Craig Cooper: Expensive coffin? May as well toss $1000 on a fire.

Coffins come in all shapes and sizes, and costs. Craig Cooper would like to be buried in a cardboard box. Photo / Rachel Rose

Buying a second hand coffin lifts the lid on a life-sized Pandora’s box of questions.

Second hand goods don’t faze me.

Although there are some personal items I draw the line at purchasing second hand - I’m not sure I could wear another bloke’s jocks. It happened once - a rugby changing room mix-up. Not good.

And yes, I’m not sure I’d want to be buried in a second hand coffin. Or indeed bury someone in a used coffin, without knowing the history of how it came to be second-hand.

None-the-less, one was being offered to my brother and I.

What the second hand coffin seller didn’t know was that a) I was a journalist and b) my brother was a detective. So there were going to be a few questions.

First though, some answers. How did I end up being offered a second hand coffin? I was helping organise a funeral, and my brother and I had been sent on a coffin buying mission.

In a small town that once thrived with a now defunct industry (every New Zealand region has one) lived a man, for whom dying has become a home-based business. He made coffins in his workshop, from MDF, and other materials.

We had been asked to take a look, so we did. After browsing about the workshop, he mentioned he had a second hand coffin in his van.

My brother and I were intrigued. Had someone made a miraculous recovery, and the coffin was no longer required?

In my early tenure as an editor, I was responsible for a death notice published in a newspaper, for a person who was still alive. Which is kind of opposite the scenario I’ve just described.

But it’s a story worth telling.

Craig Cooper: ''If the opportunity arises, publish my death notice a day or two before I depart. It only seems fair''. Photo / Paul Taylor

As an editor, I had next to zero to do with the publication of death notices, but an editor is responsible for every word published in a newspaper.

And so it came to be that I had the necessary delicate conversation with the family of the ‘deceased’.

The death notice not only incorrectly advised that the person was dead, but it stated that the person’s service and burial had taken place, before the person’s date of death. Calamitous.

If you see me in the street, ask me how the story ends.

Back to the used coffin. There it was, in the back of a van, bumped and bruised.

Under gently interrogation, the coffin maker explained he had sold the coffin to a family, who seemed to have discarded it.

Police found it on a roadside reserve, one of the officers recognised the coffin seller’s handiwork and it was returned to him.

Most of the questions we had, could not be answered - why was it discarded? Had a person lain in it?

We didn’t purchase it. But I get why someone would, once it had been reconditioned.

According to Funeral Directors Association chief executive Gillian Boyes, the average cost of a cremation is $6500 and a ‘simple’ burial is $8400.

The Work and Income funeral grant has just gone up 7 per cent to $2445.

That leaves a struggling family well short of the overall cost.

Personally, I find the idea of spending money on an expensive coffin akin to tossing $1000 on a fire.

For centuries, many families have followed colonial death rituals that for me personally, are no longer fit for purpose.

I’d rather the money be spent on planning a party - not a funeral, and my family have full licence to dispense with the expense and formalities usually associated with a funeral.

Bury me in a cardboard box, under a simple white cross, somewhere quiet. And spend the money on something else, that gives joy - even momentarily - to people who are alive, not dead.

And by all means, if the opportunity arises, publish my death notice a day or two before I depart.

It only seems fair.