Short, special life
’Merry and bright’ farewell for 7-year-old Evan.
There is always something poignant about a casket made for a child.
It’s the physical representation of a particular sadness: a wooden box to contain, for eternity, a small body that had still been growing until suddenly it wasn’t. The seemingly boundless potential of youth halted, its embodiment placed in a container meant for burying in the earth.
Every death will provoke its own solemn emotions, but the sight of a child’s coffin seems to open a specific chamber in the house of grief, different somehow from the others.
And then there is this one, the fivefoot-long casket in which the body of 7-year-old Evan Leversage was buried in St. George, Ont., on Thursday, something different again altogether.
Its frame is constructed of familiar polished brown wood, but its side and top panels are finished in royal blue cloth, bearing pictures of snowmen in red Santa hats, bright green Christmas trees topped by yellow stars, snowflakes and Christmas stockings.
Between the pictures there is a repeated inscription that reads, “merry and bright.” It is festive, joyous; a contrast to the sombre occasion for which it was made, but a tribute to the life of the boy whose body it now holds.
“It was initially my idea,” says Dennis Toll, the funeral director tasked with making arrangements. “I had an opportunity to spend some time with the family before Evan’s death, and knowing them and the circumstances, I thought it would be nice to do something special.”
For Evan’s short life was a special one: diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour before his second birthday, he was embraced by his community for his bright smile and courage, becoming an honorary firefighter, police officer and paramedic in the small town of St. George (“The Friendly Village,” as it is called on a sign on picturesque Main St.) where he lived.
This year, as it became clear he didn’t have much longer to live, Evan was embraced by a wider, international community who followed him through media reports in the United States and overseas, as he and his family worked their way through his “bucket list” of last wishes, culminating when the whole town gave him “one last Christmas” in October: hanging decorations on front lawns and lampposts, singing carols along the sidewalk, covering lawns with fake snow, and finally, staging a Santa Claus Parade attended by 7,000 people (more than triple the population of the town), in which Evan got to ride on Santa’s sleigh.
Given this unique rallying around Evan — according to Maclean’s magazine, the “Boy who moved Christmas” — funeral director Toll says he thought, “What could we do in regard to a Christmas theme?”
He contacted Northern Casket in Lindsay, to inquire about options. A family business making burial caskets since 1926, company vice-president Caley Ferguson says it has recently been fulfilling more requests for unconventional, personalized items, ranging from splashier colours in interior lining to more offbeat customizations.
They offer a camouflage-and-wood patterned model popular with hunters, for example. This year, for a farmer in Strathroy, Northern produced a casket made to look like a John Deere tractor.
“When we got a call from the funeral home for a Christmas theme, we jumped right on it,” Ferguson says. Time was of the essence — the product would need to be ready in about a day and a half. He dispatched a sales representative to their fabric supply store in Peterborough to seek out options — sending smartphone photos to Toll for approval on the spot.
Toll says he thought the snowman and holiday theme worked, and presented the final design to Evan’s mother, Nicole Wellwood, for approval.
“It’s a sad occasion, but it’s also a celebration of his life,” Toll says of the balance to be struck. “We wanted the casket to represent Evan, and I thought with the snowman pattern it did. When the family saw the words ‘merry and bright’ — even I was concerned that message might be a bit much — the mother’s first comments were, ‘That was Evan. Merry and bright! That’s him.’ ”
The juxtaposition between the sad and the celebratory: that was Evan’s story too, as the public came to know it. A story of a boy with an inoperable cancer who knew his life wouldn’t last a long time, but a story too of how thousands of strangers were inspired to join him to celebrate that life while he was living it.
It’s a legacy of finding the good in the tragic that Evan’s family hope can endure in a fund they’ve set up to benefit the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada.
That tension between grief and inspiration was there in the funeral service Thursday, attended by hundreds and watched by many hundreds more by livestream.
“He taught us not to count the days, but to make the days count,” one of his schoolteachers said at the funeral, remembering not the gift her community gave to Evan, but the one he gave to them.
That tension was there as mourners released balloons at his graveside when his casket was lowered into the ground. And it was there even in the fine details of that bright blue Christmas casket itself.
“This will be the perfect final resting place for Evan,” his mother said of the casket in a statement released to the press, “because he made everyone’s world merry and bright.” A particular poignancy, softened by a particular joyfulness: a final seasonal message from the boy whose holiday celebration brought the Christmas spirit to so many people earlier than usual this year. May that spirit, and Evan’s memory, live on. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire