VIDEO: Staffer stops father’s funeral at UK crematorium, orders sons to move away from grieving mom due to COVID-19 rules
A staff member stopped a father’s funeral at a crematorium in the United Kingdom last week and ordered his two sons to move away from their grieving mother due to COVID-19 rules — and it was all captured on video.
What are the details?
At the start of his father Alan Wright’s service Friday at Crownhill Crematorium, the chairs were spread apart to conform to social distancing guidelines. Wright died from a heart attack in September, the Daily Mail reported.
But Craig Bicknell told BBC News he decided to close the distance between himself and his “vulnerable” mother as she was “lost.”
“I made everyone aware that I [would] need to comfort my mum at some point,” he added to the outlet. “When I saw my mum break as she did, it just took over that I had to comfort her and put my arm around her.”
Seconds later, Bicknell’s brother followed suit and moved his chair, and both sons were sitting next to their mother.
However, a crematorium staffer was seen on video walking in, raising his arms, walking behind the sons and their mother, interrupting the speaker, and telling Bicknell and his brother, “you have to put them back, I’m afraid,” BBC News said.
“You can’t move the chairs, you were told,” he added, according to the outlet.
The brothers complied.
What did the powers that be have to say?
Milton Keynes Council, which runs the building, told BBC News it regrets the incident.
“We are sorry to have upset this family,” a Council spokesman told the outlet. “We don’t usually step in if a guest needs to be comforted by another family member, and in this instance [we] should have taken a more considered approach. We ask funeral directors to let us know whether any chairs should be grouped in advance, and from now on this includes guests who are in the same household or bubbles, as well as people who need extra support.”
BBC News said COVID-19 government guidelines allow up to 30 people to attend a funeral and require social distancing.
What else did Bicknell have to say?
Bicknell noted to the Daily Mail that he and his brother Paul were left devastated by the “telling off,” and he added to BBC News that the incident left him “angry, upset; it was just an empty feeling.”
He also told BBC News that it “totally ruined the day” as he still had to deliver his eulogy after the confrontation.
“It was very hard to do,” he said. “I needed the service to carry on for my dad. It was a really scary feeling, I’ve never felt [it] before.”
Bicknell wrote on Facebook of the experience, “I can sit in a restaurant, I can sit in a pub, I can live at her house, I can travel in a limousine to the crematorium with 6. But when I want to give my mum a cuddle at dads funeral, a man flies out mid service shouting stop the service and makes us split…A devastating day made even worse,” the Daily Mail reported.
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