Coffins are not a free deal. The family needed to come up with a payment...they didn’t do it. You could go for some cheapo $700 deal and the family wasn’t willing to go and do that. So this was the only way to handle the visitation situation in the end. I’m willing to bet that the flag ‘solution’ has been used in the past.
It looked macabre and like crap. Seems they’d have some kind of throwaway cardboard deal they could dress up a bit instead of that scene.
I’m pretty sure that rental coffins are available.
They can give a loaner one for visitation until the money comes in and paid coffin arrives. Happens all the time.
Please they have demos lying around the showroom and if ever sold and used do you really thing the client will complain it was used once for a visitation?
A US Flag is placed over every Veteran who has a funeral, even when they are just dropped in the sea. It may be used for several men on that occasion. With a proper folded Flag sent on to their Survivors. Thousands of Service men never had a funeral, nothing left to bury after being blown up. Or mass graves were dug going as far back as the War of Independence and Civil War.
Any handyman can make a simple pine box. Some one had to pay for a plot, opening and closing cost. And those are NOT cheap. Want a stone that cost big bucks too. Start making payments if necessary, I’ve had to when we buried our murdered 16 year old, and were living pay check to pay check, in his school clothes.
Something rings wrong and sour noted with this story.
When the Flag is placed over a Veteran flowers are not used. They maybe standing around him/her but they are not on them. And family and friends buy them or send them.