​What to Do When a Funeral is Not Possible

Use the ideas here to create meaningful ways to honor the dying, the deceased, and the bereaved while physically distant. What you chose to do to honor and mourn a death during this difficult circumstance may provide an important foundation for how your family and community grows stronger going forward.

On This Page

• Overviews and Ready-Made Resources
• Creating memorials and rituals
• ​Using virtual video platforms in lieu of gathering​

Overviews & Ready-Made Resources
General Guidance On Home Funerals and Virtual Funerals:

• Home Funerals Guides and Pandemic Care, video by seasoned home funeral guides and progressive funeral directors, featured in Newsweek
• Postponed Funerals, video guidance from Josh Slocum, Funeral Consumers Alliance 
• Dying & Caring for the Dying at Home, print-at-home booklet from A Sacred Passing
• Loving, Living & Dying During COVID-19, 1-page guide from Minnesota Death Collaborative & others
• Dancing with the Bones: Distanced Grieving, tools for showing up grounded and calm from Dina Stander

Video Platforms for Virtual Funeral and Memorial Ceremonies: Funeral homes may offer online platforms for virtual funeral and memorial ceremonies. Other independent vendors and community-based resources are moving quickly to offer structured support as well. Two examples:

• Gathering Us: Virtual Interactive Funeral Service & Reception platform
• Your End of Life Guide: Support & Virtual Options for After-Death Services & Ceremonies

​Collective Memorial Rituals 

• Memorial for Us All: Weekly online community remembrance concerts “honoring and celebrating those who have left us too soon” produced by the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and interfaith communities in NYC. Submit names.
• Faces of COVID:  A Twitter account publishing stories of those who died from COVID in the belief that "They were more than a statistic." Submit a story.

Sample Ceremonial Content to Adapt 
The following websites offer free ceremonial resources, such as poems, songs, hymns, quotations, prayers, and other elements for families to use in physically-distanced ceremonies now or ceremonies deferred to a later time:

• The Inspired Funeral
• Funeral Helper
• Creative Funeral Ideas
• Short, focused rituals designed for small groups from Memoriam Services
• Here’s a set of questions to inform a eulogy that can also be used to inspire shared story-telling about a family or community member before or after their death
• Visit our How to Create Ceremony page for general guidance you can adapt, including economical options to a paid newspaper obituary (see Public Announcements of the Death)
• Visit our Practical Guidelines page for a listing of organizations that provide general deathcare information; some offer directories of local practitioners should you want more personalized support 

Ritual and Ceremony Along the Spectrum of Time
Even in the best of times, no one ritual or ceremony meets every need. Consider simple, thoughtful ways to honor the dying, the deceased, and the bereaved even without physical presence:

• In anticipation of a death
• When death occurs 
• At the time of burial or cremation
• Down the line when gathering in groups is possible

 
Ideas for What You Can Do Apart/ Together (scroll down for links to other organizations' tips)

• Organize ways for your family and community to connect online
• Where folks don't have internet access or prefer not to use online connection platforms, consider synchronized actions that everyone can do at the same time in dispersed locations: for example, lighting a candle, reciting a poem or prayer, singing a song or playing a piece of music, everyone stepping outside (or opening a window) to speak a name aloud
• Find creative ways to be close without physical proximity, to be in touch without touching, to gather with meaning and love
• Explore connection through holding hands over hearts, eye contact, speaking from inner calm
• Where possible, work to slow down and open hearts to create a sacred place of honor within the larger context of societal and personal crisis
• Create a round-robin process through email or phone/video chats to involve other loved ones in story-telling about the person being honored:
  • Inspiration: A customized Litany of Remembrance that captures the details of a personality in a collective pledge to keep their memory alive
  • Inspiration: Bill’s story where an online process helped his community distill and communicate the gifts of his life and blessings for his dying time
  • Inspiration: A eulogy for a father who died without a funeral or memorial service, composed 10 years later using condolence notes collected at the time of his death
• Create a quiet ritual that can be done solo or within your household, perhaps using a physical artifact from the person’s life, or dedicating a space in your dwelling or yard to honoring them:
  • Inspiration: Peggy’s story of a solo walk into the woods to memorialize her father
  • Inspiration: Amber’s story of a nature walk coinciding with the time of her father’s cremation
  • Inspiration: David’s story of his widow creating a place of remembrance for him in her new house
  • Inspiration: John’s story of folding origami cranes to honor victims of war, continued through his own dying time
• Planning in-person memorials for a future time when folks can gather in person once more may provide some comfort and focus, even if logistical details remain uncertain:
  • Inspiration: Caity’s story of involving her community to honor her mother’s cremated remains in dispersed locations (cremated remains are sterile)
  • Inspiration: Charlotte’s story of spending a year helping her mother plan a memorial celebration for her stepfather eight years after he died
  • Inspiration: Kathy’s story of a memorial “re-do” 19 years after her mother’s death

Ideas Compiled by Other Sources

• Ritual and Grief in the time of COVID-19 blog post from the Conversation Project
• When You Can’t Be With A Dying Family Member from What's Your Grief
• Funerals & Dying in Absentia: Inspiration & Tips During COVID-19 from The Order of the Good Death
• Virtual Funerals During the Pandemic video by Life-Cycle Celebrant Sarah Jane
• Creative (Tactile) Rituals for Death in the Times of COVID-19 video from Australian designer Pia Interlandi
• Funerals During The Coronavirus Pandemic Happen In Parking Lots, By Livestream, ideas from a Canadian death doula and a funeral director
• Distance Funerals, Complicated Grief: Gathering to grieve during COVID19, webinar hosted by the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab
• Grieving Our Collective Loss—One Stitch at a Time, essay by Kari Nixon describing use of textiles in mourning (YES Magazine, May 1, 2020)
• Death, Grief, and Funerals in the COVID age, a “white paper” compiled by The Virtual Funeral Collective