Can we bring our own casket?

 
My Dad’s funeral was the first ever funeral I have had to arrange.

When I was living in America, I was working in event catering with our headquarters next to a church. At one stage, I was nicknamed the ambulance chaser of memorial services as a big part of the business I brought in was from memorial services. That was as far as my funeral arrangements experience goes.

We had not even engaged a funeral director to help us out when Dad passed away. While our family started talking about this sensitive subject, we never got as far as taking any action. All we knew was that Dad was leaving the decision making to Mum, as per his words 'It's time for Mama to be making decisions and Mama will be the one visiting me'.

While my brother and I knew that Mum will be making the decisions, it was up to us to run the logistics to provide her with her choices. My brother told me about his colleague whose Dad passed away early last year, and all the research he had done which he passed on to us. An absolute Godsend. The research was thorough and provided a number of avenues and caveats that we needed to keep in mind, as we started to navigate unchartered territories.

In the brain-dump synopsis, it mentioned purchasing the casket ourselves from a well known members-only warehouse. I was floored. My brother, being a member of this warehouse confirmed that they in fact sell them but it is one of those things that you walk past and don't really pay attention to, unless you finally need to.

Not your average supermarket

It also recommended going to the manufacturer to see what the casket actually looked like, rather than the partial box displayed in the warehouse. So the morning of Dad's passing, we went to a casket manufacturer.

Surreal cannot even begin to describe how I felt when we walked into the building. We immediately walked into rows and rows of special boxes ready to be delivered. It was here that we met another Godsend who took his time to show us the options available to us. Here we learned that caskets can range from about $500 to thousands of dollars. When I shared with him my idea of Rent-A-Casket, he informed us that by law, everyone needs to be placed in a casket whether they are to be buried or cremated. He also warned us that not all funeral directors like for their clients to purchase their own casket as it obviously cuts out a part of their business. We needed to be clear with the funeral director that we had every intention of doing a BYO.  Finally, this Godsend provided clarity on the main difference between Macquarie Park Crematorium and Cemetery and Northern Suburbs, the two places we were already considering for Dad's cremation and final interment.

That afternoon, my brother and I were due to meet with a funeral director in Dulwich Hill. Following Godsend 2's advise, I rang to ask my question. Surprise, surprise, it was a flat out no, their insurance cannot cover the casket and they could not guarantee the workmanship. Jeez, we were only going to use it for a couple of hours, days at most. Godsend 2 was indeed correct.

We rang up a couple of other directors including one that Godsend 2 had referred.  Yes, no problems to a BYO coffin and a director can come to my brother's house that afternoon to meet with us as he lived in the next suburb. Nothing like making it easy and saving us a drive out.


We decided to meet with 2 different directors. One that afternoon, the other the following morning. We would make our decision by lunch time Tuesday given the funeral was on Friday.

The process we undertook was a complete eye opener. I remember being candid with funeral director 1 when he started going through the motions of asking us personal family details he needed for the hospital to release Dad to him, and for the death certificate. We wanted to get 2 quotes that included bringing our own casket, working directly with their florist as well as organising all the mass resources ourselves.

Funeral director 2 came the following morning and we started going through the motions again. Before he got too far with his spiel, we asked him to provide his quote. It was not too long until my brother and I could see that his totals were going to be at least doubled what funeral director 1 quoted. I was eyeballing my brother, willing him to say something. Maybe we completely forgot to let funeral director 2 know that we were sourcing 2 quotes. Finally my brother interrupted his number crunching, telling him that we met with another director the day before who had provided a quote almost half what he had so far written.

What floored us was that funeral director 2 quickly turned around to say 'No problems,  I can match what they have quoted'. He then asked what the amounts were so we showed him the quote. Lo and behold, he managed to match it. We asked him how he could do that and he said that he has different business models at different price ranges. Huh? He further told us that many clients do not have the capacity to negotiate during this very vulnerable time. It made the decision easy for us. 

Clearly, business is business, in life and in death.

Smiling from above

 

 

 

 

Labour of love

Adding colour to the casket