PHILADELPHIA _ Preston Griffin never sleeps. Not really. Even when he sneaks a nap, his iPhone, set at maximum volume, is angled on the pillow, brushing his earlobe. He can't miss the customized ringtone. The first note blares, and Griffin hops up. A funeral home director is on the line.
He listens to the scant details. Someone just died in a nursing home. A hospital. A home. The funeral director tells him if the coronavirus was to blame. Sometimes, it's a mystery.
It could be 6 p.m. or 3 a.m. No matter. Griffin's drill begins. He reaches toward the long, organized row of dark colored suits, shirts and pre-tied ties hanging on a rack nearby. He gets dressed at Army-pace speed. Within minutes, he's out the door of his West Oak Lane home and into his black Yukon Denali _ with a mask, gown, booties, and gloves on the passenger seat, two stretchers and maroon colored body bags in the back. And he heads out into the night.
Time to collect one more body. One more life gone.
"It's not a job for everyone," he said. "But it's a part of life. It's the end of life. I want to make sure that families know their person is taken care of, that I'll be gentle with their loved one."
Almost all funeral directors know Griffin as the dapper, soft-spoken, sensitive, slender guy who represents them in life's darkest hour. And families who encounter him, even in their grief-soaked fog, remember him fondly. Because the pandemic has robbed families of traditional funerals, even in non-coronavirus deaths, Griffin often becomes the face of their final goodbye.
"I didn't know Preston personally, but I remember him because he was just so nice to us," said Elaine Mann, whose mom, Daisy Hill, died from Alzheimer's disease at the age of 88 on the night of April 29.
At 10:30 p.m., the house on Wingohocking Street in Philadelphia's Logan neighborhood was packed. Hill had 10 children, nine surviving, 45 grandchildren and more than 60 great-grands. Two of Mann's brothers wanted to help Griffin wheel their mom's body to his truck. Griffin agreed. "I have no problem with that," Griffin recalled telling them.
"He does that all day, every day," Mann said. "He made it look easy."
Griffin, a 42-year-old single father of two and staff sergeant in the Army reserves, had grown accustomed to his "jump and go" mortuary transport job. But since the pandemic, the number of pickups has tripled. "It's constant," he said. "I'm so busy, I don't have time to think."
But when he takes a moment to reflect, he feels vulnerable like most in America these days. "It makes you think about your life," he said. "That it's short, that it's unpredictable."
Funeral homes used to do a lot of the pickups themselves. But now they call on Griffin more often. West Laurel Hill Cemetery and Funeral Home in Bala Cynwyd relies on him exclusively.
"I was trying to protect my funeral directors as much as possible," said Patricia Quigley, West Laurel Hill funeral director. "And I know Preston is professional. He's a sweetheart. He's got the perfect temperament for this. It's the most intimate moment with the family. They have lost their most precious person and you are the first person allowed to come into that space.
"I would send him to pick up my own mother," she said.
Before the pandemic, Griffin almost always met the family of the dead wherever the end came. "You could tell so much about how someone was loved," he said. "Sometimes, people grab me by the arm and tell me, 'Please don't take him away.' I end up putting the person back down so they can be with their loved one for five more minutes or so. I can't rush them."
But those face-to-face meetings haven't happened for about two months, because relatives are not permitted inside nursing homes or hospitals. "It's strange," Griffin said. "It's weird. I walk into a room and there's no family. Just a person.
"No one could be there for these people. Husbands, wives, kids, nobody is there when they pass. They're alone and that really hurts me."
One morning early this month was unusual. Two pickups, neither coronavirus-related. "Surprisingly," he said. Either way, Griffin, dressed in a charcoal gray suit, takes the same precautions, treating each case as though it might be infectious.
His first assignment took him from Chestnut Hill Hospital to the Deborah L. Wilson Funeral Home in Germantown. He got out of his truck with the body of an elderly woman in the back, and Debora Wilson-Bailey was on the sidewalk to greet him. "I'm calling him around the clock," she said. "I don't know what I'd do without him."
She said she worries for Griffin because he's walking into so many hospitals and nursing homes where people have succumbed to the coronavirus. "He keeps going," she said. "He's like a clock. He just keeps on ticking."
Griffin disinfects all his equipment at the end of each job. For the second trip, he pulled into The Hearth at Drexel, an assisted living facility in Bala Cynwyd. He slipped inside, wheeling the stretcher. About 15 minutes passed.
Suddenly the door opened, and nurses and relatives of the deceased stood near the exit door in a semi-circle, their eyes somber and teary above their masks. Then Griffin appeared, wearing a yellow gown, mask, gloves, and booties, pushing the stretcher with the 88-year-old man inside a body bag, with a colorful blanket on top.
Griffin inched toward his truck, as if he were guiding a military funeral procession.
His pace was deliberate. While first responders work at a frantic pace to save lives, Griffin, a last responder, always takes a slow walk away.
"That's the first time I've seen a family at a nursing home in two months," he said, before taking the man's body to West Laurel Hill Funeral Home. "I'm glad they were there. They know I'm taking care of their loved ones. I like the family to see me. I feel as though there's a mystery when they're not here."
Later that afternoon, a Hearth employee called West Laurel Hill Funeral Home and left a message: The person who picked up the body was "absolutely wonderful."
Quigley, the West Laurel Hill funeral director, often marvels at the calls she receives about Griffin.
"Who calls to thank you for the pick-up guy?" she asked. "It's just not something you hear."
