When the pallbearers brought Phil McLean’s coffin into the chapel, there were gasps before a wave of laughter rippled through the hundreds of mourners.
The coffin was a giant cream doughnut.
“It overshadowed the sadness and the hard times in the last few weeks,” his widow, Debra McLean, said. “The final memory in everyone’s mind was of that doughnut, and Phil’s sense of humor.”
Photo: AP
The doughnut was the latest creation by Phil McLean’s cousin, Ross Hall, who runs a business in Auckland, New Zealand, called Dying Art, which custom builds colorful coffins.
Other creations by Hall include a sailboat, a firetruck, a chocolate bar and Lego blocks. There have been glittering coffins covered in fake jewels, a casket inspired by the movie The Matrix, and plenty of coffins depicting people’s favorite beaches and holiday spots.
“There are people who are happy with a brown mahogany box and that’s great,” Hall said. “But if they want to shout it out, I’m here to do it for them.”
The idea first came to Hall about 15 years ago when he was writing a will and contemplating his own death.
“How do I want to go out?” he thought to himself, deciding it would not be like everyone else. “So I put in my will that I want a red box with flames on it.”
Six months later, Hall, whose other business is a signage and graphics company, decided to get serious.
He approached a few funeral directors who looked at him with interest and skepticism, but over time, the idea took hold, he said.
Hall begins with special-made blank coffins, and uses fiberboard and plywood to add details. A latex digital printer is used for the designs. Some orders are particularly complex, like a sailboat coffin, which included a keel and rudder, cabin, sails, even metal railings and pulleys.
Depending on the design, the coffins retail from about NZ$3,000 to NZ$7,500 (US$2,151 to US$5,378).
The tone of funerals has changed markedly over the past few years, Hall said.
“People now think it’s a celebration of life rather than a mourning of death,” he said.
People have been willing to throw out stuffy conventions in favor of getting something unique, but a doughnut?
Debra McLean said that she and her late husband, who was 68 when he died in February, used to tour the country in their motor home and he loved comparing cream doughnuts in every small town, considering himself something of a connoisseur.
He considered a good doughnut one that was crunchy on the outside, airy in the middle and definitely made with fresh cream.
After Phil McLean was diagnosed with bowel cancer, he had time to think about his funeral and, along with his wife and cousin, came up with the idea for the doughnut coffin.
They even had 150 doughnuts delivered to the funeral in Tauranga from his favorite bakery in Whitianga, more than 160km away, Debra McLean said.
Hall said that his coffins are biodegradable and are usually buried or cremated along with the deceased.
The only one that has ever been returned was his cousin’s, because he used polystyrene and shaping foam, which is not environmentally friendly, he said.
Phil McLean was moved to a plain coffin for his cremation and Hall said that he would keep the doughnut coffin forever.
For now, it remains in the back of his white 1991 Cadillac hearse.
For his own funeral, Hall said that he changed his mind about those red flames.
He has told his children that he wants to be buried in a clear coffin wearing nothing but a leopard-pattern G-string.
“The kids say they’re not going,” he said with a laugh.
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