Does It Really Matter The Coffin?

Several life experiences have caused me to let ink flow on paper as far as this subject is concerned. For some time now, I have watched with a lot of consternation, how peope spend lavish sums of money on funerals and on coffins particularly. When one looks at the coffin designs that people spend millions on, it beats one's imagination if actually, that matters.

This phenomenon has even lured many into comparing funeral traditions in parts of Cameroon, Africa and the world at large. True it is that some do not bury people in caskets, and do not even wail at funerals the way others do.

However while it is wholly agreeable that whatever is done at a funeral is done in last reverence to the deceased, we shouldn't equally make the mistake of neglecting how much we spend in doing so.

Funerals have now become more or less publicity stunts where people go, not for the primary motive of condoling with the bereaved, but rather to see with kind of coffin has been bought for the deceased, or how much food and drinks has been made available.

At funerals today, it is common to see coffins designed in the shape of an aero plane, an elephant or a car, a house just to name a few. Caskets fabricated in glass, gold and ivory are also common place.

Matters become even the more attention-catching when after investing such gigantic sums of cash in a coffin; you find the existing members of a family licking the sores of poverty and hardship thereafter. And when you ask them, they'll tell you that was his or her last chance.

Now permit us question; why should we spend stupendous sums of money on matter that has to be donated to the worms, most often to the detriment of those still living.

Well, some may say as for the high-ups, or the well-to-do, a state burial speaks it all. Most often they say it is a yardstick to decipher how great or influential a person was, that is, those who have added their own straw to the building of national life.

Apart from political big wheels, they are other money magnets who swim in the millions, and to them, lavish spending is just like taking a cup of water away from the sea.

Many hold that when such people die, one should not expect them to be buried in cut and nail coffins. As such, their families go for caskets that are worth millions. But the question still arises - does it really matter the coffin? I remember when former Nigerian president Umaru Musa Yar' adua passed away, he was interred in mere bamboo, wrapped in the green white green colour of his Fatherland.

If you wouldn't mind to know, death, burials and extravaganza are topical issues about which some great men have been vocal. They have shared their thoughts, experiences, views and opinions on this subject matter.

According to this prolific Ghanaian poet Koffi Awoonor, death is just a transition from the world of the living to that of the dead. In one of his poems titled “the journey beyond”, Awoonor sees death and its associated rituals not from a materialistic point of view, but rather he firmly believes that the best thing to do for the dead is to perform the ritual rites in the most solemn way possible.

In like manner, English literary icon Alfred Lord Tennyson views death as a simple transitional process from one stage of life to another. This opinion highly glares in one of his finest poems of death “crossing the bar”. Here, Tennyson sees death as a divine call and therefore advocates that there should be no mourning or extravaganza when one dies.

Though it is not any body's wish that anyone dies, many are those who are still to be convinced that death is not a misfortune, and that funerals must not drain huge sums of money before they are considered symbolic. No doubt the cash-strapped nature of most Cameroonians has caused some families to abandon corpses in hospitals for want of money to sponsor the funeral.

Given the fact that our economy continues to wallow head deep in poverty, it therefore becomes needful to check the way people spend cash. By so doing, they would therefore have succeeded in investing enormous sums of money in other productive items far from just coffins.