For a few hundred dollars, Rock & Water Creations of Fillmore will deposit the dearly departed in stumps, fake boulders or rocks — even in a sleeping bear or a leaping dolphin. Each hollow monument has a plaque and a discreet pocket to hold the ashes — or cremains — of a loved one.

Any contact with the idea of dying takes place on a totally unrealistic level, buoyed up by semantic fiddling (the loved one passes into everlasting slumber, reposes in a casket, has his cremains hygienically dissolved, rests for all eternity in a memorial park)….