Covid19 Part XV - 15,251 in ROI (610 deaths) 2,645 in NI (194 deaths) (19/04) Read OP

Cremations now taking four to five weeks the horrors inflicted upon the families of coronavirus victims have shocked this Cork funeral director.

Pelham Funeral Home in New York, owned for the past six years by Ballinhassig, County Cork native Clive Anderson, recorded a new business record during the first 11 days of April 2020. The home in Westchester County, about 40 minutes north of Manhattan, conducted more funeral services in those 11 days than the first three months of the year combined.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the deceased died from the coronavirus; the first New York cluster in March occurred in New Rochelle, less than three miles from Pelham. And Anderson, a 17-year resident of the U.S. who learned his trade at the Mount Ida College mortuary school in Newton, Massachusetts, has no interest in setting any more records because of the suffering endured by the families of the deceased is too great.

“We are absolutely swamped,” Anderson told the Irish Voice on Tuesday. “We are a small boutique funeral home that pays attention to every detail, all the small things, and now we’ve gone from that to getting about 40 calls a day. We just can’t take them all. And it’s not just our home. It’s all of them.”