descriptions

Description from Far Away

It is the basement of a funeral home, and it is like other funeral home basements: a veritable maze of coffins lined against the walls and up and down the middle of the room to force the effect of narrow aisles. The staircase leading down to the basement is rickety and the banister somewhat insecure. It is drafty like other funeral home basements and smells of varnish. The flooring consists of drab, cracked linoleum, and the walls are slabs of sheet rock hastily painted beige.

The coffins themselves seem to glisten under the fluorescent lights, which hum a steady, monotonous drone. They are organized in order of value from the silver speckled metallic blue casket with its starched linen lining all the way up to the most expensive. It stands apart from the others in its ornately carved mahogany majesty, handles accented in genuine gold. It looks like an exact replica of an Egyptian sarcophagus, minus the hieroglyphics. The satin lining is as soft as the hairs lining the slight arch of a newborn’s back. The corners are perfectly rounded and smooth, not a rough edge in sight. The surfaces are polished to a blinding sheen, and not the slightest imperfection can be perceived in the wood.

Over in the corner stand two caskets which break the otherwise strict arrangement by price. These are conspicuously smaller than the other coffins but are replicas: a miniature raised pillow in the lining, handles appropriately sized to scale, a tiny raised carving on the lid of each: one of a rose, one a cross.

Up Close

The basement of the funeral home looks like a maze, and as you navigate the precarious staircase you do not know what to expect. You find yourself in awe, at once appalled at the sight of so many boxes for the dead, yet also engaged by the sheer number of choices. The cheapest coffin will run you six hundred dollars. It is robin’s egg blue with specks of silver paint. To you, it looks like a shit speckled Easter egg. So if you’re burying Grandpa Fred, your eyes immediately stray away from this section of coffins. (If you are burying Uncle Melvin the addict, even this seems preferable to the alleyway where he spent most of his life).

You see the coffins made of wood, real wood: oak, maple, pine. They come in many stains: rose, espresso, mahogany. The mid grade coffins lack the luster of the top of the line ones so you can vaguely count the tree’s rings. These lines look like roots running through soil, but if the trees were in fact still rooted in soil they would probably still be living. It occurs to you that the coffins are dead.

Selecting a box to commit your loved one’s remains is a big decision. This person is dead, mouth sewn shut forever and about to be closed in between wood and a thin satin lining. You are making the last decision that there is to be made regarding this individual, this person who used to be a life. You can barely think through the headache caused by the unpleasant stench of varnish and the constant hum of the fluorescent lights overhead, which are burning holes in your retinas.

That’s when you see them: the baby coffins. You wished you had not looked in that corner. You understand why they hide them in the back. You even understand the utilitarian necessity in their existence. You just do not understand why you, the patron burying an old person, had to see them.