Buck
“People ask all the time about our Care Center – some people call it an embalming room. How could you do that? Isn’t that weird or strange? To be able to give a loved one dignity and give them back to their family with respect and in a way that demonstrates they were treated with love and kindness as a human being…those small moments are something that send you home feeling good at the end of the day.”
The funeral home was stark; empty spots spanned the parking lot and, except for a family of five – the maximum attendees for an in-person service – sitting across from one another in the lobby, there were only the hushed sounds of employees working through another routine day in a year when anything could hardly have been considered routine. Soon, the family would move into the chapel – a vacant room with pews roped off and seating safely spaced for an intimate, though distanced, service. Funeral homes during COVID-19 have seen their business triple across the country – working through a pandemic when death tolls have risen steadily for nearly a year. At French Funerals and Cremations, the over 100-year-old, family-owned funeral home in Albuquerque, the basic principles of compassion and comfort have remained a resolute vision in the midst of near universal loss: despite the circumstances, families would still have the opportunity to grieve, to remember a life well-lived, and to offer a final goodbye to someone they loved.
In 2001, Buck moved to Albuquerque from Reno, Nevada to attend UNM and pursue a degree in education. A week before his commencement, he began a part-time job at French. Not knowing much about the industry, he had anticipated only working to earn temporary income before ultimately continuing on with his planned career path as an educator. He was a driver – 24 years old – and responsible for meeting families at hospitals, nursing homes or residences and bringing bodies of loved ones back to the funeral home. Early on, Buck was transporting the body of an elderly woman when her husband of seventy years pulled Buck to the side and said, “please take care of my sweetheart.” Buck never did continue on with education. Instead, he began a decades long career at French, where he is now the General Manager, overseeing six different funeral homes, over fifty full-time staff and over twenty part-time staff.
In January, 2020, when the general population was only casually glancing at the news – curiously following a mysterious virus that was spreading alarmingly fast through an east-central Chinese province, French began intently tracking the spread of the illness, preparing for what it may become in the nearing months. As the virus spread though Italy – crippling the hospitals and mortuaries, it was clear that this would not be similar to the only comparable situation French knew to reference: the 2009 swine flu outbreak. While New Mexico stayed a relative island from COVID through early March, French employees had already started stocking PPE materials and supplies; the managers developed strategies to keep the staff safe, knowing that the number one priority would be to ensure the entire staff remained healthy and able to continue uninterrupted operations for when the inevitable would occur.
And, when the inevitable did occur and the death toll began to rise, French made a conscious decision that would provide a moment of critical respite to grieving families: to focus only on what they could say “yes” to. Through the COVID process, families had been dealing with ever-changing rules and regulations while loved ones grew sicker and sicker; to be met with “yes” rather than more restrictions was a basic offering French knew they could provide. As Buck explains, “Not only was saying ‘goodbye’ after death removed from families, but the opportunity to be with a loved one in their last moments was also removed.” With those opportunities lost in the final moments of life, Buck and his team focused on what was possible: when twenty people were allowed at an in-person service, they scheduled hour services, followed by an hour for cleaning and then reopened for another hour service – repeating this for hours, so that full families, many of whom had far more than 20 members, could attend services. Soon, when the restrictions tightened even further and services were limited to five people, virtual services began, but the opportunity for, at least, a small in-person farewell would always remain.
The pandemic has not only increased the amount of loss, but the type of loss. For the elderly, “the isolation and lockdown also contributed probably to a jump in the death rate,” Buck explains. “We’ve always called it the ‘broken heart syndrome.’ The passing of one spouse very closely followed by another. Many of the older people who have been removed from the supports that rallied their spirit and transferred to health, that has also been – non-scientific – but about equal to the number of COVID deaths.”
Through a year of uncertainty and effects still unseen, Buck and the French family have found a path of hope through this – moments of growth, as he calls them. The future of funerals will be essentially changed, and changed into something tending more to the positive. Even in the most unrestricted of traveling times, there have always been, and will always be, loved ones who cannot attend funeral services for someone they lost. Learning from – growing from – this experience, technology is now welcomed in funeral services as it has never been before. And the opportunities to say goodbye, to celebrate someone – to connect a final time – are forever expanded.
And, for Buck, while his role has grown since he was that 24-year-old driver, the purpose and meaning of his days are as personal as they were almost two decades ago. “Drive down Central Avenue and see how different Albuquerqueians are from each other,” he says. “But when it comes to the very human element of losing someone you love, it doesn’t matter the religion, the socio-economic or the cultural differences. Everyone is the same. They’re all hurting; they all love someone. It’s just nice to be able to do something for a human being who needs help. That’s why we’re all here.”
