7. On The Exigencies of a Zoom Funeral in a Time of Epidemic.

Dearly Beloved,

In May 2020 I experienced the Funeral on Zoom of Jill, the second wife of my brother in law. The service itself took place in New Zealand but was contributed to, on screen, by mourners in Paris, London, Cambridge, the East Coast and Mid West of the USA.

The first question was how to dress. Wearing a suit prevents you looking on screen as if you are lounging around at home watching a football match rather than mourning someone's death and participating in the final goodbye to a beloved friend or relative. As I was changing into a dark suit, tie and white shirt.   I thought at first "why am I doing this, it's ridiculous?" But finally I realised that I was suitably dressed to enter what was still a formal and a religious space although it was only experienced on a computer screen. Jill was widely praised for her "style" in dress and attitude to life . And when her son said "Jill would have hated a Zoom funeral because no one would wear a suit" I felt justified.

Experiencing a funeral on the internet via Zoom suffers from the anonymity of distance but that anonymity is almost violently juxtaposed with the intense intimacy of mourners who break down in the middle of their eulogy, within a few centimeters of the camera on their laptop or desktop computer. That experience is quickly followed by the realisation that it is not possible to stretch out a comforting arm or hand to someone whose emotions one is sharing so intimately but who is 4,000 miles away. In this way, we human beings are challenged to respond to people who are far away whilst being very close perhaps both emotionally and visually. Despite these problems I would rather have been a virtual mourner on Zoom than merely hearing about it second or third hand perhaps days or weeks afterwards.

We humans are social beings yet we suffer social spacing during this time of Covid-19 whilst, at the same time, modern technology collapses our normal ideas about time, space and intimacy. So too do the exigencies of religious belief; this was a Jewish funeral but we were united in our humanity and by the Abrahamic roots of our faiths.

Peace,

Paul.

Original published 26 May 2020



Melchizedek and Abraham.
Diertric Bouts the Elder, Church of Saint Peter, Leuvan, Belgium.

Public Domain






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