ROANOKE, Va. – It was less than 280 characters, but its impact was much larger.
Sammy Oakey, a funeral home director, with 44 years of experience, shared the challenges of his job on Twitter and had no clue it would reach so many people.
As president of Oakey’s and its six chapels across the Roanoke Valley, Oakey looks at the new coronavirus deaths every day.
On one of the rough days, he said he wanted to awaken people to the grim reality nearly 285,000 American families have faced.
“I was not given a handbook on how to handle a pandemic when I started working here. This has truly been on-the-job training,” said Oakey.
Extremely challenging and depressing for myself and our entire staff to walk into work every morning and see not one, but multiple new COVID deaths that occurred overnight. I've worked here for 44 years and have never seen such a tragedy.
— Sammy Oakey (@fabfourfan) December 4, 2020
His job has changed tremendously, from the care of the bodies to the number of deaths per week, as well as the adjustment of funeral services due to state health restrictions.
“I’m afraid with the holidays coming that they are going to continue to increase,” explained Oakey. “I hope I’m wrong and I’d like to be wrong.”
“When we see an increase in the number of cases – and you can tell by the numbers that we continuing to see an increase in cases – hospitalizations follow,” admitted Dr. Cynthia Morrow with the Roanoke-Alleghany Health District. “Unfortunately, deaths follow hospitalizations but there is a significant lag between when we expect to see high case-count reflected in our mortality data.”
Morrow said she is unsure of what’s next.
As for Oakey, his team is in communication with the health department to prepare for any potential surge.
“All we can do is try to make a tough time a little bit easier for them. It’s a whole new level of trying to care for families,” said Oakey.