We think about personalizing our laptop covers, our phones, and our bags or even customizing our shoes.
Guess what has just been added to the ever-growing personalization business.
Happy Coffins. Yes. Personalization for coffins.
Now even the dead get to keep up with the trends.
The Happy Coffins initiative allows people to design their own coffins with custom designs and pictures that help tell a story about the life they lived.
Lee Poh Wah, CEO of the Lein Foundation in Singapore and the founder of Happy Coffins, believes that the initiative takes a positive spin on death.
“The name ‘Happy Coffins’ captures what we seek to do. “We are turning the coffin from a supreme negative symbol of death into a creative canvas for reflection and inspiration, and the positive celebration of life,” Poh Wah said in a press release.
Fox News Medical A-Team member and psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow told FoxNews.com that
“Psychologically, Happy Coffins allows people to break through their denial of death and think about what their lives should really mean before their days are over, it might even sustain those who visit a burial plot after a person has died, since they could remember that they expressed themselves ‘to the end.”
Happy Coffins rooted from the Singapore St. Joseph’s Home and Hospice, which helps terminally ill patients deal with the inevitable.
“I am not afraid to talk about my eventual departure. It is very meaningful to be able to shape the design of my coffin and see it before I die, I want to have a matching Kebaya to go along” said Elise Chua, who is a hospice resident.
Chua, who lived her life as a seamstress, chose to adorn her coffin with paintings of embroidered flowers to show her love of sewing.
The Lien Foundation invited artists from the global creative community of Eyeka, to create the best Happy Coffins – for themselves, a loved one, or an inspiring person. A record 733 entries came from 37 countries for this international coffin design competition. More than 75% of the participants produced designs for their own coffins. Below, is an example of an entry by one of the contestants
An entry by one of the contestants : Boykegutsi
The first prize of 3,000 US dollars went to a 27-year-old Belgian woman, Ines van Gucht, whose design showed a furry black creature whom she described as a friend that would take care of her after her death.
A message on the figure read: “Hello coffin. You seem to be nice. One day we will meet again. To the rest of you I say goodbye. I hope it was a blast.”
Other entries included a coffin designed to resemble chocolate bars and another depicting the dishes of a “last supper” served on the top.