Quezi

Home-built coffin (photo by Ambient Damage - CC-BY)

Answerfinder’s article about Burial Clubs reminded me that many people worry about burial costs. Funeral insurance is big business, with a funeral home generally being the beneficiary of funeral expenses policies. This insurance pays for the casket (coffin), the flowers, the funeral service etc. This enables the policyholder to pay “up front” for their own funeral, so that they do not have to worry about the financial burden it may place on others.

The coffin itself can be very expensive. It’s quite possible to spend $10,000 on a coffin. People do this for one of two reasons. Sometimes it’s because they want to make a public display of how much the deceased person meant to them. But sometimes it’s simply because at a time of grief, dealing with a strange situation, people don’t know what a wide range of options is available to them.

The funeral director may skirt around the price, stressing that a coffin needs to be “a worthy resting place, fitting to bury the deceased”. However, the reality is that there are no functional requirements demanding an expensive coffin. The cheapest model works just as well.

Josephine Pesaresi tells how she bucked the trend and gave a wonderful send-off to her father, an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, by burying him in a $165 pine coffin.

Looking for something different? You could consider an eco-coffin, made of cardboard. These comprise 90% recycled material, and are made without formaldehyde, which makes them suitable for woodland burials. They come in an eye-opening range of designs, or you can get a white one and personalise it yourself.

Along the same lines is the ecopod, a coffin made from recycled newspapers and calico padding, in a dramatic curved organic shape. From China comes the honeycomb paper coffin, which is light, strong, recyclable, environmentally friendly, and cheap.

If that doesn’t appeal, you can make a coffin yourself. Mother Earth News has instructions to make simple, beautiful and inexpensive wooden coffins. Alternatively, there are two books by Dale Power: Do-It-Yourself Coffins: For Pets and People, and Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself.

At the Last Things website, you can find plans for a home-made coffin which can be assembled “in less than three hours for about $100 worth of #3 pine”. At the Outhouse Charlie website, you can order do-it-yourself coffin kits. The site is run by Charlie Hetrick, who aims to “put the fun back into funerals” and offers a range of interesting variations including a coffin that can stand vertically so that the dearly departed can join you while you stand around for drinks and nibbles at the wake.

If you do arrange a “pre-need” coffin, you may be wondering what to do with it in the meantime. Hopefully it will be many decades before it’s needed. People are using premade coffins as coffee tables (“coffin tables”), or vertically as bookshelves, or as the base for a model railway. You’ll always have a talking piece when new people come to visit. Using the casket as a guest bed might be taking things a bit far though.