What we do not do
No casket preserves anyone, and we will not say otherwise
A sealing gasket keeps water out for a while. That is the whole of the claim.
Caskets are sold in a range that runs from a plain wooden box to something very expensive indeed, and the expensive end is often sold on an implication about what happens afterwards. Nothing in a casket, and nothing in an outer container, stops or delays natural decomposition. A sealed casket resists ground water for a period; it does not do the thing the word protective is used to suggest.
It is the one claim in this trade that federal rules name and forbid, and it is still made obliquely all the time. Choose a casket because of how it looks, what it is made of, or what it costs. Those are real reasons.
What a sealing gasket does, and what it does not
One useful sentence, with a great deal built on top of it that the sentence does not support.
A rubber gasket set into the rim of a casket lid, closed with a key, resists the entry of ground water for a period. That is a real function and it is the function it has. It is also the whole of what it does.
It does not slow or stop natural change, and neither does an outer container, and neither does any material a casket has ever been made from. Nothing sold in this trade does that at any price. It is the one claim in the whole business that federal rules name and forbid outright, and it is still made all the time, sideways, in a way nobody would have to defend in writing.
What to do about it
How to choose one, then
Three reasons, all of them good, and none of them about what happens afterwards.
How it looks
In that room, on that day, to the people who will be sitting in front of it. This is a real reason and it is what most families are actually deciding on.
What it is made of
Solid hardwood, veneer over a frame, steel of a particular gauge, cloth over softwood, wicker, board. The differences are visible, describable and yours to weigh, and we will describe them plainly if you ask.
What it costs
Caskets are the widest single range on any price list, and choosing at the lower end of it is not a smaller goodbye. You may also buy one somewhere else and bring it here, and it will be used with no handling fee, no refusal and no discussion about it.
What to ignore
Any part of a description that reaches past the day of the funeral. If a feature is being explained in terms of the years afterwards, the explanation has left the ground the rest of the choice is standing on, and you may say so.
How to recognise it
What a less honest version of this looks like
It is rarely a sentence. It is a word, a gesture and a demonstration, arranged so that a family arrives at the belief on its own.
A word left to do the work a claim cannot
Protective, and words like it, placed next to a description of the years ahead and then not explained. Ask what the feature does, in one sentence. See whether the answer is the one about ground water.
A demonstration of the mechanism
Watching a gasket close is watching a gasket close, and it is genuinely well made. Ask what follows from it, and notice if nothing does.
A silence aimed at a family's guilt
The idea that a plainer casket is a lesser goodbye, usually conveyed by an expression rather than a sentence, because a sentence could be answered. There is no version of that which is about the person who died.
We answer the question directly every time it is asked, and we answer it the same way whether the casket in front of you is the plainest on the list or the most expensive one in the room.
The item on that list which genuinely cannot be declined is not the casket, and it is worth knowing which one it is before this conversation rather than during it.
- The one fee you cannot decline — The single item every funeral provider may require, what it covers, and everything it does not.
- The price list you are owed — The categories a general price list is built from, and what a real one has beside each of them.
- Burial — What a burial actually involves, in order, and which parts of it belong to the cemetery.
The rest of the argument
One argument in nine parts
Each of these is a place where a family is told less than it needs to know, by somebody, in an ordinary week. They are on separate pages because they come up separately. They are the same argument.
The other eight
If you are being shown caskets today
Ask what each feature does, in a sentence, and take the answers at face value. A good answer is short and it is about the day of the funeral.