by Sarah Murray
I’m not sure I’m ready to honor nature with my body through any of these methods. But while backyard burial poses real estate conundrums, and as an atheist I’m hardly first in line for a plot in the cemetery, there’s another option—the one my father had at one time considered—the green burial, or natural burial.
Modern burial has become anything but natural. By some estimates, enough embalming fluid to fill eight Olympic-size swimming pools is lowered into the ground every year, where it slowly leaches into soil and groundwater. Not to mention the pressed steel caskets, brass handles, adjustable beds, fabric lining, and foam padding that accompany the embalmed bodies into the earth, turning the modern cemetery into a new form of landfill.
Green funerals and woodland burials mean going into the ground in a biodegradable coffin, without being pumped full of embalming chemicals. They first took off in Britain, where chunks of rolling countryside are being opened up to those looking for a more natural type of interment. In the United States, too, green burials and “conservation burials” are catching on, with a number of eco-graveyards appearing around the country.
Pioneers in this respect are Kimberley and Billy Campbell, who’ve been restoring a park in South Carolina to its former beauty as a mature hardwood forest where orchids and other rare wildflowers can grow—and people can be buried. At Ramsey Creek, the dead are buried without preservative chemicals, steel caskets, or leak-proof coffins. Grave markers are simple inscriptions on rocks or stones. Coffins must be biodegradable (and not made of endangered tropical woods) so that, as they naturally break down, their owners are released into the earth as part of a glorious rambling wilderness. Some modern technology is at work here, however, in the Campbells’ intriguing way of helping visiting families locate their relatives—by keeping records of each grave’s GPS coordinates.
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It’s not often that you look at a picture of a casket and say, “I want one of those!” But this was my reaction to the Ghanaian fantasy coffins. I was captivated by their brilliant colors and crazy designs. And it seemed to me that knowing you’d be leaving the world in a giant orange fish or a huge wooden banana could make it slightly less traumatic. So I’ve decided to head to Ghana to put in an order for one of these eccentric funerary artworks. In the event that I pick burial for my remains, I want to go down in something stylish (even if I’m cremated, I’ll need something to get me to the furnace on time).
I’m aware that in ordering my own coffin in advance, I might be seen as slightly odd, if not downright eccentric. “Pre-need” is, of course, an important chunk of the funeral industry—one in three Americans over fifty has embarked on some sort of preplanning for a funeral or burial, according to the AARP (which represents the interests of the over fifties), and just under a quarter have prepaid a portion of their “final expenses” for themselves or someone else. Companies with names like Forethought Financial Group and Funeral Financial serve these customers (“Is your pre-need program really changing your firm’s destiny?” was one of the burning questions asked recently by American Funeral Director magazine).
But while many people purchase such policies and secure burial plots ahead of time, pre-need consumers of coffins and other funeral-related products remain part of a niche market; the smallest notch on the revenue charts of the “death care industry,” as it would like to be known.
Even so, some companies are catering to people who want to make more imaginative choices. Colourful Coffins, a British firm, helps clients create customized designs. It’s based its entire business model on offering its “Pre-Design Service” only to those who will eventually occupy their coffin. “It cannot be purchased by any third party, or on behalf of someone else,” says the company.
Those who like the buy-now-die-later option can purchase coffins that serve as pieces of furniture in the interim. Baltimore-born artist Charles Constantine’s pine-built “Memento” is a coffee table and coffin combined. It stores books and personal possessions until it’s needed as a burial casket. Canada-based Casket Furniture’s products (“Furniture for a Lifetime … and Beyond”) include the traditional-looking Adam’s Coffin Coffee Table, a polished wood coffin with six short legs, as well as the velvet-upholstered Salvador Casket Sofa in a chic contemporary design, which, says the company, “will always provide you with the ultimate place of rest, whether it’s taking a load off, or doing the final send-off.”
But if in commissioning my own coffin, I’m part of a fledgling pre-need casket market, I’m by no means doing anything new. Over the centuries, great rulers have generally liked to get this kind of thing sorted out before heading to the next world, ordering the construction of ambitious tombs or mausoleums while still alive—leaving us, by the way, with some of the world’s greatest architectural landmarks. Take the pyramids of Egypt. As pre-need sarcophagi go, how much more impressive can you get?
While the pharaohs deployed armies of slaves to work on their tombs, the wealthy and influential commissioned artists and architects. Luckily for Pope Julius II, he got Michelangelo. In 1505, eight years before his death, Julius commissioned the Renaissance artist to create a huge tomb of Carrara marble that was to be three stories high with up to forty-seven sculpted figures adorning it. “The quantity of stone was enormous, so that, when it was all spread out upon the square, it stirred amazement in the minds of most folk,” wrote Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo’s biographer in 1553.
The project suffered constant setbacks, partly because Michelangelo broke off the work to carry out a few other papal chores—the Sistine Chapel ceiling, for one. In the end, Julius got neither the tomb nor the location he’d wanted. When Julius died in 1513, Michelangelo signed a contract for another seven years, but to work on a greatly reduced version of the tomb, and even this scheme was scaled down. Eventually, forty-five years after Michelangelo’s original commission, in what Condivi calls “the tragedy of the tomb,” a modest version was installed in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, far from St. Peter’s, where Julius had wanted to rest in papal splendor.
The “tragedy of the tomb” shows just how tricky it can be to secure the right kind of burial for yourself, even if you’re a powerful Catholic prelate. Still, some practical matters can be taken care of—what to wear, for example.
The American funeral industry has made a business of this, offering a range of what you might call “casket couture.” The garments are slightly different from ones sold to the living. First, they open at the back to facilitate dressing the corpse. High collars and scarves cover the skin around the neck, which is probably not looking its best. Sleeves are cut on the long side to allow arms to be crossed over the chest. A lower shoulder line means the garment won’t ride up awkwardly over the neck when in the “repose” position.
Funerary tailors also offer “fabric, textures, and colors that work well with casket interiors” in “traditionally stylish” one-piece frocks, negligees for the “soft and peaceful” look, and “flowing” gowns (quite why it needs to flow is unclear). What’s more, you don’t have to invest in a whole outfit. As well as “full couch” attire, there’s the “three-quarters couch” option, for those who only intend the top half of the body to be viewed in the coffin.
Most of these garments are sold to customers who are buying them for dead relatives. But in some countries, people make advance preparations for the clothes they’ll wear in the grave. In her series Clothes for Death, London-based photographer Margareta Kern documents the tradition practiced by women in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina of making and arranging the garments in which they want to be buried.
In a moving set of images, Kern highlights the poignant contrast between the modest interiors and tired old work clothes in which the women are photographed and the beautiful lace and embroidered garments and sheets (for placing on top of the coffin) they’ve laid out around them for the photo session.
Kern is struck by the way the women store their burial clothes—in travel bags and suitcase
s. “One of the women, Jovana, who is ninety-seven years old, pulled out a dusty old suitcase from underneath the bed and inside of it was a floral dress, long woollen socks (which she probably knitted), petticoat and many family photographs,” writes Kern in her blog. “It was as though she was preparing for a journey and needed to be ready at any moment.”
These days, people tend to react to this kind of planning with a shudder and move on to a new topic of discussion, as I’ve discovered when talking to friends about drawing up a will. Yet along with necessities such as eating and sleeping, the fact that we’re destined to die is one of the most important aspects of our existence. We readily make provision for eating and sleeping, and, it’s true, those activities are more appealing than the prospect of our annihilation. But dying is no less real, so surely we should prepare for this, too?
Still, it can be a little discomforting. On one occasion, I inadvertently became involved in the burial preparations of an elderly couple. When living in Vietnam, my great friend Sandro Lovatelli and I would drive out of Hanoi at weekends to explore the villages and temples around the city. We had with us Sandro’s trusty driver Mr. Tan—well, perhaps I should say trusty in character (he was blind in one eye and had only 70 percent vision in the other).
One afternoon we found ourselves in the home of a Vietnamese family. They hung on Mr. Tan’s every word, grinning and nodding enthusiastically as he told them all about us, while Sandro and I smiled back politely, unable to understand a thing. As we got up to leave, Mr. Tan conveyed with a few gestures the fact that the family wanted me to take photographs of them. In the days before cheap digital cameras, the arrival of foreigners provided a rare chance for a family picture.
I took a few snaps of the children and the father, and wrote down the address so I could send them the prints. Then an old couple came forward—the grandparents, who’d been sitting quietly in a corner. They, too, wanted a photograph and were trying to describe what they were after. It was clearly not a family snap.
As I adjusted the camera, the two stood together on the front terrace of their tiny house, striking up a pose of great seriousness, no hint of a smile on either face; with their simple wooden home behind them, I couldn’t help thinking of Grant Wood’s iconic 1930 painting American Gothic. I squinted through my viewfinder and adjusted the camera lens. Suddenly it became clear what it was the old couple had requested—a picture to use on their tombstone. I took the photograph and, a few weeks later, sent it to them. But I remember feeling uneasy as I pressed the camera shutter. It was as if somehow I’d participated in their deaths.
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The first part of my plan to commission a coffin—booking a ticket to Ghana—is straightforward enough. There’s even a direct flight from New York to Accra. The coffin shops are easy to find, being dotted along the coastal road at the point where it runs through Teshi. And I’m pretty certain one of the Ga coffin craftsmen will be happy to make and sell me one of his wilder creations. But I’ve no idea how I’m going to get it home. I picture myself negotiating with logistics agents in dusty shipping offices and filling out customs forms: “Item for shipment: one coffin.”
Oddly enough, I visited those West African shipping offices many years ago, when I was hired to collect publicity material for a shipping company. The trip took me down dirt roads following container trucks to pineapple plantations and rubber factories across Ghana, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire. On a short flight in a two-seater Cessna over the Abidjan harbor, I leaned out over the wing to take photos of giant cargo vessels docked below as the great gantry cranes lining the quays heaved up from their holds the cargo of steel shipping containers.
So it’s strangely appropriate that I’m once again heading to West Africa in pursuit of containers. And this time, I’ll need to use the services of those shippers to get my coffin home. I consider tracking down the agents I met last time. But my contacts in the Ghanaian freight-forwarding industry are well out of date.
Then, poking around on the Internet, I come across eShopAfrica, an online fair-trade retailer based in Ghana that sells African craft products. When the company’s founder, Cordelia Salter-Nour, a Brit who has worked all over Africa, moved to Ghana more than a decade ago, she decided to use the Internet to generate work for African artisans by connecting them with global customers. Today, from its tiny office in Accra, eShopAfrica sells and ships everything from shawls, beads, and wall hangings to barber signs and tribal drums. Coffins are a recent addition to the product range.
I call up Cordelia, who’s in Rome working at the United Nations World Food Programme. “When I moved to Ghana,” she tells me, “the first thing I did was order a coffin.” She has two scaled-down coffins—in the shape of a computer mouse and, for her very much alive son, a football. She treats them as decorative objects to brighten up the house. “Personally, I love them,” she says. “I think they’re wasted on the dead.”
When I tell her I want to travel to Ghana to order one, Cordelia suggests I contact her colleague Kawther el Obeid, a Sudanese woman who’s lived in Ghana for twenty years and runs the business from an office in the garage at her house in Accra. Kawther, says Cordelia, can introduce me to a young coffin maker and help me with my order.
So here I am, several months later, sitting on a paint-spattered bench next to Eric, my charming coffin maker, discussing my order. Kawther has joined me for the visit to introduce me to Eric and discuss materials with him (U.S. customs regulations mean I can only import something made of the right kind of wood and decorated with lead-free paint).
It’s a sticky day at the tail end of the rainy season and the drive to Eric’s workshop has left me feeling hot and bothered. But, strange as this seems, meeting my coffin maker has lifted my spirits. His voice has a delightful timbre—a gentle pitter-patter that turns into a chortle whenever humor enters the conversation. He doesn’t look remotely like someone from the funeral business. He’s wearing jeans and flip-flops and a sky blue T-shirt on which the number 838 is embroidered with little wave crests picked out in white below it. There are no men in black suits and dark ties here.
Eric is from the Ga tribe. He lives in Nungua, the suburb next to Teshi. He got into coffins (so to speak) after dropping out of junior high because his parents could no longer afford the fees. He apprenticed himself to a well-known master coffin maker, also from the Ga tribe. Since Eric had no money to set up shop on his own, he stayed on for several years after completing his apprenticeship. Today, he’s got his own business with two apprentices and a workshop with an open-air showroom above it sheltered by a flat roof.
Eric leads me up the wooden steps to his showroom, past a sign reading, GOD FIRST FURNITURE WORKS (this, it turns out, isn’t a euphemism for Eric’s trade but the name of the business with whom he shares the building—a furniture maker). It’s good to be above ground, with the sea breeze carrying off some of the sticky sweat that’s making my shirt cling to my sides and causing my feet to slip around in my sandals. With a roof shading me from the angry sun, I’m feeling more relaxed. In any case, it’s hard to focus attention on bodily discomfort when you’re staring into the bulging eyes of a huge green, yellow, and pink crayfish that’s made of wood and designed to house someone’s remains.
Up here on Eric’s showroom platform, there’s also a scaled-down model of a “Ghana Int. Airline” plane with detachable wings, a scaled-up model of a Nokia cell phone, a couple of giant bottles of Star (Ghana’s favorite beer), an oversized sack of GMG flour (with PRIDE OF THE WEST written across it), a huge white chicken, and a gigantic red tropical fish. They’ve all been decorated in brilliant colors—and they will all one day contain a dead person.
Can these really be coffins? I wonder. With their cartoon-like designs and cheery coats of paint, they seem a million miles from the dour “Ambassador,” “Colonial,” or “Chancellor” models whose dull gray pressed-steel and walnut-veneer finishes fill the pages of funeral directors’ catalogues back home.
Eric�
��s “catalogue” is rather different—it consists of dozens of photographs of some of the coffins he’s made over the years. Soon, images of all kinds of carved objects are spread out on my lap—a giant key, a large gun, a snake (for a fetish priest), an enormous drum, and, for a pastor, a six-foot-high Bible. Eric’s most unusual commission was a giant womb for a doctor. Then there are animals—lions, fish, and other creatures. I’m reminded of the huge bulls in which the Balinese royals were cremated, but Eric’s work is designed to go below the ground, not up in flames.
Some of the coffins in the photographs contain corpses, one with a cigarette stuck in his mouth (he loved smoking, explains Eric). Others, such as a humongous root vegetable, are being paraded through the streets on their way to the cemetery.
I ask Eric where he gets his inspiration. “First, I listen to the people,” he says. “After I hear them talking, I start to know them. Then I get my ideas. And usually, they know what they want.”
Often, that’s something relating to their lives—a favorite car, perhaps (Eric’s current project is a Mercedes C360)—or a symbol of their profession. I’m not sure if the beer bottles are made for brewers or drinkers, but the fish are for fishermen, the keys for locksmiths, kiosks for storekeepers, planes for pilots, and, of course, uteruses for doctors. Occasionally the visual references have tragic origins. One young man, Peter Borkety Kuwono, was buried in a wooden replica of the oil tanker that killed him when he crashed into it.
Building these coffins requires years of training. The craftsmen work from memory or from photographs of the objects, drawing the shapes onto planks of wood. They cut the pieces, glue them together and, before painting them, sand them down to produce a silky-smooth finish. The coffin craftsmen make sure they get every detail right, from the logo on the label of a beer bottle to the registration plate of a Mercedes or the scales on the surface of a fish.