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when my blunder sank in. We would need to lift her again—this time with the added weight of the casket in which she was lying! I apologized to my hoisting partners and admitted that I should have placed the empty casket into position on the welding cart and then situated the decedent. I also vowed never to make such a mistake again.
    Since a forty-three-inch-wide casket will not fit into a hearse, a standard burial vault, or standard grave, I had to devise a mode of transportation to the cemetery and then arrange for oversize accommodations there. The burial vault company offered its flatbed truck, which was also equipped with a hydraulic crane, for use as a hearse. Following the funeral, the truck backed up to the chapel door, and two canvas-strap slings were slid underneath the casket. With little strain, the hydraulic lift gently swooped the casket onto the truck for its short journey to the cemetery.
    I’m sure the sight of a white flatbed truck with a very large blue casket on the back leading a funeral procession down the street is not very common. When we arrived at the cemetery, I noticed that an inordinate number of gawkers had staked their claims near the grave site to catch a glimpse of what they had heard was a woman with a very large casket.
    The bottom part of the vault was twice the normal size. The vault company also made concrete septic tanks, so with such a large grave opening, it had used an actual septic tank. For the first time, I witnessed a graveside ceremony standing next to a minister and a vault truck, with the honored decedent resting on the truck’s bed rather than on a lowering device above the open grave. With a twist of a lever, the casket was raised and gently cranked down to its final resting place.
    CASKET TECH
    Expensive caskets, such as those of sixteen-gauge steel, stainless steel, solid copper, and solid bronze, are sometimes urn shaped rather than rectangular. The urn shape is not only more attractive and more expensive but also serves a practical purpose for funeral directors. The extra inch or so of width inside allows us to position a heavier person in a more comfortable repose. With arms crossed across the abdomen, the elbows rest against the interior sides of the casket. Without that extra room, the deceased appears, and is, stuffed uncomfortably into the casket.
    For decedents who weigh 350 pounds and up, oversize caskets must be used. A standard casket’s interior dimensions are twenty-three inches wide and seventy-eight inches long. Oversize caskets are available in widths of twenty-seven, thirty, and thirty-four inches. For the morbidly obese, custom-made caskets must be specially manufactured and are usually available in two or three days.
    Many midrange and high-end caskets are equipped with a plastic tray underneath the dead body—a fail-safe liner. Embalming and other fluids frequently ooze from the deceased even if an expert and thorough embalming job has been done. Incisions that have not dried properly or have not been stitched tightly enough have also been known to leak, as does the site of the trocar, where embalmers insert a thin, tube-like instrument just above the belly button to aspirate the thoracic and abdominal cavities. Obese decedents present an additional problem in this regard because of the immense pressure on the abdomen from their weight and the weight of their arms and hands resting on the belly.
    Many years ago I was approached at a visitation by the deceased’s spouse, whose husband was morbidly obese. She asked me to explain the moisture and the odd sound emanating from his casket. Luckily, he was dressed in a black sports shirt, which made the moisture less apparent to the public; however, as I held my ear to his belly, I could distinguish a bass sound similar to the opening notes of the 1960s gag song “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport.” I asked those gathered to leave the room for a moment while I investigated further.
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