DIY Coffin

[geoff]

In message , ARWadsworth writes

Yes- I "viewed" my father last year before the cremation

[The Medway Handyman]

'ASTIFF' ?

'BRAUNBRED' ?

'KROAKED' ?

[Alan J. Wylie]

| Monday, 23 March 2009

| The High Court is being asked to rule on the legality of open air | funeral pyres ...

[Owain]

DARWIN

Owain

[Tim S]

ARWadsworth coughed up some electrons that declared:

When my father died, I took my 4 year old daughter to the undertakers to say "goodbye Grandad", courtesy of an open coffin.

Not to everyone's taste, but it was a good thing in our case and she handled it very well. My son was unlikley to handle it well, being much younger, so he didn't go.

Cheers

Tim

[Andrew Gabriel]

The inventor of the Pringles tube, Dr. Fredric J. Baur, was buried in a large Pringles tube last year.

[geoff]

In message , Tim S writes

I wasn't sure that I'd be able to handle it

I'm glad I did

[Tim S]

Frank Erskine coughed up some electrons that declared:

I'd like to be cremated with a *very* large can of expanding foam secreted away in the coffin.

At least my ghost will have a good laugh watching what that does to the crematorium furnace :)

[geoff]

In message , Tim S writes

Ah - the Peter Parry send off ...

[Lobster]

Are you talking about an open coffin, as in at a wake or funeral service, though, where everyone 'pays their respects'? (not quite the same thing as the posters below experience which I think is pretty widespread practice)

Dunno, really. In my own case the undertaker pushed it a bit, as being a 'good idea', but none of the family, including me, were keen. I don't have any regrets now, later. I was with my Dad when he died - maybe that makes a difference? But even had I not been there I can't imagine wanting to have gone to a viewing - don't know what it would have achieved.

Each to his own, I suppose.

David

[geoff]

Having not seen him for about 4 months, and had a 4am phone call ...

I supposeit gave a sort of "closure", a final picture burned into the memory

[Dave]

RAOTFLMAO

Please don't post things like that!

I'm off on a long drive in the morning, taking the g daughters back home and I want to wear the same clothes until I get back, that I put on after my shower tonight. Wet denim jeans show wet very well, even after a nights sleap :-(

Dave

[Tony Bryer]

I think there's a distinction between a few close members of the family viewing the deceased at the undertakers and an American style 'viewing' open to all and sundry or an open-coffin funeral.

[Tony Bryer]

Back in the UK I went to an open day at Hanworth Crem. The guy said that they really did not like cardboard coffins - the danger is that as they are slid into the [already hot] cremator, they catch light and the flames come back towards you at a rate of knots. In the light of experience cardboard coffins are now sprayed with water first.

Quite an interesting experience, and, no, they don't recycle the coffins - would you want to be unscrewing the lid and manhandling a 7-10 day old corpse for £50 or whatever the undertaker would pay (less than the trade price and much much less than the selling price).

[Appelation Controlee]

For that reason, they're usually handled through the proceedings inside a temporary wooden coffin.

[Harry]

LAASBUS

[TheOldFellow]

I made one for the old retriever in 1995. She was a big dog, about 5 stone, so it was quite a big job. I used OSB - not varnished or otherwise preserved. And we planted it in a 6 foot hole, so the top was about 5' down. No noticeable surface collapse yet.

On the other hand I help look after the local church, and we have lots of collapsed graves (coffin shaped surface depression) that need to be topped up every year before the mowing starts. Some of these graves are less than 10 years old. So whatever the coffins were made of, it rots fast!

R.

[TheOldFellow]

Spare bed?

R.

[Appin]

The message from Huge contains these words:

Yes. Embalmed. Stuffed and padded and made up to look better than in real life. Propped up into a sitting position in the casket with the upper portion of the lid separately hinged open. Brand-new clothes, too, very often. And glasses on the end of its nose, if worn in life. Enter appropriate room in funeral home during visiting hours. Admire corpse. Shake hands with long row of extended family sitting on chairs. Exit room. Sign guest book.

It's considered the ultimate disgrace in the USA not to have an open casket. If the casket is closed it's assumed the body is in such a mess that it can't be made to look acceptable and that it must be dreadfully and hideously ravaged by disease or car accident.

[Appin]

The message from Lobster contains these words:

You can certainly do that in North America. Casket has an inner "orange box" to contain the corpse. Said box lifts out at the crematorium and casket is returned to the funeral home to be re-equipped with a new "orange box" for the next occupant. Remember, though, that their caskets are considerably larger than our coffins.

Incidentally, in case you didn't know, it's normal practice in North America -- where, in my experience, cremations are much less common than in the UK, to bury only one deep and to put the casket into a rough box (packing-crate affair) which is placed inside the hole in the ground. And in my experience, coast to coast, I don't think I ever saw a casket lowered into the grave. They were normally left above the grave on a winding frame. In winter, in colder parts of North America, they didn't bother with actual interments in winter -- just kept the remains in storage until the spring. Urban folklore has it that bodies are frequently tipped out of the caskets and put into the rough box lining the grave, with the casket being resold.

For a further twist, in this neck of the woods (in the UK) coffins weren't required locally until after a major cholera epidemic in the

1830s and then only because it was feared that the communal winding sheet was spreading the cholera as it was recycled from one corpse to the next!