Death effects us all at some point in our life, dealing with the loss of a loved one is hard to deal with. Adding a pandemic to the mix can make dealing with the loss of a loved one almost impossible now. With the initial impact of covid the viewing and attendance size of funeral services were reduced to just 10 people. It has been a difficult adjustment period with creating the new normal as we live with covid. The Funeral industry has had one of the hardest adjustments, and is still being worked on. Business’s and families alike being affected.

D.S. Temrowski & Sons Funeral Home and Cremation Services is located in Warren MI, and is a family owned funeral home. It’s run by Dan and Dave Temrowski and their incredible staff. Before covid hit, an average month of services for the Temrowski’s would be 30-35 services, during February they did 60-65 funerals alone. April through May they saw the most business they’ve seen in a long time. “I hate wearing my mask but, I’d rather be part of the solution than the problem. Not one of these Karen’s at Target,” Dan said. Dan talked to me a lot about how sad it was to see these families not being able to see their loved ones, and some of them can’t even bury them.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have Rewalt-Peshek Funeral Home & Cremation Services. Trent Peshek owner of Rewalt-Peshek tends to the business himself. Rewalt-Peshek is located in the small community of Richmond, his business dropped drastically due to covid. He had less funerals and visitations, and did mostly direct burials and immediate cremations. Peshek is down over half of what his projected numbers were last year. He updated his funeral home recently with new camera equipment to livestream the services that he does get. But that’s made him come out of pocket even more, when his wallet is strapped tightly enough as it is.

Finally there’s Lennox Cremation Services of Michigan, of Casco MI. As the name entails, Lennox is 100% cremation based. With the rise of covid cremations have seen an increase, in the early stages of a disease it’s common for the bodies to be burned rather than risk spread of infection. The cremation floor of Lennox was a “mess” as Harms put it while they were in the middle of adding a new cremator. “During the heat of the pandemic, so March, April, May was crazy times. This machine was being ran 24 hours a day. They’re designed where you can run them 24 hours a day, but they’re not designed to run 24 hours a day seven days a week for three months solid. And, I ran it that hard every single day,” Harms said. The door of the old cremator was on the verge of melting, so Craig ran an air compressor on the door while it ran. The first cremator is only three and a half years old, there shouldn’t be a need for replacement unless there are dire circumstances like these.

This story is something that is going to stick with me for the rest of my life. I learned a lot of what goes on behind the scenes of funerals and funeral homes and I have a new respect for this industry. It takes a lot to go out of the way and deal with death in a normal setting and make sure that our loved ones are presented in a proper manner so we can say goodbye. Doing this while risking your own life is crazy, and something I couldn’t do. I’m thankful for the work that each and everyone of these hard working individuals do on a day to day basis.