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"I did not think anything which you proclaimed strong enough to let a mortal override the gods and their unwritten and unchanging laws. They're not just for today or yesterday, but exist forever, and no one knows where they first appeared."
In these lines from Sophoclese' Greek tragedy, Antigone believed veneration of the dead outweighed the reasons of the state as invoked by Creon, King of Thebes.
She wanted to offer funeral rites and bury the body of her brother, which lay abandoned on a battlefield outside the city.
In her plea she did not oppose one right over another. Or one moral principle over another moral.
Burying the dead is a principle of life, an anthropological need, we might say today, which defines us as being human. And because we are human, we must honor our dead.
Forbidding access to the dead to preserve public health?
The question is neither simple to ask nor easy to answer. It is not a matter of criticizing what is being done and improvised in hospitals and nursing homes, despite an extreme health emergency.
During the Ebola epidemic this was also one of the main difficulties for the African countries most affected: to find a way to honor the dead, sacrificing the need for African societies to mourn, without leaving the corpses in homes for more than a day...
Grief is not a "social interaction" like others. It cannot be classified as a social gathering, sporting event or any of the other group activities that are now prohibited during the coronavirus pandemic.
Preventing people from going to the funerals of their loved ones, as many governments have decreed, is an "inhumane" measure, in the literal sense.
Fortunately, some places have relaxed administrative constraints. For example, France now allows up to 20 people to attend these "closed-door funerals".
What we are talking about is beyond the religious or non-religious character of a funeral. Accompanying one's loved ones to their final resting place is a fundamental need. It is a need that comes from laws that "exist forever, and no one knows where they first appeared".
After all, as long as we take the necessary precautions we are allowed to go to the supermarket to do our shopping and feed ourselves. Accompanying the dead undoubtedly holds the same vital imperative.
Doctors are the first to suffer from the current situation, considering that allowing families to accompany their dead is an integral part of care, the "public service to humanity" that they have committed themselves to provide.
They, more than anyone else, are aware of the long-term psychological harm that people can suffer when deprived bereavement. They know that there is nothing like being present in the final moments of a loved one's life.
Dogmatism has no place when it comes to death
It is obviously not a question of contaminating an entire family, but finding humane solutions on a case-by-case basis. Dogmatism has no place when it comes to death.
There are some initiatives being taken. For instance, families are being informed when it is clear that use of a respirator can no longer help save the patient. In such a case, a relative is permitted to be with the dying person, after taking all the necessary precautions, to say goodbye.
The prohibition against chaplains should also not be interpreted too strictly. They are offering a remarkable service to many people these days in hospital mortuaries.
And people must be allowed to see the face of the one who has died before covering the body. At least one last time...
This is not a matter of death, but a matter of life. And we must do everything, all of us together, so that this catastrophe does not make us more barbaric.
Isabelle de Gaulmyn is a senior editor at La Croix and a former Rome correspondent.
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