Anna Mellalieu has launched <i>My Will Wishes</i> - a book where people can handwrite what they want to happen after their death. Photo / Instagram
Will wishes that include what you want to be done with your house plants, and who you don't want to speak at your service - funerals are becoming more personalised.
There can be questions left unanswered after death.
Did they want their prized golf clubs passed on to their brother or best friend?
Was their final outfit to be a suit and tie or Swanndri and shorts?
In the end, it's not the big things that matter, but the little things and a Pāpāmoa woman knows that regretful feeling when you wish you could go back and make changes.
When Anna Mellalieu's dad Tim Mellalieu, a 57-year-old linesman, died in 2015 after a four-month battle with metastatic melanoma, he'd have been mortified at photos used of him at his funeral, she says.
Young at heart and a fit outdoorsman, he dodged cameras towards the end of his life, having gained excess weight with medication and treatment.
Unfortunately, some of the photos used of him in a slideshow - collated by a well-meaning relative - were of him sick.
The 37-year-old knows her dad would have hated them. It was a negative experience for her, but also a transformative one.
It made her realise that his wishes would have been better met with forward planning, and it inspired her to launch a book called My Will Wishes, where people can hand write what they want to happen after their death.
While not legally binding, it's designed to sit alongside a person's will.
It enables the person to document their personal preferences for things that are often overlooked, such as which photos are to be used at their service and where and how to locate them.
What they want to be done with their social media pages; headstone wording; what they want to be kept out of their service, for example, a certain life memory; what they want to be done with their homewares; pets; sports equipment; where health, legal, property and financial records can be found; and basically anything else the person can think of, including what to do with their house plants, and what they want their final outfit to be.
Furthermore, there's who they want, and don't want, to visit them at their resting place before the funeral, and where they want the bulk of their funeral expenses to be spent - champagne and live music. Or casket and flowers?
Mellalieu has also included a section in the book titled Remembering Me, which allows the author to write "hidden truths or treasures", "conscience clearing or things unsaid"; family traditions they would like carried on; and love letters.
The power of the written word
Demand has been so great for the book that the businesswoman and legal executive student sold 250 copies nationwide in the first fortnight of its launch in late July.
While her dad would joke "put me in a cardboard box and throw me off a boat", she and her sister Lisa knew he didn't really mean that, not to mention it's illegal.
While his final wishes weren't written down, they made his funeral special and his final outfit was his work overalls.
His employer, Northpower, transported his strapped coffin on top of a truck, and a convoy of vehicles followed it past his favourite swimming spot. Music mates played at the service.
Mellalieu says she'd loved to have read more about what her dad wanted in his own words.
"When people pass away, a lot of people don't realise how important someone's writing is," she says.
"You want to go back and find all the letters or birthday cards they sent you. That's why I didn't want this book to be digital."
Pages can be photographed and sent to the funeral director, and the book comes with a card that people keep in their wallets that says where it's hidden.
As the creator of the book, she too has started filling one out, and her advice is not to rush the process. She suggests reading through the questions, spending time thinking about them, and then filling them in with a pencil initially, and a pen once certain.
What she does have that her dad had written down is a great comfort. She has a tattoo on her forearm that's a replica of his handwriting: "see you in heaven, I love you". She has his diaries of squiggles, drawings and music notes.
"It's the one thing that I find brings me closest to him.
"I think he'd love what I'm doing and laugh and go 'of course you're making them have this conversation'."
Helping people at a 'really shitty time'
Making light of death seems unnatural but sometimes it's the anecdote needed to pull through, believes Ross Hall.
When he was writing his will 20 years ago he started thinking about how he really didn't like the colour brown. Unfortunately, most coffins he'd seen were walnut or chestnut.
That didn't appeal, so he wrote in his will that he wanted a red coffin with flames on it.
Six months later he thought: "I can't be the only weird bugger out there who wants that."
So he put together a collection of 20 different casket designs and went to funeral directors with them.
In the early-2000s they "poo-pooed" it," he says. "At the time, it was unheard of."
But he persisted and kept adding designs to his range.
Six to seven years ago the world changed with funerals, he says, and he now makes two to three customised coffins a week.
His business Dying Art is a sister business to his Auckland design and signage company Big Ideas Group.
"The caskets are just something that's a feel-good thing for me because I feel like I'm really helping people at a really shitty time," he says.
This relatively recent move towards greater options in death, and particularly those that celebrate the individual, reflect an increasingly individualistic and personalised society, believes Hall.
"The industry is getting dragged along with it," he says of what's become a boutique business.
There has also been a move towards green alternatives and other choices that depart from the steadfast tradition. The consistency of what we've come to expect from funerals is changing.
For example, having a cream doughnut casket.
Hall created the doughnut for his Tauranga cousin Phil McLean, 68, at his request, about three weeks before he died in February 2021, from cancer.
The casket, initially covered with two single fitted sheets so it could be a "surprise" to mourners, had attendees gasping and their gasping sent them laughing.
"Phil got the last laugh. He would have been sitting there rubbing his hands together with tears rolling down his cheeks," Hall says.
His other designs - many of them turned around in 24 hours - included a Formula One Ferrari race car; a chocolate bar; and a fire engine with working wheels. Then there are caskets covered in photos of the person's garden or overseas travel adventures; holographic or glitter.
"It's endless what you can do."
Most are biodegradable, except for the doughnut, which he got back after the service - and Phil was switched to a plain coffin - because Hall used polystyrene and shaping foam which isn't enviro-friendly.
'He'd hot-rodded his own casket'
McLean's wife Debra, says her husband, known as The Doughnut Man for his love of doughnuts, died before he got to see his finished casket but she knows he would have loved it.
"He liked to 'Hot Rod' everything so it was almost like he'd hot-rodded his own casket - his final vehicle," she says.
At his service afterwards, cream doughnuts were served from his favourite bakery Bay Bakery in Whitianga.
The songs at his funeral included The Greatest American Hero ("believe it or not, it should have been somebody else"); and Take it to the Limit by The Eagles. He wore a Pink Floyd t-shirt and jeans.
Debra and Phil, who'd known each other for years, but been together for eight, and married six, both felt a custom casket eased the process of death.
Initially, Phil didn't want a funeral, but Debra talked him around, telling him his living family needed closure.
"Having a custom casket not only changed the whole dynamics and atmosphere of the funeral, but it has also helped the grieving process immensely because it has become for me, a talking point. It kept his legacy alive. It's kept his humour alive," she says.
On his birthday, the anniversary of his death, and international doughnut day, friends and family send her texts and pictures of them "enjoying a doughnut for Phil". She's also now working for Dying Art as an advisor and gives public talks at rest homes, and has previously spoken at Waipuna Hospice.
"I designed a casket for a friend of our family and he was a fisherman. He was cremated in his fishing casket so you've got an image in your head that he's forever off fishing, and that's nice. The casket is the very last thing that you see of your loved one and if it is just a brown box, you just remember them in a coffin. It's comforting to know they've gone with their passion," she says.
Another New Zealand business offering caskets that are different and special is Korowai Caskets. Working with traditional Māori designs on plywood, the appearance of the kowhaiwhai pattern is 3D, turning the design into a sculpture.
However, it's okay to opt for something plain too - as 80-year-old John Short has done.
When his wife Robyn died in 2003 he found himself with a $2800 bill for her coffin and decided for his own wake he'd do things differently.
He joined the Kiwi Coffin Club Charitable Trust, of which he is now chairman, and made his own coffin for $300. Members make others' coffins to their requested design specifications.
"I just wanted a box," he says. "It's lined, and I've left it painted white because my 12 grandkids kids can draw on it - write messages; add stickers. It's in my garage and has been there for the last six to eight years."
While the idea of storing your own coffin in your garage might seem off-putting, Short is unfazed: "You've got to have a box to go in, or a waka or a canoe. That's what I have planned," he says.
One chance to say goodbye
The funeral industry encourages people to embrace individuality and "have the best possible experience," says assistant manager at Elliotts in Tauranga, Kylie Sprague.
One of the Bay of Plenty's most progressive funeral homes, Elliotts has just introduced digital timelines, where a person's life can be memorialised online, through photos, comments and anecdotes in a secure environment for current and future generations.
People can also record and leave messages to be received in the future.
For example, a grandad can leave his grandson a pre-recorded message for his 18th birthday.
Services outside of a chapel are welcomed, although Elliotts recently spent around $2.5 million upgrading its facility, and multimedia, making it equal to anything in the country. livestreaming of funerals is now commonplace, thanks to Covid.
"We have done funerals on the beach, in the bush, on the family farm. We even took one gentleman who was a huge racing enthusiast on the last lap around his favourite racecourse," Sprague says.
Tech Innovation in death
When Tauranga's Sharon Hunter hears about businesses like Dying Art and Korowai Caskets it makes her hopeful the days of one-size-fits-all funerals are on the way out.
"For a long time, when we farewelled someone we have loved and lost, everything looked the same. Take away the eulogies and there is often little clue as to who that person was," she says.
"It can leave people with a deep regret that they didn't do more."
Part of the problem is simply not knowing what's possible, and that's where her company Great Goodbyes is making its mark.
She co-founded the "innovative" website, allowing people to consider their funeral options now - so their loved ones don't have to do it later.
She describes it as "inspiring and practical" and as if "Expedia got together with Pinterest" and changed the way we could plan for and arrange funerals.
"The website busts open long-held myths about funerals that hold us back and opens people up to the possibilities of what an end-of-life celebration could look like.
"It's a stunning online resource of ideas and possibilities, together with practical advice and help for making a funeral plan to record instructions."
Alongside greater personalisation, Hunter believes the biggest pain point for families is undisclosed pricing, and the funeral industry is notoriously opaque on costs and slow to change.
"Many funeral homes rely on the reluctance of people to question prices in person to maintain the status quo. That's where technology helps a lot.
"Online, families can research and compare in private and without pressure. [Our website] makes pricing easier to find and understand. Increasingly, funerals will be about prioritising different things; the fabulous champagne rather than the expensive casket."
Great Goodbyes was launched in Portland, Oregon because she says it was the right-sized market to test, learn and adapt before expanding to other US cities next year - and eventually, back to New Zealand.
"In the US, it lists the kind of companies that make special funerals possible. There is also a strong focus on earth-friendly funeral solutions.
"We make the research, comparison and connection process much easier than someone could ever do alone. We use online resources in almost every part of our lives. The funeral industry is now embracing that too.
"We only get one chance to say goodbye. We believe it should be a great one."
Websites to help
• mywillwishes.com. Books are $29.95. Order through the website or if it's urgent, email mywillwishes@gmail.com
• dyingart.co.nz. Purchases are made through your funeral director.
• greatgoodbyes.com
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