Dealing With Death ... at Costco?

Steve Seaver was working the store alone Tuesday noon, and things were quiet. About what you’d expect in a casket and urn shop, even on an otherwise busy mid-day on Beach Boulevard. I’d dropped in to ask Seaver about the prospect of discount giants selling caskets, assuming he wouldn’t be overly thrilled.

Seaver was even-keeled to the point where I could see how his manner might comfort grieving customers. But sure, he said, he’s not happy that discount stores might rise up as competition.

The Times reported earlier this year on what might be loosely called an “anti-mortuary” movement; still, it caught my eye Tuesday morning when the Orange County Register reported that Costco in Laguna Niguel sells caskets.

Costco? The discount store where a buddy took me this summer for the buck-fifty hot dog and Coke special?

That can’t possibly sit well with industry pros.

“It does seem strange to us, I’m not going to say no,” Seaver says. “Costco has always been a merchandise store. Although a casket is merchandise, this is a whole different ballgame. You’re dealing with death and dying versus going to a store where you’re going to a store, you’re going to spend money, you’re going to be happy.”

Costco, no doubt, is catering to people who simply have heard and read too much about mortuaries charging exorbitant prices to bury the dead.

Seaver says he agrees that some mortuaries overcharge. That’s why store owner Tom Oswald not only sells caskets and grave markers but advises customers on burial costs and how to save money, when possible.

“For us, it goes beyond the business itself,” Seaver says, solemnly, meaning the casket and urn business. “There’s a death that has happened, and Tom and I both have experience ourselves with a death in our lives. We not only share and give sympathy, but we can literally feel that there has been a death.”

He says the process shouldn’t be quite so sterile.

“I learned at the beginning of my career you have to be very humble and understanding,” he says, after showing me caskets ranging from a few hundred dollars to around $3,000. He recalls a mother and daughter that came in one day to find a casket for their husband and father.

The daughter was angry, but Seaver says he tried to listen, and eventually, the daughter quieted. The next day, Seaver says, the mother called to thank him.

I ask Seaver what constitutes a bad day at work. He says there aren’t any, and that he’s happy when a family’s needs have been met.

“The saddest moment is when you have a family call for a casket for a child. Having a child makes it very difficult. That’s why I don’t work in mortuaries anymore. I’m too emotional. There’s been so much emotion that has come out in doing this, it’s sometimes very hard to talk to families when they’re here, because they’re emotional. I just feel it.”

As we’re talking, store owner Tom Oswald comes back from making a delivery. He comes out of a mortuary-owning family that sold three of them in the San Fernando Valley. Fifteen years ago, he set up shop on Beach Boulevard in Westminster across the street from a mortuary and cemetery.

He’ll compete with Costco, Oswald says, but has misgivings about its entry into his industry. Price and quality considerations aside, he questions whether a mass-merchandising discount store can meet the needs of distraught people who might be making burial decisions at times of personal anguish.

The Costco environment is fine, he says, “if you want some good lawn furniture or a flat-screen TV.”

When in Rome ... caveat emptor. Costco knows what it’s doing and must figure there’s a market for people who want to order a casket on the same trip in which they pick up dog food and charcoal briquettes.

Look at it this way, I tell Oswald. At least it’s not Wal-Mart.

“Well, if it works at Costco,” he replies, “it might be.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.