“I made a box for my own ashes.
No, I’m not dying. Just in case some of you were worried this might be the last you’d hear of my great insights on goodreads. Is that really something you were worried about for a second there, you fucking weirdo?
A couple years back a friend told me about his father’s funeral and how everyone’s trying to upsell. Oh, get this urn. Oh, get this piece of jewelry made with your loved one’s ashes embedded inside.
My friend’s father worked around this. He set aside a simple, inexpensive urn and specifically instructed that this was to be his urn. He had his ashes spread in the bay in San Francisco, so all he really needed was something that would get his ashes from the oven to the water with a minimal loss of matter.
I thought this was genius. How can you argue against someone’s final wishes? And, if the box is homemade, even if it looks like shit, what are the funeral people going to say? “Wow, that’s a real piece of shit your friend made for himself”? No way.
After looking at urns online (which range from not-expensive to HOLYFUCK), I decided to make my own.
It’s a rectangular pine box with cheap brass hinges. That’s it. It’s not even square.
In my defense, I made this with hand tools, in a studio apartment, from a single board.
And now it sits in my closet, awaiting my demise and getting the side-eye from my girlfriend in the meantime.
I enjoyed this project, and I’m inspired to remake this box at least a couple more times. Out with the old, in with the new, slightly improved version. I’ve thought about decorating and that sort of thing, but as I recently heard from a college professor I never took a class from (long story), “Utility is its own aesthetic.” That same sentiment was in this book, and I read the same idea twice only a couple days apart. And I love it. I do think simple, functional things can be very beautiful. I think some of the urns out there are a little…gaudy. They might seem like a fitting vessel, but then I think about who I am and how I’d like to be remembered. I’d like to think a pewter vase mass produced in China doesn’t fit.
I guess a lot of folks see this as a morbid project. I’m a generally healthy guy who’s not old yet. But I’ve seen how things can sneak up on you. And I don’t see it as morbid. When I was cutting the boards, I wasn’t thinking about death. I was thinking about making the cut. When I glued and clamped the boards, I was thinking about gluing and clamping the boards. Yeah, okay, and I was thinking about how to make sure and not ruin the countertop in my rental apartment with glue.
When I finished, I didn’t think about dying then, either. I felt like…I felt like I’d taken care of something so someone else wouldn’t have to. That I’d saved my surviving friends some money and decision-making in a time when they’ll surely be devastated. I’m pretty great. I’ll just say it. See, I’m doing their work all over the place.
I felt relieved. Because there are a lot of questions about death. What will happen to my remains isn’t one of them anymore. Sometimes it feels good to control the parts you can. And sometimes that helps you let go of the rest.
The short of it, this book encourages people to make things, whatever those things are. And that’s a message I can agree with. Take some control of your life. Find a project that involves working with your body just a little, your fingers if you’ve got them.
Making things is problem-solving. It’s a good way to take your mind off the little problems of the work day. And it’s a great alternative to the stuff most of us do, which doesn’t have a tangible product.
Go and make something. Start soon. “