Reba McEntire is opening up about experiencing tragedy during the COVID-19 pandemic. When her mom passed away from cancer, McEntire struggled to be able to bury her due to the virus.
McEntire spoke about her experience managing a funeral with Sounds Like Nashville. McEntire had been rehearsing for a 2020 tour when she found out her mother passed away from cancer.
“We were so ready to go into full-blown rehearsal. I had been in Oklahoma with mama,” McEntire told the outlet. “Mama was very sick with bladder cancer and I’d been with her. I knew it was at the end, which didn’t want to be there, so I went back here to Nashville. We were going into rehearsals and then Susie called me on the 15th and said, ‘She’s gone.’”
Reba McEntire Dealt With COVID-19 Related Regulations When Planning the Funeral
McEntire said she was thankful her mother was no longer in pain. “We had prayed for that because she was hurting really bad and so I went back,” she added. After her mother’s death, McEntire had to deal with regulations related to the pandemic when planning the funeral. The funeral parlor refused to allow for a big funeral for the family.
“We wanted the next Thursday to be the funeral and they said, ‘No, we’ve got COVID-19. You can’t have the funeral. People won’t be able to come in,’” McEntire said. “So consequently I stayed in Oklahoma until the day after Mother’s Day. I wanted to stay in Oklahoma with my sisters and my brother and my family for mama on Mother’s Day. We did bury her on the 29th of March and then we cleaned out her house and everything.”
Despite the tragedy, McEntire said she was thankful to be with her family during the COVID-19 pandemic. It helped her feel less alone and separated her from the harsh realities of pandemic life.
“The pandemic didn’t hit me as hard as it did a lot of other people because mainly I was in southeast Oklahoma,” she smiles. “I was on a working cattle ranch. There was more cattle. There were more dogs than there were people at that place. Chockie, Oklahoma is little bitty and I was with family.”
[H/T: Sounds Like Nashville]
