Fantasy Coffins

A while ago while sitting in on a Friday night browsing Google for ‘weird dead things’ I came across the unusual fad in Ghana for unique coffin designs in the shape of all manner of things; giant fish, planes, cars, guitars and so on. Death and the passing of a love done is a highly celebrated event in the region and given a lot of though and effort. The 'fantasy coffins'  as they are called are designed by the deceased or their loved ones to have some sort of essence of the dead person and reflect their personality, or occupation.

This celebration of life and unique practice made me think about the choices that are made regarding death in our own society. It is still so sombre and austere, everybody in black, sullen and most importantly the black shiny coffin, which looks just like every other coffin. I wonder why we are still so reserved about death in our society, especially since we are so very individualistic in almost every other way; we love to personalise everything, difference and uniqueness is highly celebrated in our culture. Why then do we all insist on being the same when it comes to death and shunning the choices of those who want to be different?

I like these coffins; I think they celebrate the life of a person. I think I would probably be buried in a giant horse coffin, the horse would have fancy high heels (I love shoes) and be eating chocolate and there would with a union jack on it somewhere....