RIP in a Ghana-made Peacock Coffin

RICHLAND CENTER, Wis. - There's no prettier time in an old cemetery than the week after Memorial Day, with the bushes flowing with white bridal veil and the headstones accented with the red of geraniums and jaunty American flags. Advertisement

And so it seemed somehow appropriate, as I passed those decorated graves, that I was on my way to see Dorothy Thompson's new coffin.

Dorothy isn't dead yet, but she did turn 50 the week before Memorial Day, and that got her thinking about her next big developmental task: dying.

And so she decided to celebrate the occasion by buying herself a very nice coffin.

Actually, Thompson had been wanting a personalized coffin ever since she traveled to Ghana a few years ago and passed the shop of a coffin maker in the Accra suburb of Teshi. Fantasy coffins shaped like fish, cows, Mercedes Benz taxis, and other symbols of their owners' lives filled the yard.

Thompson, who works for the University of Wisconsin-Richland Center, begged the bus driver to stop. She learned that the brightly painted coffins have become part of the funeral tradition in Ghana since about the 1950s.

"Funerals are a big deal there," she said. "The families will spend an entire year's salary on the funeral."

The coffins symbolize the owners' lives. She has photos of an onion-shaped coffin that held the body of an onion farmer, and an airplane that held a pilot.

"Preachers are buried inside of Bibles," she said. "And a lot of women have hens, and the number of chicks at their feet show how many children she had."

Thompson decided she had to have a coffin, but she had two problems.

"I couldn't fit one in my luggage, and I couldn't decide what symbol I should have," she said.

Back home in Richland Center, she decided a peacock would be a perfect symbol. She likes the colors of the peacock's plumage, and with her own shock of geranium red hair, vibrant personality and collection of authentic voodoo dolls, she's much more a peacock than, say, a hen.

When she made contact with a coffin maker named Samuel Naah, she learned that he had never seen a peacock, so she sent him feathers. He did his own research by visiting the grounds of the Dutch Embassy in Accra, where peacocks roam the lawn.

He began work in October, a process that begins with cutting and curing the wood, and the peacock was ready to ship by the end of March. Thompson paid about $500 to have her coffin made, and about that much again to have it shipped to Milwaukee.

Today, what is probably the only peacock coffin in the world - certainly the only one in Wisconsin -<|>stands proudly in her living room.

"I lie here at night and read," she said, of the couch near the peacock, "And there is my death waiting for me.

"It's a little odd. But I'd rather spend eternity in a peacock than in a metal box."

While some Ghanaian coffins are large enough to accommodate a body, Thompson ordered a half-size coffin, which means she'll have to be cremated. The good news is that there's also room for the cremated remains of her husband, David. He liked the peacock so well that he decided he might just spend eternity in there, too.

And while it was mostly the artistry of the Ghanaian coffins that attracted Thompson, she says they're practical, too.

"My daughter lives in St. Louis, so for her to come back to decorate graves would be a pain," Thompson said.

And did she ask her daughter, Angela, how she would feel about someday housing a peacock the size of a golf cart, with mom and dad tucked inside?

No, said Thompson, who smiled and added, "She was a burden to me, so maybe someday I'll be a burden to her."