Funeral homes struggle to keep up with COVID-19 demands and comfort grieving families

(FOX 2) - First responders are certainly at risk for being exposed to the coronavirus – but our last and final responders are putting themselves at risk, too.

“It's a scary thing. I've been at this over 50 years and nothing has scared me like this scares me,” said John Wilk from Wessels and Wilk funeral home in Pleasant Ridge and David Wysocki Funeral Home in Warren.

Those on the last lines of COVID-19, funeral home workers, being hit too

We talk with some funeral home employees in metro Detroit as they struggle to keep up with the deaths from COVID-19.

Wilk says they’ve been inundated with death calls lately.

“The hospitals are overrun; the morgues are overrun; the crematories are overrun,” he said.

Wilk says the services they have are limited to ten people and the cemeteries are limiting how many can attend graveside services. Being together to grieve in this COVID-19-stricken world is nearly impossible.

“As they were placing it in the crypt the family and I said prayers but we had to stay away,” said Wilk. “The intimacy is gone for sure.”

In a business dedicated to caring for the dead and comforting those left behind, it's now increasingly difficult to do so. So many traditions have had to be set aside.

“Everything is done with precautions for the people that are handling the bodies and the caskets,” said Wilk. “If we're going to prepare somebody or something it's like Hazmat suits; we have to take above and beyond universal precautions just to make sure that we don't come down with it.”

Because, Wilk says, he personally knows a colleague who did and didn't make it.

“He probably got it from somebody that he was taking care of and he ended up dying. He was only 52 years old so it hits us as well.”

And it's hitting other funeral homes as well.

At O.H. Pye they've gone from 25 funerals a week to 75. At one point they were so full they couldn't take any more bodies. They've also had to add refrigerated units.

And they, too, have had to mourn their own.

“Our overnight person passed away and her husband, so their children are burying both parents,” said Kellee Miller from O.H. Pye.

“There's a lot of fear; there’s a lot of anxiety; there's a lot of worry; there’s a lot of people that are anxious because of the unknown,” she added.

“You can't stress it enough: these people that don't think that it's a danger - they're fooling themselves,” Wilk said.