NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Bahamas Christian Council President Bishop Delton Fernander yesterday encouraged the government to reconsider the restrictions related to funerals, citing grave psychological impact and lack of closure for grieving families.
“There has been no consultation between the government and the church right now,” he said.
“The last intervention we made just got us [a] 10-person increase.
“But I know a lot of people have the feeling that emotions run high in funerals and that’s why they are keeping us restricted.
“But we have proven over the time you have had the funeral ban; we have done memorials.”
According to the emergency orders, graveside service or interment with a maximum of 20 people, exclusive of the officiant and mortuary personnel, is allowed on New Providence, Abaco, mainland Eleuthera and mainland Exuma, though repasts and receptions remain banned.
Fernander continued: “If you are saying we can do a memorial and have a private burial, I think we can agree with that.
“But to give us nothing leaves us in a place where it is challenging.
“We have proven that there aren’t people crying over each other and the like when there is a memorial.
“The emotions really pour at the committal and it pours when there is a body in front of us.
“I believe that if we don’t deal with this, Dr [David] Allen was saying about dealing with grief and dealing with stress and the psychological component, that the psychological and spiritual components, if not paid attention [to], can be just as great as the economic fallout, the health fallout.
“We are at a place where people are starving themselves. He (Allen) did a wonderful paper as the chair of commission, talking about the link to this psychological frustration.
“Don’t you think we ought to address this, that this is very crucial?
“I applaud him (Allen) for using his tremendous skill and his team to analyze it and I believe that analysis should be taken seriously because here is one of us saying to us, saying there is an uptick in every category — abuse, murder, suicide, domestic abuse, domestic killings and attempted suicide.
“So, it speaks to a frustrated populous that seemingly has no place for release and until we address this, what can we expect?”
Fernander, who acts as a “frontline counselor”, said there are some who reach a breaking point due in part because of the frustration associated with being unable to gain closure through a proper funeral.
“[They say]: ‘I didn’t see mama go down. I didn’t see the last rights of my grandmother or my great grandmother’ — and there is a frustration that you take out on society,” Fernander said.
“You may not get to the powers that be, but you get to somebody in your environment and until we start paying attention to this, we have a more frustrated populous.
“The church is doing its very best, but we can’t control certain things, and I really, really don’t want it to lead to lawlessness where churches just do it and they kind of [say] ‘come and give me a ticket’ because we ought to, as a society, be able to talk through things.”
