Funeral Homes Reopen to 50 Or Less With COVID-19 Guidelines

Funeral homes across the metro reopened Friday with some new COVID-19 precautions.

Marcus Crawford with Crawford Family Funeral Centers said COVID-19 social distancing guidelines has forced both their services and families to get creative to allow grieving to happen.

"We're still doing funerals, starting to be more normal, but it's going to be limited participation still,” Crawford said.

Under phase 2 guidelines - 50 people or fewer can now gather inside for a service with sanitization requirements.

However, at the end of March, funeral services were forced to close their doors and just two weeks ago no more than 10 were allowed at a service.

"One of the hardest things we've seen is while people were hospitalized, in a care facility - then they would die, and their family were not allowed to be with them. We want to do everything in our power to allow the family to have closure,” Crawford said.

Crawford said they've implemented webcasting and Facebook live, signing online registries, wearing face masks, maintaining social distancing by spacing chairs, complete sanitizations between groups.

Some families have been using drive by services - others have put balloons on each empty chair.

"At the end of the day, what we are here for is to allow the people to grieve and to grieve appropriately and the service we're still able to allow them to participate in is what starts the healing,” Crawford said.