Colm Flynn’s excellent documentary began on 13 April a few feet away from a trailer being loaded with the bodies of Covid-19 victims. Here Clive Anderson, the proprietor of a funeral home in Pelham, New York, was calmly setting about the day’s work.

Heart and Soul: Burying the dead in New York City
BBC world service

Colm Flynn’s excellent documentary began on 13 April a few feet away from a trailer being loaded with the bodies of Covid-19 victims. Here Clive Anderson, the proprietor of a funeral home in Pelham, New York, was calmly setting about the day’s work. This was a “big feller” he observed of the first corpse; he was going to need some help.

The first Covid call had come 12 days before. Hitherto, Anderson’s business had been run on modest lines. His aim, he told us, was to be the best, not the biggest. In ordinary circumstances, he might arrange three funerals a week. Now, at the epicentre of a public health crisis, the phone rang constantly and burial numbers had risen to 40 in 13 days. The experience had proved “a thousand times worse” then he imagined.

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