Anyone else notice the nice dovetails on the Pope's Coffin?

[jo4hn]

har. And my dad was a 33 deg Mason. j4

[Andy Dingley]

My neighbour is an undertaker (mortician to you guys). His coffins are crap and _enormously_ overpriced. Undertaking wholesale is a disgusting trade, ripping off the bereaved with rubbish products and vast markups, when they're least able to look after themselves.

[Dave Balderstone]

GROAN!

[Allen Epps]

In this case it was one he had picked out himself as he ended up suffering from a long illness and passing away at age 89. Perhaps they did spend more than they needed to. Don't know. Dont care. My aunt is still healthly at age 87 and lives by herself on the farm. She'll likley follow her mother who passed away at 101 after walking to the dining room table in hte morning and taking a sip of coffee.

I'll be down in a couple weeks to do some work and if there's time do a bit of wild Turkey hunting. (whom I fooling, there's never time :(

Allen

[George E. Cawthon]

My thought exactly. But expressing it would probably piss off a lot of people who buy very expensive coffins. I'll bet if you made your own coffin (for someone else) and checked the funeral home costs, you would find that they charged you for making the coffin. Coffin supply/making is pretty much sewn up, er, is that bottled up?

[B a r r y]

I would be so honored to get a call like that, I don't think I could even accept payment.

I wonder if the woodworker is a Vatican employee?

Barry

[B a r r y]

It looked to me like a lacquer piano finish.

Barry

[J. Clarke]

FWIW, my mother asked me to have her cremated and bury her in a cardboard box to do the mortician out of his pound of flesh. I really didn't have the stomach to explain to her sister or her friends why I did that--went with the cheapest urn they had instead. If I'd thought about it I'd have used one of her vases, but I wasn't thinking too clearly at the time.

[Mark & Juanita]

So he was cold, huh?

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety Army General Richard Cody +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[SawDust (Pat)]

I wonder what he yells, when he smacks his thumb with the hammer.

[Wes Stewart]

Mom has the cremated remains of a couple of her pets. When she goes she said just mix her ashes up with theirs and sprinkle them around the yard.

On a related note, wife and I were at the Tucson home and garden show yesterday and one of the local mortuary/cemetaries was there drumming up business. We inquired as to the price of cremation and they said it they simply round up your carcass and light the fire, it's $2500. If you want a service, with rented coffin, etc. it can go $5000!

But our money isn't worth anything anymore. I had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff last month. (Too much hand sanding and finish rubbing, to keep it on topic).

The bills are starting to come in. I entered the hospital at 5:30 AM to fill out paperwork and wait. At 7:30 they wheeled me into the OR. Surgery lasted 2 1/2 hours and I was awake enough to get wheeled out to my car by noon.

Had I not had insurance, such as it is, with a negotiated rate, the total charges, not including the surgeon or the PT I'm currently going through) were over $19,000. It was over five big ones just for "sterile supplies". That's a lot of band-aids.

[Andy Dingley]

Given the usual way of such things in Italy, it's a tiny back-street firm that has done this job for generations. They charge for it, but only a modest amount. Then they have as much trade as they could want from other people, "because it was good enough for Il Papa"

[Hank Gillette]

One place online that sells wooden coffins at a pretty reasonable price is:

It's a federal law that the funeral home has to use a coffin that you provide from another source and cannot charge you extra for it.

[Glen]

But, there is a way around that law. They have a set price for each service on a sort of "a la carte menu" which is ungodly high, but they have a "special deal" if you purchase ALL services from them. Believe me, that special deal is no bargain.

Glen

[John]

I'd like to make my own urn. Anyone know what size it should be?

John

[Unquestionably Confused]

Ah, the internet. What a great place to find answers to the most arcane queries....

Take a look here:

you how to compute the volume needed for your cremains.

[Andy Dingley]

[Dave Mundt]

As a matter of fact, I touched on that very fact while my housemate and I were having a fine dinner at Outback Steakhouse last night. I was also interested to see that it was NOT FAS Oak used for the outer coffin. I liked the fact that it looked more like #1 common or so...the knots, etc, made for a more interesting appearance. If I had a quibble, it would be that I might have been inclinded to vary the size of the dovetails a bit...perhaps widest at the top, and, shrinking a bit as they got to the bottom but...hey...I'm Lutheran (*smile*) As for his policies...I have to say that I, too, hold a great deal of respect for him. Although there were a number of areas where he held onto reactionary views that were not all that appealing, he did a great deal to help bring Peace to the world and to spread the idea of the Universal Community. I can only hope that the NEXT Pope will be as good for the world and the church as John Paul... and my prayers go out to the Cardinals that have begun to wrestle with that decision. I hope they choose wisely. Regards Dave Mundt

[Brian Siano]

Does anyone have a URL for a photograph of the coffin?

[Brian Siano]

Still the best word on the subject: _The American Way of Death_ by Jessica Mitford. (I met her once.)