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In Pandemic, More People in US Choose to Die at Home

Associated Press

   MISSION, KANSAS - Mortuary owner Brian Simmons has been making more
   trips to homes to pick up bodies to be cremated and embalmed since the
   pandemic hit.

   With COVID-19 devastating communities in Missouri, his two-person crews
   regularly arrive at homes in the Springfield area and remove bodies of
   people who decided to die at home rather than spend their final days in
   a nursing home or hospital with visitations prohibited during the
   pandemic.

   He understands all too well why people are choosing to die at home: His
   own 49-year-old daughter succumbed to the coronavirus just before
   Christmas at a Springfield hospital, where the family only got phone
   updates as her condition deteriorated.

   "The separation part is really rough, rough, rough," Simmons said. "My
   daughter went to the hospital and we saw her once through the glass
   when they put her on the ventilator, and then we never saw her again
   until after she died."

   Across the country, terminally ill patients -- both with COVID-19 and
   other diseases -- are making similar decisions and dying at home rather
   than face the terrifying scenario of saying farewell to loved ones
   behind glass or during video calls.

   "What we are seeing with COVID is certainly patients want to stay at
   home," said Judi Lund Person, the vice president for regulatory
   compliance at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.
   "They don't want to go to the hospital. They don't want to go to a
   nursing home."

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