When a soldier dies overseas, they don’t have the benefit of loved ones being with them in their final moments.
During Monday’s Columbus and Bartholomew County Community Memorial Day Service, the woman who read the names of 265 recently-deceased local veterans observed that many of us have been kept apart from loved ones as they’ve left this Earth over the past year and a half.
“With COVID-19, funerals as we knew it did not exist for a solid year,” said Derika Arnholt of Myers Funeral Home. “Usually, where there is a loss, you need to be together with the ones you love. But for a year, people had to endure their losses without that comfort.”
Speaking to nearly 200 people at the Bartholomew County Memorial of Veterans, Arnholt said she was thankful that, after 18 months of death, isolation and separation, “we can finally be here together to remember.”
For more on this story, see Tuesday’s Republic.
