The Penguin paperback did for me what the big gray coffin had not: it insisted she was dead.

He looks down at the surface of the gray coffin poised above the hole dug out of the frozen earth and then he turns and walks to the cars.

Later, the mourners left the gray coffin among the headstones at the southern edge of town and went their separate ways.

The young man was buried in a gray coffin at nearby Evergreen Cemetery.

As he spoke, Officer Aselton's gun-metal gray coffin was about to be laid in the center of the church floor, before the altar, which was adorned with a simple floral arrangement.

Yesterday, at his own funeral, his body rested in a shiny gray coffin draped in white at the front of the church.

Twelve hours after the attack, a light rain fell as men in uniform washed and dressed the eight bodies and lifted them into gray military coffins.

The pearly gray coffin rested in a bay at the far end of the room, half lid open to reveal a white satin interior and a portion of his profile.

"The man from the army shot him," Mr. Roland said as the undertakers struggled to put the speckled gray coffin back atop the wheelbarrow.

One of them activated a motor attached to thick cloth straps that supported the gray lacquered coffin.