Sudbury funeral home offering modified services due to COVID-19 pandemic

A funeral home in Sudbury has made some changes in how it conducts funerals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Only ten people are allowed at a time into the chapel and everyone has to be six feet apart at the Lougheed Funeral Home. Owner Gerry Lougheed says for now, a traditional funeral can no longer happen.

"So whether that would be a visitation, whether that would be a service from the chapel, whether that would be a committal service at the cemetery," he said.

"By and large, we've eliminated the capacity of having community neighbours, friends [and] colleagues coming together for a visitation." 

Lougheed says his staff have been trained on how to direct people to keep their distance and will no longer be doing simple things such as helping to hang up coats. He says they also have live streaming of their chapel service so that any family member or friend can watch from a distance.

"We have to modify the funerals," he explained. "We're certainly not having the gatherings, but allowing people to say goodbye to people they love I think is very important to the mourning process."

He says they are also prepared for the possibility of dealing with a COVID-19 death. He says all funeral directors are licensed and trained to deal with any deceased who may have died from the virus. 

"None of my staff want to be sick, and as their employer I don't want them to be sick," he said.

"So everybody that we attend, everybody that we serve, yes we are gowned, yes we have the gloves, we have the masks, we have the footwear that nobody is being made sick because they come to work."

Lougheed says many people are choosing to cremate their loved one now and then have a full funeral or celebration of life once people can gather again in one place.