cover story what loved ones need: how covid-19 has opened our eyes to the power of remote attendance if the covid-19 pandemic has taught the funeral industry one surprising fact, it’s this: reports concerning the death of the american funeral have been highly exaggerated. what do we mean? in recent decades, fewer and fewer families have chosen full-service funerals for their loved ones, and funeral attendance has likewise been on the decline. these downward trends have led many people, including many leaders in the industry, to infer that families no longer want or need to mark the end of a loved one’s life in the traditional, formal manner. yet covid-19 has proven the experts wrong. funerals haven’t lost their appeal nor are they less important today than they were a generation ago. instead, they are simply harder to get to – and in the case of the current pandemic, sometimes impossible to attend at all. covid-19 has opened our collective eyes to a need that existed before the pandemic – and which will persist long after it: families and loved ones want to mourn, even when they can’t be there in person, and they will use technology to do so if it’s available, including remote attendance options like tribucast™. in fact, the team at tribucast™ has long believed that if it were easier to get to the funeral, then family and loved ones would hold services more often and also attend them more frequently. two generations ago people generally grew up, raised families and died in the same community, making it relatively simple to mourn collectively. today, circumstances are radically different. elderly family members often retire and move to other areas of the country. younger generations also move away after high school or college, building new lives hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their place of origin. these demographic shifts have made it harder for families and friends to come together, even to mourn a significant loss. the tribucast™ remote attendance system™ was created with these families in mind – and we have touched a nerve in the process. even prior to the covid-19 pandemic, tribucast™ funerals routinely saw double the national average for funeral attendance, thanks to the extra 40-90 people who attended remotely. one funeral at a time, we were proving that, for any given service, many more people want to pay their respects than could attend in person. the feedback from these families was incredibly positive. many were surprised at just how many people cared about their loved one and wanted to honor their memory. the feedback was even more positive during the height of the pandemic, when many who wanted to grieve a loved one could not safely do so in person. at this time, the tribucast™ platform normalized remote funeral attendance in much the same way that zoom normalized remote school and work meetings, with one important difference: tribucast™ was opening the door wider to a new way of mourning, one that specifically addressed the needs of long-forgotten loved ones. it is heartwarming to see how touched funeral directors and families have been when they realize just how many loved ones attend remotely to grieve, to pay their respects and to share their support and from how far away. the pandemic has shown funeral directors and families what the tribucast™ team has long known to be true: remote attendance, while never as good as actually being there, is a viable and incredibly helpful option for those who can’t be there in person, whether we are living through a pandemic – or not. this is the silver lining to this terrible situation we find ourselves in. perhaps we can all find a small amount of peace in that. 18 funeral service product guide