Things Really Are That Bad

On Monday, I repeated news heard on the radio and reported in the New York Post that there were plans to bury coffins temporarily in trenches dug in city parks. The news seemed so grisly, like something from a developing country or another century, that I was relieved to hear Governor Andrew Cuomo say, when asked about it, that he had heard a lot of wild rumors but nothing like that. Although the image that the report conjured up in my mind of trenches dug in Central Park is not accurate (the proposed site is a city-owned island in the Bronx), there is truth to the story. This morning NPR had this report: "Pandemic Overwhelms NYC's System for Handling Its Dead."

The Gossips post on Monday inspired a reader, currently living with his family in their second home in the Berkshires, to share his family's experience following the death of his wife's father in New York City. The reader gave me his permission to retell his story. 

His wife's father, who lived on the Upper West Side, passed away on Monday morning. He described dealing with the medical examiner's office as a "surreal nightmare," but they finally succeeded in getting the body picked up. They then learned that no funeral home could cremate the body for at least thirty days, and the medical examiner's office would only hold the body for five days. They were told by the medical examiner, "If no one claims the body in five days, we'll bury him in a field." 

They contacted a funeral home here in Hudson, hoping for a more normal process, but were told that the funeral home was receiving so many bodies from New York City that they could not help them.

Arrangements were ultimately made with a funeral home in Manhattan, which will embalm the body and cremate it when they can. When they asked where the body would be kept while awaiting cremation, they were told "the city morgue," which, said the reader, "I believe during these times is nothing more than the back of a massive truck."

The father did not die of COVID-19. He was 91 years old and died of natural causes. Still his death can be seen as a consequence of the pandemic. He had stopped eating and taking his medication--something that likely would not have happened in normal circumstances. The reader told me, "My wife was about to get in our car and return to NYC to be by her father's side, knowing she would not be able to come back to us." News of her father's death came before she could do that.