A funeral hangs by a thread. Or, the Seinfeld version of a solemn occasion.

    When the service ended, I walked through the church doors and down the front steps, and there stood Samuel (not his real name), waiting for mourners to pass. Samuel is an attractive, fifty-ish guy who sometimes drops in on our Sunday sermons. He is a friend, but technically, he is a member of the congregation, or used to be. Like so many others, he became restless and moved to a different pew in a different church.

    If this had been a normal day and not a solemn one, I would have jokingly asked Samuel, "How's business?" But on this day, I refrained and greeted him with understated fare, ignoring my urge to say something clever about his line of work. This time, I let it slide, for understandable reasons. 

    Samuel's profession is unusual in terms of both the thought process and the end product. My friend is a builder of caskets for humans and pets, and when he isn't shaping rectangular boxes out of rough timber, he might be hauling a dead body across the miles to a destination. He once told me that driving long distances with a corpse behind him allowed plenty of time for thinking. I didn't ask him what crossed his mind on those lonely drives. I wish I had.

    I took note of the hymnal in Samuel's hand, and he volunteered that shortly, he would be singing Amazing Grace a capella at the gravesite. We walked side by side in the sunshine across the churchyard to the cemetery, chatting in quiet respectfulness. A tent stood in the distance, and I already knew that our deceased mutual friend lay in one of Samuel's hand-made coffins. The dear departed one, in anticipation of this day of farewell, had bought the casket at least ten years prior and stored it in a barn on his farm, along with one for his wife. The one for his wife is still in the barn, empty. 

    As one might expect, two caskets in a barn would be a topic of conversation, as well as objects for show and tell. Before our elderly friend passed away, he sometimes showed the caskets to visitors. On at least one occasion, he opened the lid and lay down inside to check the fit, because how embarrassing it would be to find your final resting place short on leg room. 

    Samuel and I arrived at the corner of the graveyard and stopped by a mound of dirt covered with a green tarp. The casket was still above ground and over the vault, and I took note of its plainness; no gold or silver; no knobs or brass; only hewn, sanded wood. To my dismay, I also noticed a single long white thread had come loose from the satiny lining, and it hung down the outside of the casket. I wanted to walk over and pull it away, but I hesitated, for a crowd had already gathered around the grave, and such an action would have called attention to me. So I stood there next to Samuel, watching the thread sway in the breeze, wishing I could reach out and get it without anyone noticing. 

    For some time, I contemplated the fate of that string. I had been in a similar situation on another occasion. One Sunday morning, I noticed a small green leaf resting on top of a woman's pouffy hair about three pews in front of me. Probably no one saw it but me. To rise from my seat and retrieve it would have caused more disruption than a still leaf nestled in someone's hair. I sat there mulling over what to do and ultimately decided to let it lay. 

    I figured Samuel had seen the thread hanging from the casket, too, for it was more than a foot long, and the whiteness contrasted with the dark wood, but we spoke of other things and pretended the thread did not exist. This went on for several minutes, me hankering to yank the thread while we chitchatted about trivialities. 

    Until.

    Samuel, bless his heart, suddenly took three or four long strides toward the coffin, yanked the thread from its anchor and stuffed it in his coat pocket. As he turned and strode back to his place, I breathed a sigh of relief. Beside me once again, he confided, "That thread had been bothering me."  

    "It bothered me, too," I whispered.

    The pastor began speaking words of encouragement about life after death, and when he said, "amen," Samuel took another step away from me and bellowed out, low and slow, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, his voice booming over the Angus cows in the pasture next to the graveyard. When he finished singing and closed the hymnal, a uniformed soldier pierced everyone's hearts with the first note of taps, causing rivers to run from our eyes. On the final heart-wrenching note, I said bye to Samuel and spoke to other funeral-goers on the way to my car.

    My casket-builder friend lives several miles from me, and I don't see him very often, but not too long ago, he came over to cut some cedars that were growing on our property. By chance, I happened to be out on my morning walk, and I stood and watched as his helper measured with a long stick. Samuel, looking at lot different dressed in chaps and goggles than in a Sunday suit, cut casket length logs with his chain saw. 

    His handiwork is probably as stellar as the nighttime sky, because, think about it. He probably hasn't received a single complaint from a customer, and not one request for a refund. After all, nothing bothers you from the inside of a casket with the lid closed, not even a loose thread.