Daily Times

Funeral director Hasina Zaman recently helped a family say goodbye to a young man in his 30s who had died from Covid-19, on the same day she was planning a service for a husband and wife, both also lost to the virus.

Since the pandemic struck, Zaman’s phone has rarely stopped ringing, with bereaved people seeking help that she is not always able to provide.

“Every week I think I don´t have what it takes,” said Zaman, whose company Compassionate Funerals serves a multicultural, multi-faith community in east London. The small firm normally arranges about five funerals a week, but Covid-19 has driven the number as high as 20.

“We just do it,” Zaman said. “Literally just hands-on approach and just go for it and do it. And it´s not sustainable. It´s definitely not sustainable, because it´s not healthy.”

Funeral home staff are under pressure in many places, but the burden is especially intense in Britain, where more than 115,000 people with the virus have died, one of the highest per capita death tolls in the world. Undertakers, embalmers and others who deal with death for a living often regard the pressure on them as less important than the pain felt by bereaved families. But many are exhausted by the sheer amount of mortality they have faced, and the pandemic is increasing awareness that their own mental health also deserves tending to.