I’m Afraid that People Will Get Used to Not Honoring The Dead
The coronavirus pandemic has already altered daily life beyond recognition. It will shape our lives for years to come, mostly in ways that are impossible to predict, let alone understand. Esquire asked twenty people to share their experiences in the first few months of the outbreak. Each of their first-person accounts is a reassurance that none of us are facing this alone. Check out the full list here.
Funeral directors are community people. We’ve always been that way, especially in the African-American community. I always say the leaders in the community are the doctor, the lawyer, the minister, and the funeral director.
It seems so impersonal now that we can’t see each other, we can’t touch one another, we can’t hug each other. We can’t even have a church service. If we do, there’s only ten people, and they’ve got to sit apart. You know, I’m afraid that if people get used to this, when their loved one dies, they’ll say, “Oh, just cremate them and we’ll call you later.” I tell families: Whether it be in your backyard or at the bar or at the funeral home—anywhere—celebrate their life in some way.
African-Americans make up:
14 percent of Michigan’s population
41 percent of its coronavirus-related deaths
Right now the political environment that we have—us versus them, and it’s happening to them so it won’t happen to us—has to change. I mean all over the world. I’m not trying to be profound here. I’m just trying to be real. My issues are your issues; your issues are my issues, especially when it comes to communicable disease.
Yesterday, there was a big protest in Lansing against Governor Whitmer by people who said that she’d taken away their freedoms. “Don’t tread on me” and all this kind of thing. They have no conception of my community, our lives in the city. All they know is “I live out here on five acres, and I can’t mow it. You’re stepping on my freedom!” Meanwhile, our people are dying because they have no choice. There may be ten members in one house. How do you tell somebody they’ve got to self-isolate when there’s multiple family members in one house?
We must talk to each other instead of being so separated, but that’s the political environment we’re in. We don’t even know our own neighbor, so we can’t detect if he or she is sick. Or you never noticed that they’re not out of the house. I think we need to get back to that. A lot more lives will be saved if we know our neighbor.
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