Sublime

eternity box: a coffin. furniture: a collective noun for coffins. Coffins were once made by craftsmen who worked in wood and also made other items of furniture. meat wagon: an ambulance or a hearse.

Today things look very different, and the undertaker can draw on a lexicon as softly focused as any estate agent’s. As one wryly told me: ‘We deodorize death to within an inch of its life.’ No longer does someone die and be laid out in a coffin, or taken to a cemetery and cremated: instead they pass away or depart, are placed in a burial container,

we do not believe in embalming. It is not a ritual that brings us comfort; it is an additional $900 charge on our funeral bills.

We don’t need to stop at green or natural burial. “Burial” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word birgan, “to conceal.” Not everyone wants to be concealed under the earth. I don't want to be concealed.