HAVE YOU ORGANISED YOUR DEATH PARTY?
WHEN YOU’RE PLANNING THE PERFECT END TO LIFE, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FASHIONABLE DETAILS. WE INVESTIGATE THIS RADICAL TREND
There’s a wave of people planning their own end to life, long before it’s needed. ELLE finds out why
Shatzi Weisberger is showing me her biodegradable cardboard coffin over FaceTime from New York. OK, it’s not the one she plans to be buried in (she’s having a coffin-free green burial wrapped in a shroud – aka a fancy table cloth), but it is the one she displayed at the funeral-cum-death-party she organised for herself and attended two years ago. Guests, of which there were roughly 1OO, decorated the now-9O-yearold’s coffin with glitter during an evening spent eating prawn cocktails, drinking wine and getting temporary tattoos. Weisberger’s choir – Brooklyn Women’s Chorus – performed and the guest of honour made a speech discussing everything she’d learnt about death from years of researching, attending courses and hosting workshops.
‘We live in a death-phobic society,’ says Weisberger, whose interest in death first started during her 47 years as a nurse, where she oversaw much of the Aids crisis in New York City. ‘Fearing death is no personal shortcoming, but rather a cultural phenomenon.’ Weisberger hosted her death party in a bid to get people talking about one of the last taboos in the Western world; she wanted to let them know that it’s OK to talk about death.
Despite death being one of the only sure things in life, it isn’t a topic we bring up at dinner parties. While we now discuss previously outof-bounds subjects – money, sexuality, prejudice – death still fills us with fear. As for attending your own funeral? It’s not exactly common. Yet…
Currently in the UK, living funerals – whereby someone attends their own service – do exist, but are almost solely for the terminally ill or those with progressive conditions such as dementia. In South Korea, companies are using them to try to curb the country’s suicide rate, which is the 1Oth highest in the world. As part of a ‘dying well’ programme, employees write ‘farewell letters’ to loved ones before lying in a coffin and hugging a photo of themselves. A man representing the ‘Angel of Death’ (dressed in black with a tall hat) then closes the lid for 1O minutes. The aim? To encourage people to gain a fresh perspective on their lives.
The idea of having a death-themed away day might not sound likely to take off in the UK any time soon, but there are signs that we’re becoming obsessed with our own mortality here, too.
Freelance journalist and media consultant Suzanne Bearne started planning her funeral when she was 33. She had no health conditions, but grew up imagining her dream funeral, rather than her ideal wedding. Her fascination increased after reading about bespoke funeral planner Louise Winter’s send-offs, including woodland burials where guests wear white and the procession is in complete silence, other than the sounds of the birds and the wind through the trees. For Bearne, there will be no stuffy hymns, eerie churches or black dress code.Therewill bechampagne on arrival, a grand entrance in a VW campervan (a nod to her festival days) and a DJ set of funky soul into the early hours.
‘The last thing I want is my friends to leave my farewell thinking, That was a bit naff,’ says Bearne. ‘I don’t want the rigid package I’ve seen repeated time and time again, I want a service that represents how I lived.’ Though waves of sadness hit her when initially thinking about her death in such detail, once she’d made some key decisions, she felt accomplished. She wants to go out with a party and, by axing flowers, limousines and pall bearers, the price should be around the same as a traditional funeral, which in 2O19 reached an all-time high of £4,975 for an average burial. She’ll be footing the bill anyway: ‘I have requests, but I want to take the burden of choice away from those left behind. Often quick decisions are made in times of grief, so I hope pointing my family in the right direction can ease some stress.’
For a new generation, death is in need of an update. ‘Young people are looking for ways to grieve and experience death that reflects their voice and attitudes,’ says Rachel Wilson, founder of The Grief Network, a community for bereaved young people that hosts book talks and interviews public figures – from Next In Fashion designer Claire Yurika Davis to influencer Lottie Tomlinson. ‘That’s why The Grief Network lives on Instagram, has a chatty tone of voice and why our imagery is never morbid. You don’t stop being engaged in your contemporary context just because you’re dying or grieving.’
As for funerals themselves, doom and gloom is taking a back seat. In Chiswick, Exit Here has been dubbed the ‘funeral parlour of the future’ for its Dezeen Awardshortlisted interior design that looks like a Conran showroom. ‘We don’t use a lot of black,’ says founder Oliver Peyton, one of London’s most influential restaurateurs, who got into the business after organising his parents’ funerals. ‘We try to make things more joyous, but the main thing we do is give people choice. We’re not stuck on one traditional conveyor belt.’ Exit Here even has an IGTV series with people sharing their future funeral plans. From caskets woven with Somerset willow, to stylish ceramic urns that won’t look out of place on your mantelpiece, Exit Here is as modern as they come. But it’s certainly not the most outlandish.
Leicester-based Crazy Coffins, run by ex-Marks & Spencer textile designer David Crampton, is the UK’s answer to Paa Joe, the prolific Ghanaian coffin artist whose designs range from Porsches to Pepsi bottles. Are you a massive sneakerhead? A Louis Vuitton bag enthusiast? You name it, you can get buried in it. For eco-warriors – green is definitely the new black when it comes to death – there are tech startups such as New York-based Coeio. Its Infinity Burial Suit – made from organic cotton and mushroom spores – decomposes your body without leaking harmful toxins into the soil. There’s even a drawstring sack version for pets.
The future of death is personalised. ‘It’s about control,’ says Jenny Kleeman, author of Sex Robots & Vegan Meat – a book about entrepreneurs who see a commercial opportunity in promising us the illusion of control in the fundamental elements of our existence, including death. As part of her research, she met ‘Dr Death’, the designer of 3D-printed suicide machine Sarco. ‘I saw the first proper prototype of Dr Philip Nitschke’s biodegradable 3D death machine and it looks like the Batmobile,’ she says. ‘It promises to give a peaceful – even euphoric – death when you get inside at the time of your choosing, without a doctor signing it off.’ After paying to become a member of his group Exit International, you receive the plans, which, in theory, will let you 3D print the machine at home when the technology is available. Effectively this allows Dr Nitschke, a radical pro-euthanasia campaigner, to abdicate all responsibility of assisting suicide. Nitschke explained to Kleeman that it appeals to those who want a sense of occasion when they die. ‘They might have a party, make a final toast in celebration of their life before stepping into the machine then and there, almost like attending their own funeral.’
Aside from the obvious red flags around unmonitored suicide being so readily available, Kleeman wonders how guests left behind at death parties will feel. ‘Death is never an entirely solitary pursuit,’ she says. Bearne’s funeral planner Louise Winter agrees. Founder of creative funeral service Poetic Endings, Winter thinks that the process is for the benefit of those attending. ‘I went through a lengthy process of writing down what I’d like my own funeral to be, and ended up tearing it up,’ says Winter. ‘I decided it was really not any of my business. It’s the process that makes them so valuable for the people left behind to come to terms with their loss.’
But experts believe that humans have an innate obsession with death. Carla Valentine, known for bringing the Death Salon (a meeting hosting death discussions) to the UK from the US, argues that our growing obsession with true crime and graphic computer games is down to a primal need to be around death. ‘The more we’ve pulled away from the death process by taking it out of the home and into hospitals, the more we seem to recreate it in other ways,’ says Valentine, also a curator at Barts Pathology Museum and author of Murder Isn’t Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie. ‘There is an animalistic need to understand our own mortality.’
Dr Michael Sinclair, consultant psychologist and clinical director of City Psychology Group, thinks that confronting the idea of death with a mock funeral may be beneficial. ‘Realising that we won’t be around forever can highlight what truly matters to us,’ says Dr Sinclair. ‘It causes us to reflect on our values and commit to changes to live a more satisfying and fulfilled life.’
Even thinking about death can give you a greater zest for life, according to research from the University of Kentucky. Its findings confirmed that, when confronted with death, our subconscious pushes us to experience positive feelings as a coping mechanism. The app WeCroak was launched in 2O17 for this purpose, and sends out five daily reminders that you’re going to die. The death cafe movement – where people meet to discuss death over tea and cake – took off in the UK in 2O11, when writer Jon Underwood founded Death Café in east London after reading of Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz’s Café Mortel. Before his own death in 2O17, Underwood explained that talking about death was the ultimate prioritisation exercise: ‘You know you have a certain time left, then the question is, “What’s important for me to do in that time?”.’
In the spirit of accepting my own mortality, as Winter suggests in her book We All Know How This Ends, * I’ve formulated a few plans of my own. The playlist will range from Lizzo to James Morrison – surprise performances welcome – and, after initial tears, there should be dancing and ideally snogging, in honour of my greatest passions in life. Exes remain firmly off the guestlist, but I would serve pornstar martinis. A photobooth is a must. And my cremated ashes (I’m sure there will be a greener way to do this soon) should be distributed to those closest to me, encapsulated in personalised jewellery.
A text to my mum describing the above got no response. (Unhealthy denial at its finest.) So, at our next family gathering, I’ll be sure to force them to confront their own mortality in the name of happiness. Consider the death party started.
“ARE YOU A LOUIS VUITTON BAG ENTHUSIAST? YOU NAME IT, YOU CAN BE BURIED IN IT ”