I am SO far behind on reading my Backwoods Home Magazines. But I was doing a little skimming during Maggie's swimming lesson recently. I ran across an article that really intrigued me: Funerals Don't Have to Be Expensive in the September 2005 issue. (See, I told you I was behind on my reading!)
It's hard to check out websites when you're sitting poolside. So tonight I finally got around to checking up on a few of these items. Turns out that the very nice cardboard casket in the article is no longer being manufactured. But there's a whole list of alternative suppliers of caskets. Maybe I'm morbid, but I kind of like the idea of spending $500 for a casket now, using it as a bookshelf or a linen chest, and then not having to pay the funeral director $6000 for a casket when we need one. Or maybe it's not being morbid so much as it is just being a tightwad. Of course, this scheme would leave me (or my family) with having loads of company for a funeral, and having the couch, chairs, and tables all covered with BOOKS that used to live in the casket/bookshelf and have recently been displaced.
Gary's been saying for quite a while that he should probably check out the funeral homes around here, and their prices. It would be something he could do at a leisurely pace so that the information would be available to church members when they're not in an emotional state to sort through all the decisions. I'd like to know what kind of pine boxes the funeral homes have available, so as to know whether to mail-order a casket from the guys who make Jewish caskets or easy-to-assemble pine boxes, or whether we could count on the more expensive caskets made by monks which can be shipped in the space of a day or two.
I fully intend to be one of those cruel and heartless customers who will boldly insist on seeing the "unacceptable caskets," the "welfare caskets," when visiting the morticians. I have no patience with salemen who try to pressure me into buying things. Kids, don't let them talk you into burying me and your dad in fancy boxes. Tell 'em your folks would be just fine with a used refrigerator box from the appliance store, if that were legal. And Mom, I'll go along with whatever the other kids say, and won't force them into picking cardboard or pine unless you want us to.
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The funeral industry - one of my pet peeves. I"m planning to die at home in my bed, and then Brad is to call up the friends and family. Men all retire to the basement to throw together a pine box. Women - get the potluck going. Take me to the cemetery in the back of the pick-up. Bury me within 24 hrs so as to bypass the embalming - dress me in my white linen re-enactment shift.
ReplyDeleteWe should talk Susan!
Years ago, I read Caring for Your Own Dead, but I don't know how the laws have changed by now. I'd like to study up on that, but there are just so many other things demanding attention.
ReplyDeleteI know how the educrats think about the homeschool laws. I know how they interpret them wrongly. I know how they will tell people what is required of them -- some willfully lying but most of them just not being able to think outside the box to be able to see what the law actually does and doesn't require. In the same way, I'm not sure I could get reliable answers from a funeral director about what is REALLY required by law and what they assume to be required by law.
When we went to funeral home when Nanna died, we asked to see the pine boxes. They willingly showed them to us. It was ME that got hung up and, at that point, decided against it. It it the "but what will other people think" that gets in our way. Don and Sue have always said that's what they want.
ReplyDeleteI saw a wonderful documentary a few years ago about a family here in South Dakota whose patriarch built his own pine casket by hand but died before it was finished. The grandsons finished it in the few hours after he died. They placed him in his casket, the family buried him in the family cemetary on the family land within 24 hours. They bypassed the whole funeral home scene. It was beautiful and I wish that it could be that way for my family.
ReplyDeleteMy husband insists on being buried in the cheapest casket possible ( I agree) with the least amount of money possible spent on the funeral. I hope our children will abide by our wishes.
So, Polly, it sounds like you've made the same declaration I have. "I get to go first!" :o)
We were at a funeral once, and I thought the casket was the nicest one I'd ever seen. When I mentioned it to Gary later, he told me that it was the el-cheapo pine box. So Mom, if we decide now that we don't care what other people think, will that make it easier when we have to make the decisions? Granted, "what will people think" means the Amana or Whirlpool crate should be out of the question. (But if a funeral director should attempt to induce guilt over the purchase of a pine box, then the kids should dig in their heels and get stubborn and threaten to go to the appliance store for a box!)
ReplyDeleteMelanie, I liked the idea of the little family plot on the land too. But apparently that will really mess up any chance to sell the land later, because a new owner cannot block access to the cemetery.
Another thing I want to find out is if it's legal to have the visitation in the home, or does there have to be some "government agent" monitoring the body the whole time? And do you legally need a hearse, or can you put the casket in the back of the van or a pick-up? So, at the next homeschool get-together, do we need to discuss funerals and burial plans???
My dad will probably make his own pine box casket--he has talked about using it as a coffee table beforehand (we'll see what my mom says about that). My husband, on the other hand, wants a replica of Pope John Paul's casket. (I doubt anyone watched as much of the Pope's death and funeral coverage as we did.) It probably is not a budget box.
ReplyDeleteErin, that would be a very LONG coffee table. But now I have an idea of whom I could prevail upon should I need a casket in a hurry someday.... :-)
ReplyDeleteI just recently saw a film on PBS called 'A Family Undertaking', about families who 'think outside the box', as it were, on the topic of death. It was informative and really got me thinking.
ReplyDeleteBeth
Believe it or not there is an outlet in Bloomington, MN where they sell caskets at deeply discounted rates.
ReplyDeleteAlso when my mom's husband died about 5 years ago, Buck-Wheeler-Hyland funeral home in Belvidere made many of the arrangements. It was nice having the LCMS owners in that vocation.
FWIW