>> Coffin couches: “a company that turns caskets that mortuaries ordinarily toss into the dumpster—thanks to cosmetic defects or the fact that they were used for display—into macabre conversation pieces you can rest your tuckus on for significantly less than an eternity.”
>> A bookshelf that turns into a coffin for when you’re, um, done with the bookshelf. Sort of a cool idea — reading books as a metaphor for death? (a repeat)
>> Corrugated cardboard coffins. Another repeat, especially as no one’s as of yet correctly named the literary allusion in that post’s title.
I’m still leaning towards cremation.
Update: Now there’s a “Weave Your Own Coffin” course — which is apparently selling out. The class is taught by a UK supplier of natural willows for basketweaving.
Whoa, now you open for some morbid facts:
You know, when the body is cremated the remains fits in a shoebox. When I visited a crematory the deceased were actually kept in boxes of that size untill they were put in their urns.
Here in Sweden a new burial method is tried. The body is freeze dryed and put into a paper box. After the funeral the body is ‘absorbed’ by nature in a few years (depending on the groundsoil this process normally takes one tenth to hundreds of years - I’ve worked at graveyards where hundred year old bodies accidentaly surfaced when we dug new graves*). It’s said to be environmentally friendly, but I don’t now - after all we are top predator and amass toxins which then are released.
Unfortunately I can’ find a link in english on this freeze method, sorry.
(*The church is from the middle ages, so the church yard is crowded.)
Comment by Rosengeranium (Indoor Gardener) — August 25, 2008 @ 10:53 am
“Here stands death, a bluish decoction in a cup with no saucer” Rainer Maria Rilke.
Comment by Don Hosek — August 25, 2008 @ 11:07 am
Nice, Don — Are you a Rilke fan?
Comment by Siel — August 25, 2008 @ 1:33 pm