A man dressed in a brilliant white shirt, charcoal grey checked trousers and blue Italian loafers, sunglasses resting on his forehead, walks into a funeral home in Kisumu. It is a storeyed, sleek and modern building that could pass for a luxury furniture shop. The funeral home offers a full bereavement service, marketed as A+, catering for the VIDPs (Very Important Dead Persons). 

The director, dressed in a black suit, black tie and spectacles receives the new client. There is an air about this client. He can smell the whiff of new money. Everything about him screams rich. His chubby frame, his weighted gold watch and the Porsche Cayenne parked outside, its suited driver scrolling on his phone. 

The director invites him for a tour of the premises, studying the client’s face as he talks about his needs. What does he want? 

“The best, the finest. A grand funeral for my mother. The whole city must witness how a great woman is buried”. 

They stop at the showroom, where the coffins range from modest pine to luxurious mahogany. 

The client browses quickly, running his finger over the cool teak surface as if trying to trace dust, feeling the velvet lining and rubbing his fingers together. Unimpressed he asks, 

“Is this your most expensive coffin?” 

“Yes”, says the director, launching into the quality details but the man interrupts him again,

“Can you make something more expensive than this?” 

The director isn’t sure what the man is asking and he tries to be specific, 

“This is top of the market, African teak, Iroko, termite and fungus resistant, doesn’t decay and is certified internationally as…” 

The client arrogantly interrupts him, 

“ Yes or No!” 

The director probes further but the client lacks patience. A man unused to waiting. 

“Custom for my mother. It is a simple question. Can you?”  

They shake hands, a firm urgent grip. A deal has been secured. The client turns and strides out, his driver scrambling to open the Porsche’s door. As he climbs into the Porsche, he shouts back,

“My PA will call you in four days to arrange for the collection and payment”. 

The director watches him leave, marveling. No one had ever agreed to pay so much for a coffin. His mind returns to the present. Haste is required. Only one craftsman can deliver quality with such short notice. 

********

The coffinmaker is surprised to see the funeral director driving into his compound and straight to the workshop. He usually just calls. This must be a VIP client. The director finds the coffin maker sanding a coffin top. The room is musky with sawdust and varnish. He has known the coffin maker as a reliable, humble and gifted craftsman. Their long partnership had generated profit for both. 

The funeral director hardly bothers with greetings, ignoring an invitation for tea from the coffinmaker’s wife gardening nearby, and demanded,  

 “Fundi, I need you to make the most expensive coffin you have ever made. Spare no costs. Four days”. 

The coffinmaker said yes before truly weighing the commitment. The funeral director, disposition changed with the assurance; he waved at the coffin maker’s wife as he apologised for his rush. 

“You won’t regret it. This dollar millionaire from Amsterdam is our big break” .

The coffinmaker regretted giving in so easily to the pressure from the funeral director. The director demands always made him feel like that boy again, the one who’d never wanted to be a carpenter. That was his father’s profession and he only got into so as not disappoint him. Father always said he had a talent for working with wood but the wrong attitude. Father wanted to remain a humble carpenter, making school furniture and church pews. Then tragedy struck. A big Meru oak tree was uprooted during a storm and it fell through the roof of the house. Mother escaped unharmed but father was not so lucky. A big branch landed on his back and he was never the same after that, living with constant pain. 

During Father’s recuperation, the son took over the business. But father only got worse and died, four months after this. 

In a rite of honour, the son carved a coffin from that fatal Meru oak. At the funeral, the mourners admired the coffin. “What a beauty, like never seen before!” And so, the coffinmaker was born.   

His father believed wood was for the living and coffin making invited misfortune. Yet after this, the coffinmaking only brought prosperity. New contracts with the funeral director funded assistants and a workshop. He became “the celebrity coffinmaker”. Ironically, trees had taught him death long before he started making coffins. He had watched trees die, split logs hollowed by decay and now he mastered balancing beauty with function. 

The wife tended her vegetables. That visit troubled her. The director had only come to their home once before when the workshop was opened. She disliked how her husband became so timid in the face of his endless demands. But as her husband reminded her, he paid well and on time.

This is not the right time to voice her anger at the director’s lack of manners. How could he come to their home and not even sip some water? Does he think my husband was an ATM for his coffins? Her thoughts returned to the plants. I will cook his favourite because he doesn’t eat well when working on big orders. 

Then she noticed something unusual.  Saplings sprouting from where the old Meru oak tree had fallen. Perhaps this was a sign. The oak had never sprouted in all these years. She dug up the strongest carefully and then wrapped its delicate roots in black plastic. It would be a wonderful surprise for her husband. Maybe he would find a special spot to plant it. 

When the coffin maker’s wife came to check on her husband in his workshop, he still looked troubled.  

“What is wrong, father of my children”?

“I have an impossible request. The director wants something I cannot see in my mind”.

“Leave it to God, then…”.

She held out the sapling but he did not seem to notice. Later, maybe. She placed it by the door and asked what he desired for dinner. 

As his wife left, the coffinmaker sighed. After all these years, she still called them boxes. He would spend the next few hours researching the Ghanaian fantasy coffins sent by the director on WhatsApp. There was no time for that kind of grandeur. His wife had returned to the garden patch, to water her veggies.  The leaves looked lush even from a distance. His mind wandered there. That spot must be very fertile and then he remembered and stood up from the chair where he had remained seated for a long time, to search the workshop.

Indeed, he still had remnants of the Meru oak, planks of wood stored over years, dusty and untouched. He had never built another coffin using Meru oak since it was impossible to find and an endangered species. This is it. This was the wood.  

So the work began. For the next three days, from early morning, late into the night, the coffinmaker and his crew worked on their order. The wood fought back, hard, dry and unyielding but his hands remembered. On the fourth morning, he was laying the finishing touches on the coffin. 

It looked exquisite, understated luxury.  He remembered his father’s coffin. This wood was the bearer of good fortune. The rest of the raw unfinished coffins, stood in contrast at the back of the workshop, stacked like sacks of maize in a warehouse. 

The funeral director arrived sweating and wiping his brow. He circled once. Twice and then paused.

“It lacks presence” running a finger over the wood as if checking for cheap veneer. “This won’t impress a  Luo man who flies his tailor in from Milan. Where’s the gold? The carvings? I sent you photos!”

He needed this coffin to scream wealth and to be his advertisement to international clients. 

The director was now in a foul mood. The coffinmaker laid a hand on the wood,

“This is my most valuable wood. It is from the tree that killed my father”. 

The director scoffed at the explanation, wagging a finger.

“Sentimentality is for the movies. That man is ready to pay for the spectacle, marble! – not endangered firewood”. 

He flashed images of gem-encrusted Ghanaian coffins on his phone.

“This is expensive. Your tree is just a dead thing that would only impress a market carpenter”. 

The coffinmaker stood helpless. The funeral director’s verbal barrage was interrupted by a phone call from the client’s PA who wanted to see pictures. The director wandered off towards his car, the voice slick with persuasion.

The coffinmaker trailed him and then stopped at the entrance. Regret washed over his face as  he observed the restless funeral director pacing and talking loudly into his phone. Then his eyes fell on the sapling. This was unbelievable. The oak had sprouted. Bless my wife. A sign from above. The roots peeked through the plastic, the damp earth clinging to them. 

The funeral director returned. He was not losing this deal. He had bought an extra day. They walked back to the coffin and the coffinmaker suddenly shut down the lid, 

“I am not making another coffin. If the client is not satisfied, then give him this” he said with unusual firmness, holding out the Meru oak sapling. 

The funeral director looked at him in disbelief. “Are you mocking me?”

“No, I am very serious, this is the most expensive coffin in this workshop. Tell your client to plant it over his mother’s grave. It roots will fuse with the coffin and live on after us”

The director barked.

“You are an idiot?”

He looked at the sapling still in the coffinmaker’s hand and then at his face and realised that he was not going to budge.

“You will regret this. Take this nonsense out of my face” and he burst out of the workshop and stormed towards his car. 

The coffinmaker’s wife watched, her husband holding the sapling and the director’s hand flailing in anger. When the director stormed toward his car, she bent back to her plants, potting new saplings, her hands holding the roots delicately.

The coffinmaker did not turn to watch the director leave. Instead, he placed the sapling gently on the windowsill. He would find a good spot to grow it. For now, he had work to do. 

Picking his chisel, he walked towards the neglected cheap pine coffins.  

P.S. This short story on the most expensive coffin is drawn from my reflections on the ones we lost and meditations on grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of insights drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding healing amidst loss.