Penelope · 7 answers · 4y

Would you join a “coffin club”? Do we need to think about our deaths more? Would planning your funeral make death seem less scary?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/diy-coffins/592777/

I don't think I'd join... I'm not that afraid of talking about death. I'm really young, though, so I haven't planned for my death. I was thinking about it the other day because my insurance company sent me a promotional email to take out a life insurance policy (oh my), but I don't think I'm going to make it a priority until I at least have a spouse/life partner. I don't even need to do anything rn though because if I die (without a will) tomorrow, all my assets will go to my parents and that's just fine with me

I wouldn’t want to be a financial burden to my children, and in this day and age, it costs a fortune to die. I don’t obsess about it, but it’s best to be prepared.

Haha. Coffins, funerals, rites etc. are social constructions to make loss and death bearable for the living, not meant to ease the fact we all will die or make the experience of death better for those about to die. Though rites and culture can be a means to let the idea we are mortal more close to ourselves, so we can maybe adapt a bit. But for most a DIY coffin is always the coffin for the others, not for them, even if their name is engraved in it. Most of us simply do not switch their point of view when it could lead to uneasy feelings.

No, I wouldn't personally be joining any social clubs because I am broken, but maybe we should at the very least be able to talk about it more without being considered ghoulish, because lemme tell you, that is a good way to get people to stop returning your calls. Of course, the other side of normalization of death talk is eventually a thousand crass TV commercials for Crazy Eddie's Body Farm and his Labor Day sale

No, I'm too lazy to be makin' a coffin, especially since it's something that won't be of any use to me until I'm somewhere completely different and couldn't care less. Also I'm not sure I want to be coffinated when I die; I just want to be buried, unembalmed, directly in a hole in the ground.

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