In a normal month, Symonds’ Funeral Home in north suburban Highwood handles five to eight funerals.
As the COVID-19 pandemic peaked here in May, that number jumped to 44.
The vast majority of those were COVID cases, said Irving Symonds III, the second-generation funeral home operator who is only just now starting to see his workload ease slightly.
“It’s still busy. It’s not like what it was. We really got slammed,” said Symonds, who spent much of May with families lined up outside his office door seeking to make arrangements while he got only three hours sleep per night trying to keep up with the work.
As Illinois continues with its reopening process and life returns to some semblance of normal, it would be a tragedy if people failed to keep in mind that what we’ve been dealing with is real — and continues to be real.
And I can’t think of any place better to bring home that point than a funeral home, where death gets about as real as real can get.
“We’re the last responders,” said Symonds, drawing on a reference to his profession that has been popularized during this pandemic.
Indeed, funeral home operators have been very much on the frontlines of dealing with COVID-19, just not in a lifesaving capacity.
That has made this a difficult three-month stretch for Symonds and his colleagues as they have picked up bodies from nursing homes and hospitals and witnessed the despair of others suffering from the illness.
“A lot of times we would leave the nursing home feeling huge heartbreak,” Symonds said.
Funeral homes also are dealing with families of the deceased who have been suffering more than normal because of the restrictions necessitated by the disease.
“People in the beginning were very, very frustrated. They couldn’t get into nursing homes to see loved ones. They couldn’t see their families,” Symonds said.
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Most of the funerals Symonds has been handling are for people living in nursing homes where the infection rate is much higher than in the general public.
His funeral home receives a greater share of those cases because it is one of the relatively few in his area to accept Illinois Medicaid for payment, he said.
The advanced age of most COVID victims is no consolation.
One of the funerals he handled was for a 101-year-old World War II veteran who Symonds knew personally.
If not for the coronavirus, the man “would have been around for a long time,” Symonds said. “He was a health food nut. He was in good, good shape.”
Symonds took my call after finishing with a burial service at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery near Joliet, relishing the opportunity to enjoy the nature walk there.
In addition to the Highwood location, Symonds said his family operates a small funeral home in the city on the Northwest Side and another in Grayslake. They also have a crematorium in Villa Park that handled 427 cremations in May, up from the usual 250-275 per month, he said.
Although Symonds must take every precaution on the job, treating every deceased person as a possible COVID victim, he says, “I’m not going to let it rule my life.”
At work for him, that means wearing full PPE from the time they pick up the body. But he says he’s not going to be one of those people who won’t come out of their houses.
My purpose is not to scare anybody here. Symonds says we in the media have been doing too much of that.
Nor is this an argument against reopening the economy. It’s definitely time to move in that direction, although it would sure be nice if folks took the precautions of facemasks and social distancing more seriously, if only as a courtesy to others. How that became a political statement may be the biggest indicator of just how screwed up we are.
But I’m not giving up on spreading the idea that COVID-19 remains serious business, even as we redirect our attention to pre-existing societal ills.
“There’s no other way to say it other than it’s real,” Symonds said. “People need to take it seriously, although I know there are many people who don’t.”
“If they won’t listen to a doctor, maybe they’ll listen to an undertaker.”
