Episode 11: Jim Benuska on Funeral Home practice and celebrations of life during the pandemic
Jim Benuska works as a funeral home director at Tezak Funeral Home in Joliet, IL. He joins the Hospice Chaplaincy hosts to talk about funeral home practice during COVID-19. With the COVID-19 outbreak across the United States, funeral directors face challenging times as visitations, funerals and burial services are restricted. In just the past month, everyone has witnessed how the pandemic has uprooted the rituals that we need and cherish when we lose loved ones.
Over the past week, the obituary pages of area newspapers have become a haunting litany of “memorial service to be held at a later date,” “no services,” and “services canceled due to COVID-19.” To be sure, this is our new normal, but for funeral directors dealing with the day-to-day business of life and death, the coronavirus and social distancing era has changed the way they help people grieve, and how funeral homes host celebrations of life.