Sidney, 30, had to say goodbye to his father connected to his computer, confined to nearly 7,000 km from his relatives. At 60, Adolphe, president of a football club, succumbed to the coronavirus. "Over the days, his condition has deteriorated, he was having trouble breathing ... It strikes you down, because you don't expect it," says Sidney.
On May 6, the day of his father's death, the thirty-something was at home in Besançon (Doubs). Impossible to jump on the plane to join the family at his bedside, in Cameroon. "Normally, I would have gone there, we would have organized a ceremony ..."
Instead, it will be content with an online celebration. What to compensate a little for the absence of a family funeral even if, “there, we can't really say goodbye to him…” A priest in a church, his two brothers in Cameroon, his four sisters… In all, a week after Adolphe's death, around 50 people find themselves on this videoconference.
"It helped us, it allows us to resume a little more normal life ... This is where I stopped crying, it allowed me to become aware of death." He will, of course, have the pain of not having been together at that time. "I have to grieve in another way," sums up Sidney.
"We don't really understand what's going on"
During confinement, this impossible goodbye was not limited to the thousands of coronavirus deaths. For the families of victims of road accidents, heart attacks or other diseases, the same strict rules have been imposed: a burial in a small committee, reserved only for close family members. The threshold of 20 people has remained in effect since May 11.
Difficult to realize that a loved one is gone when you can't be present at his funeral ... "We don't really understand what's going on," explains Valentine, 18, a resident of Poitiers. On March 13, a Friday, his uncle died in a motorcycle accident. A few days before the start of containment.
"It is the first relative that I lose, so it is a pain that I cannot explain," says the young woman. No family reunion, in the broadest sense, could take place. She herself was unable to attend the funeral of the man she describes as "a second father". "It's complicated to say that we can't say goodbye to a loved one properly," she says. Mourning is all the more difficult ”.
"Nothing can replace looks, hugs ..."
Alternatives were born to comfort loved ones, here a ceremony by videoconference, there registers filled by email. But nothing can replace physical presence. “Funerals are just one of the possible mourning rituals. There are multiple paths. But where this situation is burdensome, it is for the lonely families during the burial: the bereaved may have suffered from being less surrounded by people, ”estimates Alain Sauteraud, psychiatrist doctor in Bordeaux, author of a book on mourning .
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“The hardest part is not being able to show my support directly to the family,” confirms Patrick François. This retiree from a small town in the Dordogne could not say goodbye to his witness to his marriage, his friend from elementary school, who died of cancer at the age of 68.
Beyond not having been able to meditate on the grave of the one who was also his colleague, he regrets not having seen his wife and two children. "I of course sent them messages, we are called. But that will not replace looks, hugs, direct words… ”regrets Patrick, who chairs the association of former students of his school.
Post-funeral ceremonies that will multiply
Alexis *, 25, would also have liked to find his friends at the funeral of Damien, 24. Since their meeting at the lycée in Compiègne (Oise), they had stayed very close and planned to go to festivals together this summer. In full confinement, Damien collapsed during a sports session with his girlfriend, struck down by a ruptured aneurysm. The doctors discovered this follower of American football and bodybuilding a previously diagnosed heart weakness.
"Drowned in the information we received every day, I only learned of his death two weeks later, almost by chance," says Alexis. The burial took place in the strictest family intimacy. Without him therefore. “When we announced the deconfinement, it made me weird, the impression of not being able to go to another stage. With so much time between the announcement of his death and a visit to the cemetery, it's complicated, we have to get back into it constantly ... ”Another tribute is planned, without yet a specific date, once the rules are relaxed.
PODCAST. Confined funeral: how funeral arrangements are organized
These post-funeral ceremonies should increase when the sanitary rules for assembly are softened. Stéphane Vabre, manager of a funeral director in Guilherand-Granges, Ardèche, says he expects calls from families to organize ceremonies with more people. “People wanted to meditate together and they couldn't do it. They will want to be reunited with family and their loved ones so that they can finally go to another stage of mourning. Because there, it is impossible ”, he estimates, himself“ strongly disturbed ”by the organization of these“ painful ”funerals.
Sidney has already checked the date of May 6, 2021 in his calendar. That day, on the anniversary of his father's disappearance, he hopes to finally be able to go to Cameroon. The opportunity to celebrate real funerals. "The idea is to finally bury my father in the family vault and organize a real funeral for him, as they should have taken place."
* The first name has been changed
The episodes of our series “Farewell stolen from the coronavirus”: