Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By: Kaitlin Holley

Due to the coronavirus, local funeral homes are following new directives sent out by the Alabama Department of Public Health. People who have lost loved ones will have to be forced with more trauma of not having a funeral service.

ADPH informed all funeral home owners with a COVID-19 Advisory Planning Form on March 27.

Joey Evans,  owner of Evans Funeral Home in Florala said he will be following all the rules that the state of Alabama has instructed.

“We are limited to 10 and under and we keep practicing social distancing.  We are talking to funeral homes and seeing what they are doing,” Evans said. “We have not been doing any visitations and we have only been having graveside services.”

Kym Keahey owner of Keahey Funeral Home is practicing safety as well.

“We place the register book on the porch and have hand sanitizer at the book for people to use after signing. The break room is closed so we don’t have coffee or water available like we normally would,” Keahey said.

Keahey Funeral Home said they will be live streaming funeral services.

“We will also offer live streaming of the services for the families and have them recorded,” Keahey said. “The service will be available for loved ones and friends to watch when they login to their zoom account. Skip Enzor will be conducting this service and we have talked about several plans for live streaming as well. We are working on where we can have a set time for visitation and you can see on the screen who all is making comments to the family.”

Even though they are providing the live stream service, they will still be abiding by the rules.

“We have been doing graveside funerals as well as people choosing that service,” Keahey said. “We still can only have ten people there.”