at a faster rate. People are aware of the fact that other people may want to come in.”

Peter Moloney

Funeral directors appreciate how mourners have understood the circumstances of the pandemic and have shortened the time they spend on site.

“People are tending to come and go at a faster rate,” said Peter Moloney, co-owner of Moloney Family Funeral Homes, which has eight locations, including in Port Jefferson Station and Hauppauge. “People are aware of the fact that other people may want to come in.”

Some families have chosen to reduce the number of people who attend funerals, asking relatives who might be coming in from out of state to join the service through live streaming.

When Connell’s mother Betty Ann died in May, he said his family went through the same difficult decision that hundreds of other families have had to make.

“We decided we weren’t even going to have a public wake,” Connell said. “We had 10 people attend [who were all] immediate family.”

The Connells spent an hour visiting at the funeral home, had a short prayer service and then went to the graveside. Some people met the family in the parking lot and followed in the procession, without getting out of their cars at the cemetery.

Connell’s father, John, who had been married to his wife for close to 60 years, visited with his grandchildren, in a socially distanced setting, at his house.

Like many others, Connell has not set a date for a celebration and memorial for his mother’s life.

“Until we know we’re home free [with the virus], we’re not going to start the planning process,” he said.

Benites said Bryant Funeral Home still has about a dozen families that have postponed a larger event for their loved ones.

“They still aren’t ready” for any larger or more elaborate gathering as a part of a memorializing event,” Benites said. “When they’re ready, we’ll go back and try to give them a celebration of life.”

At times, grieving families have also had to wait to hold a service until close members of the family either have recovered from quarantine or have tested negative for COVID-19.

Benites said around three to five families are waiting for their next of kin to finish quarantine before they hold a service.

While these funeral homes are accustomed to thorough cleaning efforts, directors and owners said they have also complied with rules regarding disinfecting their sites between visits.

Funeral homes, some of which have held services for more than one member of the same family over the past year during the pandemic, have provided their customers and visitors with help managing their grief.

“We have more grief literature available to families during this time,” Moloney said. “The COVID pandemic has been very disruptive to the grief process. We’re all aware of the fact that people are grieving differently today.”

After all the challenges of the pandemic, funeral directors anticipate that more residents on Long Island and throughout the country will likely consider preplanning funerals.

“After we go through COVID, there will be a more obvious increase in the numbers of preplanned funerals,” Benites said.

Moloney’s Funeral Homes are advertising a motorcycle-based farewell ride through town for the recently passed. Photo from Moloney Funeral Homes Facebook

Carla Sciara’s father, former Port Jefferson Station resident Ronald “Ronnie” Scalone, passed away March 17 after a long illness, one unrelated to the escalating coronavirus pandemic. 

“It just added to the grief of it all.”

— Carla Sciara

Scalone was a past aeronautical engineer at Grumman, and lived a life bound to nature and the Long Island Sound. In Sciara’s father’s final days, he was living in the Patchogue-based Suffolk Center for Rehabilitation, a nursing home that had decided to close most access to visitors, their residents being especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

Sciara was one of the few people the staff allowed in to visit during her father’s final hours. She walked through halls mostly devoid of the normal family members strolling the halls, with nursing home staff all garbed in masks and gloves. Amidst all the pain and suffering of losing her father, she said dealing with the panic and stress of a pandemic was like “grieving twice.”

For people looking to mourn and memorialize the recently passed, the ongoing coronavirus crisis has upended everything. Places of worship of every denomination far and wide have limited their public services, and with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines having limited the number of people in a room at once, services for the recently passed have become small, solemn affairs.

Sciara had worked with Robertaccio Funeral Home in Patchogue, who she called “amazing” for their work with her father’s cremation, and Infant Jesus R.C. Church in Port Jefferson for either a Mass and funeral arrangements, but she decided to hold off, knowing family who live as far away as Florida shouldn’t be traveling during the ongoing pandemic. She has plans to celebrate his life sometime in the future, after the end of the panic, though it’s hard to say when that will be.

“It just added to the grief of it all,” she said. “We wanted to celebrate his life.”

Beyond the fear and the tragedy of the more than 200 people in Suffolk County who have died from the virus, the act of mourning has become limited. Funeral homes throughout the North Shore have limited the number of people who can be at a service at a time and have looked to offer people as much ability to grieve as they can.

The March 22 executive order by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) called funeral homes essential businesses, but houses of worship, where many services are held, were not. Not only that, but CDC guidelines advise limiting such occasions to 10 or less people.

“This isn’t what the community wants — this is something that is forced upon us.”

— Peter Moloney

Funeral Homes like M.A. Connell in Huntington Station have severely limited the number of services they host, with arrangements being made by only two or less people or done via phone or email. Services are limited to 10 people or less and to one hour. Only one service is allowed at a time.

Peter Moloney, along with his brother Daniel Moloney Jr., owns Moloney Family Funeral Homes, with eight locations on Long Island including Port Jefferson Station, Lake Ronkonkoma and Hauppauge. The challenge has been allowing people the room to grieve when there are limits on how many people can be in the same place at once.

“This isn’t what the community wants — this is something that is forced upon us,” Moloney said. “The families still need to grieve.”

Moloney’s has established tents at some of their locations for families to hold ceremonies outside. While their website lists a maximum of 10 mourners for each gathering, he said he wouldn’t simply deny a family if they wished to bring in around 20, but the goal is to limit the number of people in the same space. Otherwise, they are providing access for families to listen to the prayers via online streaming. They are also offering alternative services such as a motorcycle-based farewell ride through town.

The facilities are also being sanitized regularly after every service. But the hardest part of these services in the time of a pandemic is watching people necessarily stay apart. Even in tight-knit groups, friends and family not living in the same house often try to keep apart, even when the inclination is to hold each other in times of grief.

“A lot of these people are passing away alone, so it’s really doubly troubling for families and emotional,” Moloney said. “People are keeping their spacing.”

Paul Vigliante, who owns Branch Funeral Homes in Miller Place and Smithtown along with his family, said his locations too have been limited in the number of people who can attend services. These, he added, have been for the most part limited to one a day. They have also set up live streaming of the services through Zoom for extended family and friends, which “has worked well so far.”

Vigliante said they have cleaning staff on hand seven days a week and have worked not just to protect the people coming to grieve but staff as well. The owners have also encouraged mourners to stay six feet apart from each other, even in the chapel.

“It’s a truly heartbreaking time,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can to allow families that time to grieve … It’s very difficult. It’s unfortunate the circumstances we’re living through.”

Despite the hardship of putting off a full service for her father, Sciara still marveled at the work and professionalism of everyone she’s interacted with, from the staff at the nursing home to the funeral home to the church. 

“They were willing to do whatever we wanted to do,” she said. “It’s brought out a whole lot of good. It’s incredible how people are still coming together.”