The COVID-19 pandemic has made the ZOOM meeting a fixture of our lives and even our deaths. As gatherings became unsafe, funeral businesses have shifted much of what they do online.
“There is a hunger and an appetite to to grieve and mourn,” said Barry Koch, co-founder of TGBeyond, which helps families navigate late and end-of-life needs. “We re actually biologically wired in a way that grieving is an essential part of the human experience.”
Since the pandemic hit, the bulk of Barry’s work has been producing online memorials. Grieving on Zoom felt like the only safe choice for the family and friends of Daniel Williams, who died by suicide in Athens on Jan. 12. His sister, Anna Ruth Williams runs arpr, a technology public relations firm in Atlanta, so she is tech-savvy. She, her mother, Terri Davis, and Dan’s widow, Melissa Lee, put together a Zoom memorial five days later.