something to consider when choosing a casket for your loved one.

I have nothing to do. There are no families to meet with. No bodies to make pretty. There are no projects to tackle. Well, there are ALWAYS projects to tackle at a funeral home but I have pretty much decided that those are not my jobs unless I am specifically asked to do something. I am being paid to be a mortician and not being paid to be a lawn-boy. We already have a lawn boy. Sometimes I am the IT guy. For instance, yesterday I hooked up a 47 inch flat screen TV to a computer with a wireless connection to the network. That was fun. Now on the weekends I have a new and wonderful place to watch streaming netflix. You better believe I do.

The real reason that this monstrosity exists is because we have done away with our casket showroom and replaced it with this screen. Well at least we are getting closer to that dream anyway. Since we leveled the showroom we have been selling out of a picture book and it has been just fine. No one seems to care one bit. Funny huh? You might think that you would want to kick the tires (or tyres maybe, depending on where you are from) on Mom's new ride before you pulled the trigger but apparently not. Herein lies the interesting part to me...

When we had the showroom, they used it. They used it well I suppose. I once watched a Laotian family throw bones and coins at caskets until the right combination came up to make the decision. Many times I witnessed families laying their loved ones clothes into the casket so see how Mom's dress would look against the Rayon, (Rayon chafes you know...). So wow, here we are now, no showroom, no velvet interiors to lovingly stroke, no highly polished stainless steel gleaming under the humming fluorescent lights. How did this change peoples ability to choose? Not one bit. Because we took away their ability to ponder the possibles, they now just flip through the book until they see something that looks decent and point. "That's the one Dad had, that one will be fine". Before, when we had a showroom, they took their time (well, not all did, some just walked in and said, "which one is the cheapest?") and made the decision because that was part of the arrangement process. To a certain degree, that is what people expected to do when they came down to the funeral parlour. We have just taken that away from them and given them damn little choice about it. Is that wrong? Will this influence these people's ability to properly grieve the death of the loved one? I don't know, but I tend to doubt it very much. A casket is a box to place a dead body in and place into the ground. Period. Caskets serve a highly utilitarian purpose. They hold our dead and make them easier to carry.

How much more should caskets do for us? If it is so easy to pick one out of a book, (and people have told me that it is MUCH easier than "going into that dreadful room") why is there so much value placed upon this thing? Why do people care about color, finish, interior, wood species, precious metal, memory drawer, customizable corners, etc. etc. etc? Folks, I can not answer that one. I would not even try.

I write this post, like all of my posts, completely off the cuff. I generally never know what I am going to write about until I am writing it. There are many, many things to say about caskets and I am barely scratching the surface with my musings. Factors included when choosing a casket (if you must) are historic, religious, socio-economic, cultural and environmental. Caskets make us think about what we are, who they were, why we are and what will eventually be. They symbolize death for us and make it real. Caskets are a tool for making the unreal, real.

Hmmmm. I think I better stop writing now.