The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [72]
Q. Did you know what a hermetically sealed casket was at that time?
A. Well, I know that it was a casket that no air or no water could get into.
Q. All right, did you tell him anything else?
A. I told him that is what I wanted. I didn’t care what the cost was going to be, but I did have the $1,500 on hand that belonged to her, and these other moneys were coming in that I could put into it later.
Q. All right. Did you tell him anything else at that time?
A. Also told him that I was anticipating making a lead box to eventually put her in, after the war was over; that lead couldn’t be had at that time, and I am a mechanic. I intended to construct a lead box.
Q. You were going to do it yourself?
A. Yes, I have a sample of the box, the design of it, and I told him that I was going to figure to put her in a crypt until the war was over, and so that I could get the necessary things and put her away in accordance with her wishes.
Q. By the way, you lived with your mother all her life?
A. There was times she lived out in South City, but we were with her pretty near every day.
Q. So, after you told him that you were going to make this lead coffin, after the war, did you have any further conversation with him?
A. Well, we talked about the embalming, how long he could preserve it, he says, “Practically forever,” he says. “We got a new method of embalming that we will put on her, and she will keep almost forever.”
Q. Pardon me. Go ahead.
A. I says, “That is a pretty long period, isn’t it?” Well, he says, “They embalmed Caruso, and they embalmed Lincoln, that way, and they have these big candles near Caruso, and we have a new method of embalming. We have a new method of embalming. We can do a first-class job, and she will keep almost forever.”…
Q. Then, the next day, did you have another conversation with him?
A. Then the next day he told me that I would have to come down to his establishment, and pick out a casket.…
Q. And you went down there?
A. My wife and I went down there.
Q. And when you got down there, did you have a further conversation with him?
A. Well, yes, he took me down in the basement there where he had all these caskets, and he told me to look them all over, and we picked out what we thought was the best casket in the house.… First I looked around, and my wife looked around. We both decided on the same casket. So, I asked him if that was a hermetically sealed job, he says, “Oh, yes, that is the finest thing there is, that is a bronze casket.” He told me this was a casket, it was a bronze casket, and was a hermetically sealed casket, and he said that that is the finest thing that is made, and he says, “This is pre-war stuff,” and he says, “As a matter of fact, this is—I am going to keep one of these myself, in case anything happens to me, I am going to be buried in one of these myself.” … He quoted me a price, then he says, “Well, that will be $875, that will include everything, everything in connection with the whole funeral,” he says, “That will be completely everything in connection with the whole funeral, $875.”*
Q. Yes.
A. So, from what he told me, this casket was the best—it seemed very reasonable, so I told him that we would select that.
(Later that day, Chelini’s mother was brought back to his house.)
Q. Was there any conversation in the house?
A. Well, by the time I got there, she was up there, the wife and I decided to put her in the dining room, originally, and when I got up there, he had her in the living room.
Q. Did you have some conversation with him at that time?
A. So, he said, “Well, I think it will be better to have her here, because there is a window here, she’ll get lots of air.” He said he would have to put this body here in the front room on account of the window was here.
Q. Yes.
A. And he said it would be better to have a breeze, a flow of fresh air come in there.
Q. All right, did you have a conversation about the funeral with him to hurry over this?
A. Let’s see. I don’t think there was very