The Pandemic on the Final Front

Understanding the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of a mortician

By: Martin Hendrickson

When the bubonic plague infected medieval Europe, plague doctors carried their dead on carts and buried them in mass graves. In 1918, the Spanish flu infected the United States at such a speed that morticians couldn’t bury the bodies fast enough. Victims would sometimes be wrapped in sheets and left out in the cold for collection. In 2022, two years after the onset of the pandemic, the world is still dealing with COVID-19. As of the end of January 2022, the virus has claimed around 900,000 lives. Hospitals and clinics are dealing with waves of cases that tragically end in death. Although the pandemic has been detrimental to the economy, COVID-19 has been quite profitable for mortuary businesses. However, morticians around the nation continue to deal with the pandemic’s worst effects, seeing the statistics with their own eyes.

Oliver Perkins, a student at the University of Minnesota and self-proclaimed “last responder,” has worked throughout the pandemic, continuously dealing with COVID-19 victims. Perkins has been working for funeral homes and morgues since before the pandemic. The changes his morgue had to make were immediate.“You couldn’t have funerals at first,” Perkins said. “It was direct cremation because we didn’t know if we’d get contaminated or not.” The funeral services that Perkins attended were full of people who did everything they could to prevent the spread. “They had gloves, masks, sanitizer, everything. They were very angry environments.” The pandemic has made it so that the loved ones of the deceased have no choice in how they have closure.“We’d have drive-by funerals and live stream services,” Perkins said. “You could have only ten people at funerals, but usually families are bigger than that.”

Perkins decided to become a mortician because he holds a deep respect for the dead. “I'm a caretaker, and I want to make sure I can do everything in my power to give a grieving family a comfortable and loving space to say goodbye to their loved one,” he said. What Perkins realized was that the COVID-19 victims in his care had more life to live. “I always read their obituaries and memorials,” he said. “They were all people who had lives and people who loved them. They had careers and dreams, and they died abruptly.” Along with funeral procedures, morgues had to take extra precautions to ensure their safety. Despite the measures that were taken, Perkins and his coworkers fear that they could become the bodies they take care of. “We know that it’s a very active virus. It’s over our heads constantly, and we don’t want to be next.”

During Perkins’ time at the morgue, the number of people with COVID-19-related deaths was alarming, “At this time last year, I’d say one in four people in our care were COVID-related.”  In recent weeks, Perkins says it’s been as many as one in three. It’s become so overwhelming that the morgue has been at full capacity. “Our funeral home had an overflow of people. We’ve always had backup, but our backup is getting backed up,” Perkins said. The increased number of bodies isn’t something that’s only affecting morgues locally—it’s a national concern. “We morticians are a small group, so we know one another, we talk about what's been going on, and we’re all in the same boat, cleaning up the mess from this pandemic.” Some of Perkins’ coworkers have had to travel to California to help morgues that have experienced an overflow of bodies, storing some in outdoor coolers. 

The pandemic has made Perkins frustrated, feeling that the people he’s taking care of could’ve lived longer. “It’s leaving me with a lot of bitterness. I'm angry at people because these lives could’ve been saved.” Perkins fears that COVID-19 is an issue that will never go away, putting him and his coworkers at risk. “We’ll never not see COVID again—there’s no escape.” Perkins believes that the solution is for people to get vaccinated and do what they can to slow the spread. “We are all in this together and we can only end the pandemic if we work together.”