Palmdale Group: 10 person limit on funerals is leaving families ‘devastated’
The Central Coast’s largest funeral group has stopped listing upcoming funerals, cancelled its Anzac Day and is worried about Mother’s Day as restrictions leaves families `devastated’.
Central Coast
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The Palmdale Group has begun live streaming funerals and despite most devastated families accepting the restrictions around public gatherings, most people feel “it’s not the same”.
Palmdale general manager Lee Caddis said the funeral group, which included Palmdale Lawn Cemetery, Greenway Chapel at Green Point and Western Districts Memorial Park at Dubbo, has had to stop listing scheduled funerals online to avoid large numbers of people turning up un announced to pay their respects.
Instead she said funerals were being live-streamed with only nine members of the immediate family and a celebrant present to keep under the strict 10-person restrictions.
“(Live streaming) does make it easier but obviously it’s devastating for families,” she said.
Ms Caddis said the group had to stop listing scheduled funerals online because of the tragic deaths of a number of young people on the coast recently, which tended to attract large numbers of mourners.
“It’s only going to encourage people to come and the fact is, we’ve had police and rangers turn up here,” Ms Caddis said.
“It’s devastating for families, it’s hard enough for them to restrict who can attend.
“The live streaming does help but a lot of them don’t think it’s the same. Deep down they understand.”
Ms Caddis said a funeral service was a big part of the whole grief process; “it’s a finality and they can move on”.
The funerals at Greenway Chapel and Hillside Chapel at Green Point were streamed via private YouTube channels with families given a password for them to pass on to anyone they wanted to watch.
Palmdale Group services was filming its services before the coronavirus outbreak with families given a copy on a USB at no extra cost, which will continue.
Ms Caddis said outside funeral services people could still visit the graves and memorials of loved ones but the public gathering rules still applied.
This means members of the same household could gather but no more than two people from separate households.
Ms Caddis said the group had already cancelled its annual Anzac Day memorial service and fears “we will struggle on Mother’s Day”.
Traditionally Rotary Clubs handed out pancakes to grieving families coming to pay their respects to deceased mothers and grandmothers.
The pancakes have been cancelled and Ms Caddis said people would have to observe the social distancing and public gathering measures.
“We can’t compare it to anything because it’s never happened before,” she said.
“It’s going to be so different this year.”
Ms Caddis said with the public health orders changing constantly it was hard to plan ahead.
“We just have to be sympathetic to people,” she said.