Cheerful caskets

If you live - or well, die - in England, you can take your favorite brand with you to the grave. In the homeland of black humor, funerals can be anything but black. Several clever companies offer colorful, customizable and even crazy coffins. Whether and to what degree the deceased benefit from the personalized caskets is a question of faith. But funerals are more for the living than for dead, anyways.

What seemed to be rather out of place at first sight, made sense after I forced myself to think about what nobody wants to think about in the first place: There is a slight chance that I might actually die one day. In that event there will likely be a casket and I might as well have it my way then. I like to think of myself as a fairly agreeable sight and somewhat entertaining company. So why not continue that tradition when I am no longer with us and provide some visual stimulation and a topic to chit-chat about at the afterparty. In that way, people who did not really know me will have a topic to small-talk about and people who did not actually like me won't have to pretend they did.

I don't usually like boxes in any size or style, however, I do like purses in all sizes and shoes in all shapes. I do not care about mahagony or pine board, but I sometimes have trouble to choose between a Caramel Capuccino and a Vanilla Latte. While hexagonal and rectangular sound like medical terms to me, I do know exactly what a Frontside 360 is. So, future husband and children, take this as a hint and choose between a huge handbag, a coffe cup (caffein-free please, I am already dead and don't need to stay awake) and a snowboard to bury me in. If you can't make up your mind, just take a casket from the Easy Rider collection. I am sure I will appreciate the postmortem irony.