LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS
I’m a Funeral Director. The Coronavirus Has Changed Everything.
The way New York City buries its dead is different now, regardless of whether people were killed by the disease
Life in the Time of the Coronavirus is a GEN series where we are interviewing people across the country who have had their lives upended or are experiencing the stress of the unknown.
Amy Cunningham, 64, is the owner of Fitting Tribute Funeral Services, based in Brooklyn. She and her team provide eco-friendly burials and witnessed cremations, but in the past few weeks, she has had to shift the way she works, using synthetic burial bags, providing socially distanced funerals, and consulting the bereaved over video chat.
Im m an eco-friendly funeral director, which means that I manage green burials, often upstate in rural cemeteries, with the body on a burial board, wrapped solely in a cotton burial shroud. Now, two or three weeks into the coronavirus pandemic, I have a new way of functioning. I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time during this tragic moment in American history. People need a kind soul to guide them through the experience of planning an unanticipated funeral. I also help them understand they won’t…
