There are 48 bodies in the basement of the funeral home in Harlem. Forty are in cardboard boxes, ready for cremation. The other eight are in the refrigerator, to be embalmed and buried. It will be weeks or months before they get either.
As health officials began burying COVID-19 victims in a mass grave on Hart Island during New York’s worst week of death, the four female undertakers at the International Funeral & Cremation Service started turning bodies away.
On the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, nurses and doctors are caring for the living. But there is another front line of those caring for the dead. They fear they can also get infected and die. Some of them have sent their own children to live with relatives. And because American cities like New York were never designed to dispose of so many dead, their call of duty will last much longer.
“Today kind of broke my heart,” says Jenny, 36. “She needs her mom. She don’t need Jenny the funeral director.” Alisha Narvaez, 36, the manager and Nicole Warring, 33, a Resident Funeral Director at International Funeral & Cremation Services, a funeral home in Harlem, carry a deceased person into the basement area, where bodies are stored and prepared for funeral services, during the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S., April 2, 2020. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
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Dealing with the dead: the female undertakers of HarlemThere are 48 bodies in the basement of the funeral home in Harlem. Forty are in cardboard boxes, ready for cremation. The other eight are in the refrigerator, to be embalmed and buried. It will be weeks or months before they get either.
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