by denying the inevitable. He said the magazine desired advertising that was positive for seniors and that promoting a book about death and end-of-life issues would be too much of a downer for senior readers.
Whether or not it’s a downer, at some point we all have to come to terms with what we’re going to do with our loved ones.
Burying a dead human body deep in the ground has always been the best way to rid society of a potentially serious physical and psychological health hazard. Leaving it outdoors to be ravaged by nature’s elements seems repulsive and disrespectful to us. The strong stench, the bloating, the rapid liquefaction, the insect and small animal activity, the rampant bacterial growth, and the possibility of disease have all moved us to dispose of our dead as quickly and efficiently as possible. That usually means depositing the body either several feet beneath the earth’s surface or in a tightly sealed, above-ground crypt.
The deceased loved one is the focal point of any funeral, yet much attention is given to the stately steel or wooden container where the deceased is reposing. In most cases, the deceased is nattily attired and posed as if sleeping in a bedlike box designed to look attractive and comfortable. That bedlike box is a casket,
In the death-care field, we distinguish between the terms
Today’s caskets are mostly the same design as in the l930s, but they are usually constructed of sheet metal and designed to emulate the look of costly, handcrafted hardwood caskets. An abundance of steel forging and automobile manufacturing techniques have made their way into casket making. Current innovations include more ornate interiors, pinstripes, and special corner applications for the exterior, but the rectangular box of steel, copper, bronze, or hardwood we are familiar with today has not changed very drastically over the past seventy years.
The casket, then, can be constructed of the most rustic materials or the most expensive metals—and anything in between. Just like cars, casket offerings start out as basic squares with few frills and can become elaborately crafted units with velvet interiors and leather-wrapped carrying handles.
Cloth-covered wood $300–$500
20-gauge steel (non-sealer) $500–$995
18-gauge steel (sealer) $1,200–$3,800
16-gauge steel (sealer) $3,900–$6,500
Stainless steel (sealer) $3,500–$7,000
Solid copper (sealer) $4,400–$9,500
Solid bronze (sealer) $4,500–$17,000
Solid bronze with 14-carat gold plating $29,000–$35,000
Selected hardwood veneers $1,600–$3,400
Solid pecan $3,200–$3,800
Solid maple $3,200–$5,000
Solid oak $2,900–$5,000
Solid cherry $3,500–$7,500
Solid mahogany $7,500–$9,500
The cheapest caskets are made of thick cardboard or particleboard and covered with doeskin. Their interiors are fitted with low-grade crepe and cotton wadding, with correspondingly inexpensive pillows. Such caskets are used for both in-ground burials and pre-cremation viewings. They are sometimes referred to as paupers’ caskets, as some funeral homes also use them for indigent decedents when they expect little or no payment.
Cloth-covered wood is the next step up, with particleboard covered in blue-, gray-, or burgundy-embossed cloth. The interiors of these are also inexpensive, and sometimes they have a filler of wood shavings in lieu of bedding, which is covered by the interior material. Still featured in funeral homes’ display rooms, they serve a useful purpose—they are readily burnable when cremation follows a visitation and they look so cheap that families turn away in horror and instantly upgrade to more expensive models.
The next category of caskets is twenty-gauge steel. Gauges range from twenty, the thinnest, to eighteen and sixteen, the thickest and therefore the most expensive. All twenty-gauge caskets are virtually shaped the same but are available in a variety of exterior and interior colors. As prices rise, trim options increase as well—two-tone color schemes, better interior materials, and even swing bar handles on the outside.
The most basic twenty-gauge is a non-sealer, in which the lid has a small metal catch that attaches to a corresponding hole in the front when closed. In contrast, a sealer casket features a seamless rubber gasket attached to the upper portion of the box. When the lid is closed, a crank is inserted into a hole at the right-side foot of the casket and the lid is closed via an internal gear system that forces the lid against the rubber gasket, thus rendering the casket permanently closed. Some twenty-gauge caskets; most all eighteen- and sixteen-gauge steel caskets; and all stainless steel, copper, and bronze caskets are “sealers.” Customers choose sealers more often because funeral directors tell them that the casket becomes air- and watertight, thus forestalling the process of decay.
I have often questioned whether this system accomplishes an actual seal—and the Federal Trade Commission has asked itself the same thing. The FTC now instructs funeral directors to inform families that a sealer casket equipped with a rubber gasket is
The next level of casket, and the most popular one, is eighteen-gauge steel. Most casket sales from the 1970s to the present have been eighteen-gauge-steel selections. Most grieving families do not want to appear cheap, and this medium-priced model fits the bill nicely. I have probably heard the following a thousand times: “We don’t want the best, but we don’t want the cheapest either. Show us something priced in the middle.”
Virtually every color (and combination of colors) is available in the eighteen-gauge selection, as well as interior upgrades, such as velvet, tailoring, and head cap panels (the interior lid panel at the head of the casket), custom-designed with any theme imaginable. Funeral homes generally employ a 150 percent markup to arrive at that retail figure—but I’ve heard tales of some funeral homes charging four or even five times their wholesale price. The majority of funeral homes nationwide offer reasonably priced, affordable eighteen-gauge steel caskets, and such caskets have become the benchmarks of successful sales.
Today’s shaky economy has had a tremendous impact on casket sales. In the 1970s and l980s, employers used to provide company-paid life insurance, which included coverage for funeral expenses. But today most employers have dropped that benefit. The salad days of the funeral business are gone. Before customers didn’t have to worry about how much to spend at the funeral home, and I can recall many occasions when folks stopped by to pay the funeral bill riding in their new car, courtesy of life insurance proceeds. Consumers are obviously more cost conscious today, and a growing majority have to pay funeral costs out of their own pockets. This trend has spawned a great push in marketing lower-cost, twenty-gauge-steel caskets, the thinnest gauge available. The major casket manufacturers are introducing a vast array of choices in the inexpensive line to capture sales of any kind. Extravagant and expensive funerals are on the decline even in traditional Bible Belt strongholds, and many more families are considering what would have been unthinkable to them a generation ago: cremation.
The high-end casket market still exists, though, and it includes stainless steel, copper, and bronze. In the 1970s, the major casket manufacturers, Batesville Casket Company and Aurora Casket Company, encouraged
