Noah's Coffin

It probably seems strange for me to be posting so much about Noah passing away and about his funeral and particularly coffins, but there is so much that I want to remember so I'm going to just keep posting them since this blog is our family journal.

Two days after Noah passed away Aaron and I met with our Bishop from church at the funeral home to arrange Noah's funeral.  I had always imagined that day, and it was so much easier than I thought it would be.  I thought that sitting there talking about coffins and flowers and who would talk at the funeral would be hard, but I just looked at it as planning a very special day for Noah which made it a lot easier.  We even had a few jokes about Hawthorn colours :)

When the funeral director asked us what kind of coffin we were thinking of I straight away told her I had always thought about having a white one, with bright coloured flowers on the top.  Aaron and I had never really talked about it together, because talking about your son's funeral when he is still living was just too hard, so we never really planned anything except in my head. When I looked at Aaron to see if he thought the same thing, he said he always imagined a dark chocolate coloured, wooden one, which kind of threw a spanner in the works.

She then told us that they don't do white ones, but they could paint one of the other coffins for an extra cost.  She then said that we needed to work out how tall Noah was.  She said a child's sized coffin was 4 foot, and we worked out Noah was at least 4 foot 4 so she said that meant he would have to have an adult sized coffin.   I hated to think that he would have to be in an adult sized coffin,  but she said to go into the room where all the coffins were to have a look to see if there was anything in there that we liked (but seriously who really likes a coffin!?').

We went into a room which had about ten different coffins in it ranging from around $800 to up to $6000! All I could think of was that ad on TV for funeral insurance that says 'the cost for flowers alone was hundreds of dollars' and kept thinking about how crazy it was that you have to pay so much for all these different things, at such a sad time in your life.

We looked around and none of the coffins really stood out to us, so we decided on one that was a blackwood one which looked okay.  It was one of the cheaper ones, but still looked 'nice' (if a coffin can really look nice).   Just as we had chosen it the funeral director came into the room and said that the boys out the back had just told her that there was a half finished WHITE coffin in the workshop that was 5 FOOT LONG!

She had just told us that they DON'T make white coffins and that they either have 4 foot coffins for children or adult coffins.

This was Noah's coffin!

I know it probably sounds crazy to some people, but I truly believe that it was meant to be Noah's coffin.  She asked us if we wanted to see it and they brought it into the room - it didn't even have handles on it, and wasn't lined out as they were STILL making it.  It was like they were making it just for Noah and I'm sure that was the case.

As soon as we saw it we both said it was the one we wanted as we knew it was Noah's coffin.  As hard as it was to see Noah in it, I think he looked so peaceful and beautiful in it and I knew it was meant for him.

There are so many 'little' (or actually big things) that let us know that it really was Noah's time to go and that things were being prepared for it, including us being as ready as we could've been. For that I'm very grateful.