Elderly New Zealanders And Their DIY Coffins

Credit: theguardian.com

According to the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand, the average cost of a funeral there can be between $6,500 and $7,000. A coffin alone can range between $1,000 and $10,000. Now some clever New Zealand seniors have come up with an alternative to prohibitively expensive caskets: They’re creating personalized DIY coffins themselves.

In the latter years of life, social gatherings often revolve around getting together to play bridge or learning to square dance. But members of the Kiwi Coffin Club are upping the ante. They are confronting their mortality with some collective art therapy AND saving their families a few thousand dollars while they’re at it. (The coffins that members of the club build cost about $250 each.)

Credit: theguardian.com

“Our motto is: It’s a box until there is someone in it. And while it’s just a box, it brings us together,” says former palliative care nurse Katie Williams, 77. Williams founded the first coffin club in 2010 in Rotura, located in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand’s North Island.

“Because of my work and my age I had become a perpetual mourner,” says Williams. “I had seen lots of people dying. And their funerals were nothing to do with the vibrancy and life of those people. You would not know what they were really like — that they had lived and laughed and loved. I had a deep-seated feeling that peoples’ journeys deserved a more personal farewell.” That feeling spurred Williams to hold the first Kiwi Coffin Club in her garage.

At that stage she had neither the tools nor any idea how to construct a coffin. Thankfully, a few handymen with some construction skills jumped on board and the club began to gain traction. Williams’ garage soon became too small to accommodate the growing numbers of DIY coffin builders, and the club had to find a larger facility.

Williams explains the therapeutic value of the DIY coffin clubs, noting, “There is a lot of loneliness among the elderly. But at the coffin club, people feel useful, and it is very social. We have morning tea and lunch, and music blaring, and cuddles.” In addition to constructing their own coffins, the club also creates coffins for premature babies, which they donate to the local hospital.

The official Kiwi Coffin Club in Rotura now has around 80 members. There are at least 10 other clubs now in existence across New Zealand. I wonder if there will be DIY grave digging clubs popping up next?