In one sense, Ollennu is doing this for his neighbors. Then they take turns spraying themselves with disinfectant. Standing outside the truck, the troops ball up their protective equipment and toss it into a bucket marked bio-hazard. The team wheels the corpse back the way they came, through the basement, into the elevator, out the service entrance to the back of the medical examiner’s truck, where they gently secure the woman’s body. After a medical examiner’s official confirms her identity, the troops zip her into a body bag, then place her in a second bag to ensure no bodily fluids escape. The body of an elderly woman awaits them. Wordlessly, the collection team heads to the basement morgue, where a staffer points a thermometer at each of their necks to ensure they aren’t running a fever. He promptly moves to the other side of the street, watching as Ollennu and his group disappear into the service elevator with a stretcher. A man walking a white and brown shih tzu stops midstride when he spots the troops looking like spacemen. It is a spectacle for the New Yorkers enjoying the 72☏ day. Funeral directors like John D’Arienzo search for small symbolic steps to honor the deceased in rituals so anonymous and restrictive, they are no longer called wakes or visitations but rather “identification ceremonies.” City officials like Frank DePaolo, who handled the dead after 9/11 and now oversees mortuary operations for the chief medical examiner’s office, are working 12-hour shifts trying to ensure a modicum of respect for those brought into the disaster morgues. Reinforcements from the National Guard have been called in, with part-time soldiers like Senior Airman Steve Ollennu pulled off his job installing communications equipment to retrieve bodies as grieving family members say their last goodbyes. How do you maintain your humanity in the face of so much dehumanizing death? Amid the crisis, the usually discreet network of humans entrusted with caring for our dead and helping us mourn has struggled. Crematories’ brick ovens collapsed because of overuse. Funeral homes stacked caskets in spare rooms, hallways and private chapels. Medical examiners set two-week limits to claim bodies before they were sent in pine boxes to paupers’ graves on Hart Island. At the worst moments, hospitals loaded corpses onto refrigerated trucks with forklifts. The first is logistical: How do you handle that many dead bodies in a safe and hygienic manner? The pandemic has overwhelmed the network of funeral parlors, mortuaries and morgues designed to process the dead.
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