Dear Editor,
When I die I want to be buried in a cheap cardboard box. I don’t want my casket to be broken. Not too long ago, I went to a funeral in Guyana and witnessed something that made me feel very bad for the deceased and his family.
The family had to break the casket to prevent it from being stolen after burial. It’s sad that such a beautiful and costly casket had to be destroyed. The casket was magnificent and expensive. I called it the Royal Angel Casket. It was made of gauged steel, brushed copper and gold with a white crepe interior and an ebony finish exterior. Simply put, it was a casket made for kings and queens. I don’t want to be buried in that because I don’t want my remains to be dug up by thieves.
And yet, with all its magnificence and splendour, it had to be destroyed in order to save it from the thieves coming in the early hours of the morning to steal it,leaving the corpse in the dirt and the family having to buy a new one. And hopefully, it is one that is less expensive to avoid the same thing happening twice.
However, while I was watching the breaking of the casket, a feeling of sadness and anger overcame me. How can human beings descend so low as to desecrate a corpse? In our country, even after you die, you don’t get any rest. And before you die, you have to worry about someone trying to steal your casket. In our society, no one is able to rest in peace and nobody is safe – not even the dead.
During the religious ceremony at the gravesite, I observed that there were silent tears until the breaking of the casket began, which entails the use of a small sledgehammer. And then, the sound of the hammer was followed by loud, louder and eventually tremendous screaming. The breaking of the casket made the mourners feel violated. To witness someone pounding on the casket of your loved one has to be nerve-wrenching.
Editor, I’m recommending that families have much less expensive caskets that thieves will not want to steal. It will also save money.
So when I die I want my body to be donated to the medical community so that they may use my organs and anything else that they may need. And whenever they have finished taking parts from my body, I want to be buried in a cardboard box, because nobody will ever try to steal my cardboard box. And the money that was saved from buying the expensive casket, I want donated to an orphanage.
Yes, I want to be buried in a cardboard box.
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Pantlitz
