#443： What Building Your Own Coffin Teaches You About Life, Death, and Meaning
Episode Stats
Summary
When David Giffels was 50 years old and completely healthy, he decided to build his own coffin with his 81-year-old master craftsman father. In his new book, Furnishing Eternity: A Father, a Son, a Coffin, and A Measure of Life, he recounts the experience of building his own casket with his father and the lessons about life, aging, and death that he picked up along the way.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. When David Giffels
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was 50 years old and completely healthy, he decided to build his own coffin with his 81-year-old
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master craftsman father. Why? Well, I asked him that on the podcast today. David Giffels,
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a writer who previously published a book of essays about growing up in the rust belt of
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Ohio in the 1970s called The Hard Way on Purpose. In his latest book, Furnishing Eternity,
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A Father, A Son, A Coffin, and A Measure of Life, he recounts the experience of building his own coffin
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with his father and the lessons about life, aging, and death that he picked up along the way.
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We begin our show discussing why men in the rust belt live by the motto, The Hard Way on Purpose,
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and how it manifests itself in their undying loyalty to their sports teams that come up short year after
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year. We then shift gears and discuss David's project of building his own casket with his dad,
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the expectations he had going into it, and why lying in your own coffin is unfortunately not
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as profound an experience as you'd think it would be. After the show's over, check out the show notes
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at aom.is slash giffels. David Giffels, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. All right,
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so you wrote a book called Furnishing Eternity, A Father, A Son, A Coffin, and it's all about you
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building a coffin with your, your own coffin with your dad. But before we get to that morbid story,
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let's, let's talk about your home state of Ohio because you write a lot about that and it comes
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up in the book as well. Before this one, you wrote a collection of essays called, about the rust belt
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called The Hard Way on Purpose. I love the title of that. How does that describe, you know, The Hard
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Way on Purpose describe the character of the rust belt in Ohio? Yeah, I think it describes, especially for
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my generation, which is the people who came of age after the boom years, after the sort of the,
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the glory of, of industry and really only knew our hometowns as places that had fallen onto hard
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times. To, to commit to a place like Akron, Ohio or Detroit or Buffalo or, you know, Des Moines was,
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was to make a conscious decision not to do things the easy way or the glamorous way. You know,
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a lot of my friends from college moved to Chicago because that was a Midwestern place that seemed
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like, you know, sort of the, the, the easier way on purpose. And, you know, at first it's sort of a
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commitment to the sort of the grittiness and, and the struggle, but then like, you know, the,
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the on purpose part is that it just becomes your way of doing things sort of like I, I use an analogy
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in that book of Jack White from, from the White Stripes who talked about when he was on stage,
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when he would have the stage set up, if the organ needed to be like three feet away for him to reach
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it, he would have the, the stage crew put it four feet away to create that sort of tension of,
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of the performance. And I, I kind of think that's a metaphor for the, the, the way we,
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we do things here. I mean, you know, it would be much easier to root for the New England Patriots,
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but we love the Cleveland Browns. Well, that, that comes up to the sports, you know, I think
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everyone knows about Ohio and their, you know, and their love for their, their losing teams. Like,
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you know, for example, the Cleveland Browns. I mean, what do you, what do you think that says
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about, I mean, is that, that, that hard way on purpose attitudes? Like, yeah, things are bad,
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but we're going to, we're gritty. We're going to stick through it no matter what.
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Yeah. But Brett, you, you said our losing teams and it's, it's not that we lose. It's that we
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always almost win. Yeah. And that's, you know, we're like Charlie Brown who just keeps believing
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that Lucy's not going to pull the football away when he's trying to kick it because we just always
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have gotten so close. And in fact, when LeBron James came back and sort of delivered on his promise
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to bring a championship two years ago, there was a little bit, not just for me, but I think for a
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certain kind of person, a little bit of ambivalence. Like, you know, we had the distinction
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of having gone 52 years longer than any other, you know, pro sports city without a championship.
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And, you know, anyone can win a championship because everyone else had, but we had that one
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thing that we were like the, the long, you know, still in the struggle. And so it was great when he
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won, but it was kind of an identity check. It's kind of like, you know, now that you've won a
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championship, you don't really have that sort of mantle of, of, of, of hard times.
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Yeah. I like that idea that you didn't, you're not, you don't lose. You just almost,
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right. Almost won a lot. I mean, I mean, what do you think the difference between that,
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that what's the distinction there? Is it like, there's like hope in the almost winning or there's
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like no hope in always losing? Yeah. I mean, there's a beautiful and terrible hope in that
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because, because it's not total despair because there's always that glimmer that we were just there.
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We were just on the goal line when we fumbled or we were just about to make the final out when,
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when it dribbled, you know, past the, the shortstop or whatever that, that leads you to a kind of hope
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that's, that's not manifested by any truth so far, but you still believe it's there. And, you know,
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that's a, it's a great human thing. I mean, that's, you know, that carries far beyond sports,
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but it's also a terrible thing because you've never had proof that, that your hope will be
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fulfilled, but you keep at it, you know, so it's, it's a delicate line, but, um, it's one that seems
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to really be reinforced, you know, in so many parts of our culture. I mean, sports is just a,
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just one example, but, you know, in economically and culturally so forth.
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Yeah. I mean, what I, what I liked about that distinction, it sounds like when you say like,
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we almost, we almost won instead of saying we lost, like it sort of, it gives you the idea,
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it gives you your like sense of autonomy. It's like, we did everything we could.
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Right. But we just came up short for whatever reason, you know, going back to sports, you know,
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a lot of the reasons, like the, those teams came up short, it was just like a fluke, right? A fumble,
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the ball bounced the wrong way. It wasn't anything you could have done. And that happens a lot in life
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and you did everything you can. And instead of saying like, man, I'm a loser, which is sort of
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like definitive and, uh, universal. It's like, well, I almost won. I think, I don't know for
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some reason it's, yeah, like you said, it's very hopeful. Yeah. You know, the older I get,
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the more I really think that like the highest highs of my life and the lowest lows of my life
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are really more similar than different. Like that, that intensity, the intensity of, of losing or of
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almost winning is very similar to the intensity, the intensity of winning or almost having lost,
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you know, um, as opposed to like the vast middle of what most of life is about where, you know,
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the day when nothing really happened, isn't the day you remember, you know, 10 years later,
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you remember the death of somebody you love, or you remember your wedding day, you know,
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in ways they're very similar. So, you know, like, I, I guess I can handle losing more because I define
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it as not winning and not, you know, in, in every part of life. Well, I got to ask you,
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cause I, I'm an OU grad. Do you think Baker Mayfield is going to turn around the Cleveland Browns?
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Well, of course I do. Just like I did with the other 30 quarterbacks in the last 15 years.
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But, um, what I like about him so far is that he has a sense of humor. And if you live in Cleveland,
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you need to have a sense of humor and, and the more bitter and twisted, the sense of humor, the
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better. But I mean, he, I don't know if you've seen the video of him doing his imitation of John
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Dorsey, the Browns general manager, but it's, it's hilarious. And, and it's, you know, it's,
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it's like born of, of a true spirit of humor. He's going to need it.
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You know, like no matter what, for at least a couple of years, he's going to need that sense
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of humor. But yeah, so far I, I, I like everything about him.
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Well, what, that's interesting. What do you think the humor is like in Ohio? Thanks to,
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or particularly cause like there's, you know, Oh, you know, I think Ohio gets a lot of attention
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particularly during election years and it's sort of treated as a monolith, but it's not right.
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There's like, you know, Southern Ohio is sort of like Appalachia almost. And then Northern
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Ohio is something different. So like, I mean, let's say Northern Ohio, where a lot of the
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industrial towns are like, what, how is that? Like, do they have, is there like a sense of
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Yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a, yeah, it's, it's definitely the humor that comes from people
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who've been through a struggle, which is, which is, has its own kind of edge to it. And, you know,
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and from a place that doesn't have a lot of sunny days and people, you know, sort of live in a,
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sort of with a kind of wry understanding of what it means to live in a kind of darkness,
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but especially because, you know, for more than a generation, we've grown so used to being the
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punchline of, of other people's jokes, so used to being misunderstood or ignored that we are very
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quick to get to the punchline quicker. And that, you know, that's a cultural thing. Like when you've
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been kind of like laughed at and you learn how to laugh at yourself better and quicker,
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you kind of diffuse somebody else's attempt to do it.
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Right. Now I've seen that YouTube video about Cleveland, like someone like made a commercial
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are great. Yeah. The, the ironic, uh, chamber of commerce,
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Uh, Cleveland it's, it's not as bad as you think kind of vibe to it. Yeah. It's awesome.
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Well, I, I mean, I think, uh, this kind of, this sense of gallows humor, uh, leads to a great segue
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to, uh, your new book, furnishing eternity, which is about building your own coffin, which I guess
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is something that someone who grew up in the rust belt, watching basically the city decay and, and,
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and diminish something that that person would do. I'm curious, like, why did you like, what
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kickstarted this? Like, why did you decide I want to build my own coffin? Cause you're a young guy.
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I mean, how old were you when you decided to do this?
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I was, I was nearing 50 and it was not so much the press of mortality or, you know, like the sort
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of the big ideas of life. What it really started out as was a sort of quasi argument between my wife
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and me. And we just celebrated our 30th anniversary. And when you've been married a long time, very often
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what, what sounds to other people like an argument between the couple is actually just us practicing
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our material. And so my wife comes from, she's from a first generation Sicilian, very old school
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Sicilian Catholic mother and, and a father who was from the Hills of Kentucky with very old sort of
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traditional notions about most of life, including the way a funeral should be, which is the sort of
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formal Catholic go to the funeral home by the manufactured, you know, sort of Ethan Allen type
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piece of furniture and spend a lot of money on it. And that's how things are done. And I, you know,
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in response to that had this sort of half-baked idea that I just wanted to be thrown into a dumpster
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after I die. And so I would exaggerate my side of it and she would exaggerate her side of it.
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When we would have this debate, especially in front of other people to the point where it became like,
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well, I am never going to be buried in a $5,000 piece of furniture. I want to be buried in a cardboard
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box. And then she would, you know, this would go on. And so, you know, my dad is a, was a, a master
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furniture builder and, and carpenter and made lots of furniture for us and for my siblings and so
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forth. So one night we're having this, this sort of debate and I just looked at my dad and it was just
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really literally just sort of a spontaneous, whimsical thing. I was like, you know what? You and I could
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probably build a pretty cool casket together. And it was like immediately, cause I'm a cheapskate
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too. I'm like, it probably costs a couple hundred bucks, you know? And it'd be some, it'd be one of
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those weird things that we like doing together. So, you know, so really it was not any more than
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that, than this sort of like, just might be crazy enough to work idea that somehow took hold.
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Right. So there was no like existential nemento mori thing. Like you didn't think like this would
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be a great book. You're just like, no, I'm going to build a, I'm going to build a coffin because my
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Yeah. Well, here's where it gets weird. Here's where fate comes in. Cause you're right. It wasn't
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initially, but very soon I'm like, you know, I think I would like to write about this. And then I'm
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like, you know, I'm getting to that point in my life as, as a person and as a writer where,
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you know, the big ideas are important and, you know, this could be my death book, you know,
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like I could sort of philosophically, esoterically think about the notions of mortality and death,
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but I hadn't lost anybody very, very close to me really in my life yet. Both my parents were still
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living, you know, I, I hadn't really had like, you know, the sort of unexpected death of somebody at
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the, at an age that seemed too young, you know, so close to me that it had really kind of hit,
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you know, sort of punched right in the stomach. And so I'm like, yeah, so I'm going to use this,
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the, the template of this narrative of my dad and I doing this project together
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as a way to explore the big, one of the big themes, you know, that writers should take on
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and ha ha ha writing gods said. And so within a year, my mom unexpectedly died. She had been
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struggling with cancer, but she had a heart attack and it just kind of took her right down.
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And then a year later, while we're still in this project, my best friend who was my age, who,
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you know, too young to die, not even 50 also died. And so it was kind of like the writing god said,
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oh, you want to dabble with the mortality theme, do you? Yeah. So here you go. So it really, I mean,
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it changed everything completely. It changed the book completely and it changed, you know,
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the, the, my life completely. And, you know, kind of taught me a very humbling lesson about,
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you know, how to think about things and, and the, the actual lack of agency that writers have when
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we believe we have sometimes complete agency. I mean, how did, how did your, you know, losing your
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mother and your friend so close together? And while you were doing this project of building your own
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coffin, how did that change the project? Like when you were working on the coffin, like, did it take
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on like significance? Like it was more heavy on you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all,
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because I was writing the book, actively writing the book when that happened, you know, and this was a
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different kind of book. It was more like it's, I mean, it's a memoir, but it's really, it was really
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more journalistic because I was documenting the process of building this thing as it was happening.
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And so when these events unexpectedly come in, I had to deal with them, you know, in a practical
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way as a writer. And, and so first, you know, when my mom died, you know, I'm actively grieving her
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and trying to make sense of it. The chaos of grief, grief is violent and, you know, and got moves and
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cycles that are hard to understand. And, and to try to gather that as a writer and, and make sense of
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it on the page was a huge challenge. And, and, and then a year later to go through it again with my
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friends. So logistically it, it was troubling, but then, yeah. So then going back, you know, to my
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dad's, my dad's workshop was in his barn, kind of out in the country in a sort of suburban township
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near Akron, Ohio, where I live. So I'd make these tracks out to his barn and work there sometimes
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alone. And I found it to be therapeutic because even though I'm obviously building my own coffin,
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which seems like a sort of like, you know, sort of overt, you know, connection with, with the death
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and, and the, the, the temporal nature of life, it was really just, you know, sort of a process that
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I could put my hands on and understand in a much more concrete, tangible way than, than trying to
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understand the concept of the, that, that my mom wasn't there to ask a question of, or that my friend
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John wasn't there to say, let's go see a band, you know? So, so this sort of, it was a weirdly a kind
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of a comfort just because it was something that I could work on and also work on with my dad who,
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you know, I suddenly became hyper aware, you know, dad is 83 years old, you know, he's old,
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he's the oldest person I know, you know, like constantly thinking, you know, am I going to get
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the phone call that he's, you know, something suddenly happened to him. So, you know, just to
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spend time with him where it wasn't about, you know, thinking of his mortality, but just, you know,
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this thing we were working on was, was helpful.
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Well, he developed lung cancer during this thing as well, right?
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Yeah. He, he sort of, he sort of tricked me because he actually, yeah, he, he, just as we got the idea
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that we were going to do this project, he was diagnosed with, with cancer and he had to undergo
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treatment. And it was pretty heinous treatment. I mean, they, they, they basically just put him in
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this, like, look like the, the man in the iron mask contraption that they would strap him down
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on this thing and just blast the shit out of it with, with radiation. And he, man, he would come
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home and he just go to work in his garden, you know, from, from each day's treatment. Like he sort
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of really deliberately tried to make this not be what his life was about. And by virtue of that,
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it made me think, well, you know, I'm sure cancer's bad, but look, you know, dad's so tough,
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you know, like, look, look how he's doing it. And so, you know, for, for about the five years that this
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project spanned, he was being treated in, in some way or another for, for cancer, but,
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but proving that, that you can, you know, live a vibrant life without it. I mean, I mentioned
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before that I thought of him as the oldest person I knew. And especially after my mom died and I saw
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the way he dealt with it, he also seemed like the most alive person I knew. Like he never talked about
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it, but you could just sort of see by the way he was living that he was going to make the very most of,
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of the time and energy that he had. And so he, he really lived, I mean, you know, it's cliche,
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but he lived life to the fullest in the final years of his life. And I should point out the book
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ends with us, you know, sort of finishing this process and the book, and then, you know, it takes
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about a year for, for a book to come out after the time the manuscript's been accepted. This book came
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out on January 2nd, and three days later, my dad died. I'm really sorry. So it was kind of,
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yeah, thanks. I, it was, um, it was, you know, definitely the strangest irony of my life and
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probably of his life, but, but in a way it was kind of, uh, I, I was really glad that we had done
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this and really glad that he had gotten to see, uh, what the book was and, and to get to understand
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it. But, you know, again, it's, it's kind of like, you know, this, this book has had a weird life of its
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own from the very beginning and taught me a lot more than I ever could have guessed it would.
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Omigo. All right, guys, bear with me for a moment. I'm going to get weird with you because we're going
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in America for over a hundred years, we've been using paper. First, it was pages from the Sears
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00:22:00.660
Like really thought about it? Because like if you go out and work in the garden, you get mud on your
00:22:03.860
hands. Would you come in and wipe your hands off with a dry paper towel? Well, no, you would get some
00:22:08.800
water in there to get the mud off. Why don't we do that when we go to the bathroom? Well, other
00:22:11.960
countries have been doing that. Like in Japan, they got these toilets that clean you off with
00:22:15.580
water. There's a company now here in the States that's trying to make that a thing here. It's
00:22:18.720
called Omigo. It's a revolutionary toilet seat replacement that will change the way you use the
00:22:22.320
bathroom. With Omigo, you can finally say goodbye to toilet paper. You're going to save trees,
00:22:26.200
water, and electricity in the process. It washes you in the right places. You can adjust the
00:22:30.280
temperature, position, pressure, width, and movement. It feels like you just took a shower. When you're
00:22:33.940
done, they got a little fan that dries you off. The seat is heated. There's got a nightlight
00:22:38.600
in it. It deodorizes everything with a carbon filter that eliminates odor. This thing is pretty
00:22:43.180
cool. My kids call it the robot toilet because that is what it is. Super easy to install. It took
00:22:47.820
me just about 20 minutes. We've been using it for a few months. Game changer. No more having to holler
00:22:51.760
at your kids to bring you a roll of toilet paper because you've run out. Don't have the toilet paper
00:22:55.440
ever again. If you want to try this, got a special offer for you. You can get $100 off your order when
00:22:59.900
you go to myomigo.com slash manliness. That's Omigo, O-M-I-G-O. So myomigo, M-Y-O-M-I-G-O.com
00:23:08.480
slash manliness to get $100 off your Omigo toilet seat. I know the future seems weird at first,
00:23:13.320
so let's let it be weird. Go check this out. Definitely be a game changer. And now back to
00:23:17.320
the show. I'm curious. What's it? I know there's a lot of our listeners who are probably your age in
00:23:23.280
their 50s. And that's kind of a weird time because if your parents are still alive, they're
00:23:28.520
in their 80s probably. They're getting sick. And then you finally lose. I mean, what's that like
00:23:33.460
seeing your parents slowly decline? And then finally, and then what's it like when you no
00:23:40.920
longer have parents on there? It's like, did you feel something different? I remember my mom when
00:23:45.060
my grandfather died not too long ago. She finally says, I finally, it's weird not having
00:23:50.500
parents on earth. It's like, I feel like an adult, like fully an adult almost.
00:23:56.100
Yeah. I think specifically as sort of a generation Xer, there's something about the way we view aging
00:24:06.860
and mortality that's unique to our generation, which is that like, I don't really know what age I am. I
00:24:15.500
mean, 50 is a weird number to me because it doesn't seem like what 50 probably used to be.
00:24:23.100
You know, I mean, I don't know if that's true, but it certainly seems true. It just seems like
00:24:28.320
in an age of cultural acceleration that I don't feel a generation gap for my kids, but it's not like
00:24:35.100
I'm trying to act like them or trying to be younger than I am. But I also don't feel like embarrassed
00:24:41.260
that I am interested in new music, you know, when I was supposed to leave that behind at age 30 or
00:24:47.760
something like that. And so by the same token, like my wife and I have talked about this. We're
00:24:53.180
like, you know, it just seems like we just went, we made this, this invisible leap from going to all
00:25:00.740
of our friends' weddings to now going to their parents' funerals. Like there was this, there's just
00:25:07.380
this sort of generational thing that kind of slips in in a sneaky way that all of a sudden it's kind
00:25:12.560
of like, you know, our parents are dying and we don't really know what that means. And so for me,
00:25:17.740
like, you know, to, to, to lose my mom, it was a, it was a confrontation with mortality that I hadn't
00:25:24.200
experienced before, but it was really confounding. It was hard to put into context because I started
00:25:31.620
thinking of myself after she died. One of the things that starts happening happened with me. And I've
00:25:37.200
heard other people say this is you start to do like sort of obsessive math. Like at first it's
00:25:43.020
like, it's been exactly three days since I spoke to her. And then it's been, you know, like exactly
00:25:48.520
two weeks and one day since she was in our house and she was standing on that floorboard. That's
00:25:53.640
three floorboards away from the baseboard or whatever. And then, but then I started to do like
00:25:58.740
in my head, I would calculate like what, who she was at exactly the age I am now. So, you know,
00:26:07.140
if I was 48 years, three months and six days, I would actually like try to figure out, okay,
00:26:12.680
that was this year. And I was to say like, who was she in relation to who I am? You know
00:26:18.220
No. Yeah. I know exactly. Cause after I read that, like I started doing that with my parents,
00:26:22.080
my parents were both still alive, but it was like, yeah. Like what were my parents? Like
00:26:26.120
when I was there, what year was it when my parents were 36 years old?
00:26:29.680
Yeah. And when my dad turned 50, did he feel like he was becoming an old man? Cause when I
00:26:34.840
turned 50, yeah, I didn't have, it was just like, uh, I don't know, you know, like I went
00:26:41.260
for a run and I probably listened to like parquet courts or something, you know, like, and I
00:26:49.120
No. Yeah. You don't start listening to Bobby Darin or.
00:26:51.320
Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Big band music, you know?
00:26:56.160
Yeah. I mean, it is weird. And I've, I've heard that from other people too, like in the
00:27:00.340
next generation, like, you know, they'll say like, you know, I feel like I'm 18, but
00:27:05.020
then when I look in the mirror, I see this 50 year old guy and it, it spooks me sometimes.
00:27:10.340
Yeah. Yeah. Am I allowed to wear skinny jeans? You know, can I still wear Converse?
00:27:17.280
I, um, several years ago, um, red book magazine did, uh, it was like a, like how men think
00:27:25.740
issue or something. And they reached out to a whole bunch of people, writers and celebrities
00:27:29.460
and stuff and asked them all to write little pieces. And so they contacted me and they
00:27:33.400
said, we, um, we want you to write a piece for this. Um, we want you to write a piece.
00:27:38.340
Um, why are men obsessed with being cool? And I'm like, oh, this is awesome. And then they
00:27:44.420
said, you have 200 words. No, it would be easier for me to write 20,000 words on that subject
00:27:52.480
because, um, especially now it's like, you know, like it's not out of the question for
00:28:00.100
somebody in their fifties to still be hip. But if you're trying, you're failing, you know,
00:28:05.580
like, so it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's so different. I don't know. It's a different kind of culture,
00:28:12.840
Yeah. No, it's weird. Yeah. And I think you're right. It's, it's that acceleration of culture.
00:28:17.280
Everything seems super compressed. And I've thought about that too. Like I'm when I'm in
00:28:21.640
the car with my kids and like, they're enjoying the same music that I'm listening to, which never
00:28:27.520
would have happened with my parents. Right. Like my, my dad like had album, like Herp Albert
00:28:31.540
and the Tijuana Brass, uh, albums. Like I'm listening to them now cause I inherited them. I think it's
00:28:37.420
pretty cool. But you know, when you're 12, you're like, boy, that's pretty lame. But like my kids,
00:28:41.440
they enjoy the same, like they enjoy the killers. They enjoy bleachers. They enjoy the same music
00:28:47.300
Yeah. Yeah. I remember like I was listening to, uh, the, one of the, to Kendrick Lamar
00:28:54.020
and they, they didn't know what to make of it. Like, you know, it was like, uh, like,
00:29:01.160
is this, you know, do we need to go find some other music now so that we're not listening
00:29:05.620
to the same music as you? No, it's like, it's interesting. I'm sure it's interesting to
00:29:10.980
me for different reasons than it's interesting to you is what I said to them. And, um, you know,
00:29:16.440
I think that helped. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. That saved Kendrick Lamar. Right. Yeah. So we have
00:29:24.020
that. Let's go back to, you know, working on this with your dad and, you know, that's a great setup
00:29:29.820
for like the stereotypical, like, you know, father, son working on this project together, you know,
00:29:35.180
like a river runs through it type thing where fatherly wisdom is imparted and et cetera, et
00:29:40.760
cetera. Did that happen? Like when you started working on this with your dad, were you hoping
00:29:44.640
that, you know, you would like gain like all the wisdom that he had while you were sanding
00:29:49.920
your own coffin? Of course I was hoping that, but I knew my dad well enough to know that that's
00:29:57.020
not what exactly what would happen. I mean, you know, anytime that I would try to get philosophical
00:30:04.360
or feelsy about it, he would make, you know, like a wry joke out of everything. But I knew
00:30:13.860
like my, um, you know, going back to my earliest memory, my, my favorite times with my dad were
00:30:19.820
always when I was with him, either in his workshop or when he was working on a project somewhere
00:30:24.400
around the house. Cause he was always doing that. He was an engineer and like a really inventive
00:30:29.200
tinkerer and really talented, you know, sort of woodworker and, and, you know, just good with all
00:30:35.180
of the things that a household needs and all that. And I always just really loved, you know, either just
00:30:40.700
being around him when he was doing it or actually helping him with that. And I, and I took on a lot
00:30:45.940
of that interest too. And so, you know, kind of our, you know, our best bonding moments for lack of a
00:30:54.560
better, better term have been in, in those kinds of projects where it wasn't like we had to talk
00:31:01.560
about, isn't this great that we're doing this together? You know, what, thanks for being my dad.
00:31:06.880
It was never like that. It was just like, you know, we just both enjoyed doing it together and,
00:31:10.600
and we both gathered by osmosis certain things from each other. So when we, so this was, you know,
00:31:18.600
pretty early on in the process, he knew that I was writing, going to be writing about this.
00:31:24.240
And in fact, I'd actively, sometimes as we were working in the Dusty workshop, I'd go over to
00:31:30.300
my notebook and write something down and he'd be aware of it, you know? So sometimes he'd, I'd,
00:31:36.300
you know, ask him to say something again, because I wanted to make sure I wrote it down.
00:31:40.200
And so he'd just kind of chuckle and he's, you know, just nod and, you know, it's basically just
00:31:45.540
went along with it because he was a good sport, but, you know, did I do it specifically to get some
00:31:53.240
new experience from him? You know, I had some, you know, again, I had some hope that there would
00:31:59.200
be something special that would come from it, but really just what came from it was I created some
00:32:05.320
new extra time with him that we got to spend together solely the two of us. And then upon his
00:32:14.380
death, I immediately was so thankful for that. Cause at times I was like, I hope I'm not wasting his
00:32:21.800
time or I hope he's not wishing he didn't have this, you know, cause it took, it ended up taking
00:32:26.840
us four years because we kept getting busy with other things. We'd come back to it and it was
00:32:32.140
taking up room in his workshop. And I'm like, it might be in a burden to him. But as soon as he
00:32:37.040
passed, I was like, no, I'm glad we did that. And I'm sure he was too.
00:32:41.100
Yeah. I love that. How, uh, you know, you had that hope that you would get some sort of wisdom,
00:32:45.120
but like, you know, you didn't, but it was still worthwhile. I feel like a lot of young people,
00:32:50.560
like, I don't know, parents that are like in their thirties, forties, like they have a high,
00:32:54.540
like they put high expectations on themselves on like what it means to be a dad. And like,
00:32:58.600
they should always be like imparting this, you know, important wisdom to their kids at any moment.
00:33:04.700
But I remember when growing up, like my dad wasn't like that. He wasn't, he wasn't like the
00:33:09.460
talkative type. Right. But the best memories I had of him, you know, is when my dad was a game warden
00:33:15.380
and sometimes he would take me out with him patrolling, uh, from, you know, checking duck
00:33:19.580
hunters. And that was just awesome. Cause I got to get up at four o'clock in the morning. I was in a
00:33:24.100
truck with him for hours and we didn't really talk. Uh, and I just, but it was great. I loved it.
00:33:30.120
And that's for me, that was sufficient. Um, and sometimes I've, I've, I've tried to remember
00:33:34.100
that with my own kids, like I don't need to like always be lecturing them and partying,
00:33:38.940
hoping to like stuff their heads with as much knowledge and just being there is, is enough.
00:33:43.040
Yeah. And you know, as my kids got older, cause I, I, I was the same way. I mean, I was definitely
00:33:47.900
more emotive in the household than my dad ever was. Like I refer into the, in the book jokingly
00:33:53.420
to myself as the emo mascot of the homestead, but you know, you wonder like, did I say enough
00:33:59.800
or did I give them enough examples? And my kids are, you know, college age now and I see
00:34:06.300
enough of how they're living their lives now to think, yeah, they were probably getting what
00:34:12.020
I was hoping or some of what I was hoping they would get, but, but yeah, kind of to
00:34:16.780
that, you know, sort of like that overt imparting of wisdom or, or, or bonding or whatever.
00:34:23.100
There's a unexpectedly funny moment that happened that, that I write about in the book, you know,
00:34:29.420
the movie boyhood, the Richard Linklater movie. Um, when that came out, I got the DVD and I was
00:34:36.600
like, my dad always came over on Sunday for dinner. So I'm like, dad, why don't you come
00:34:40.580
over early in the afternoon and you and my son, Evan, who was exactly the same age as the boy in
00:34:46.780
the movie. And I will watch this movie together. And so we sat down on the couch and I was all like,
00:34:53.740
I'm like, this is going to be great. It's going to be three generations of men watching this movie
00:34:58.280
about two generations of, of, of father and son, you know, sort of aging in real time before us on
00:35:03.760
age. It's going to be like this really meta emotional experience. And like 10 minutes into
00:35:09.420
the movie, I'm sitting in the middle and they're both kind of starting to fidget and like, and this
00:35:14.880
is like a three hour movie. So it was like this long afternoon of me hoping for something meaningful
00:35:22.200
to happen. And both of them kind of like, okay, how's this, is this going to go over? Like in the
00:35:27.600
movie, you see that the care, if you know, the way it was filmed, the characters age in real time
00:35:32.460
because Richard Linklater came back, you know, every year, I think, and, and filmed a new set
00:35:37.900
of scenes that, so this movie, you see the characters age in real time. And I felt like we watching it
00:35:42.660
were aging in real time as we were viewing the movie. So yeah, it was weird. Yeah, no. Yeah. So,
00:35:49.160
okay. I guess the insight, insight there's like, don't put so much pressure on yourself.
00:35:52.840
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It made me think about, you know, a great example of not putting
00:35:57.540
pressure and just enjoying the moment is that, you know, field of dreams, the end where Kevin Costner
00:36:02.340
plays catch with his ghost dad, right? Just, they're just playing catch. I'm sure they didn't
00:36:07.180
talk at all. They just, they just threw the ball. Yeah. You know, as, as you might expect,
00:36:11.660
when one builds his own coffin, one knows that there will be some point when he or she will
00:36:18.800
have to lie down in it. I mean, you got to take it for a test drive, right? And so I was aware of that
00:36:24.800
as, as we were going through this, that there would be some moment when that would happen. And I'm like,
00:36:30.500
I need to time this right, because it's going to be the most meaningful moment of this whole
00:36:35.280
process. I'm going to know what it feels like to lie in my final resting place, you know, like,
00:36:39.740
so all this, like, sort of like all this pressure. And when it finally happened, it's like,
00:36:45.460
it really was like the, one of these, like, okay, let's get this over with moments, you know,
00:36:50.080
like, and I laid down and I'm like, okay, let's feel it. And it's kind of like, you know what?
00:36:56.240
Death is really not interested in me. Death has bigger fish to fry. Like, you know, you hope for
00:37:03.100
those, you hope for those like epiphanies in your life. And there are certain moments in your life
00:37:07.880
when you expect them. And the truth is, you know, life is indifferent and, you know, and, and we are
00:37:17.140
so, so small and so temporary that, you know, we're not, you know, it's, you know, we're not as big as
00:37:25.620
we think we are. And we're not as worthy of, of, you know, lightning bolts coming into our bedrooms
00:37:32.340
and, you know, sort of revealing things. It's, you know, it's, it's a much more mundane thing.
00:37:38.580
Right. And that's why, I mean, but what's crazy is like, you should be, that's what makes those
00:37:42.160
experiences when you do have them, right? When you're not expecting, like, what's makes them all the more,
00:37:46.200
I don't know, meaningful because you weren't expecting it and it sticks with you the rest of
00:37:50.760
your life. Yeah. All right. So we've, we've, we've been really heavy and philosophical. Let's
00:37:57.840
get to the brass tacks of building a coffin. Cause reading this, I learned a lot about coffins that I
00:38:03.680
didn't know about. Like, for example, there are dimensions coffins have to be in order for you to
00:38:10.220
get it in the ground. And if you go too big, then like, you're gonna have to spend thousands of
00:38:14.880
dollars extra to accommodate that. So like, what are the dimensions of a coffin? Was it,
00:38:19.440
was the coffin smaller than you thought it was going to be?
00:38:23.800
It could have been. We, we kind of like, it started to expand without our realization. As,
00:38:32.020
as good an engineer and designer as my dad was, yeah, we knew the dimensions. I can't tell you
00:38:37.640
offhand what they are, but they're, they're in the book. I consulted with a, with a funeral director
00:38:42.680
as we were working on this. And he told me what the standard dimensions are. And when you're talking
00:38:48.260
about like a traditional burial situation, the dimensions are limited to the size of the vault
00:38:55.620
that the concrete or that, that the casket has to go in. It's usually concrete or metal. And the
00:39:01.480
reason for the vault is so there won't be a sinkhole where the grave is, you know, it'll, it'll keep it
00:39:06.840
from, you know, just collapsing after the, after the organic materials break down, which is what
00:39:13.640
they really should do. But yeah. So if it, so if it exceeds the dimensions of a standard vault,
00:39:18.700
then you have to either buy a really expensive, like megavolt or something or accommodate it in
00:39:24.400
some other way. And so anyway, because we kept coming up with other ideas to expand on the design
00:39:30.840
of this thing, we somehow accidentally made it bigger than the standard vault. And I don't want to give
00:39:36.000
away too much of the drama of this situation, but we had to figure out a way to deal with that
00:39:41.720
situation. So yeah, there were some, uh, practical considerations definitely that, that went into
00:39:47.640
the design. Right. And yeah, coffins are expensive and they get really a lot. They can get really
00:39:52.480
elaborate. Like there's like, I think there's coffins that you can buy as like, you know, your sports
00:39:56.540
team and blazoned on it. Yeah. That was, you know, the weirdest thing was when I was
00:40:02.280
like researching this and just kind of like free form, you know, just sort of, um, doing some Google
00:40:07.800
research early on, I was just like struck by how immediately available a casket is. Cause it's
00:40:15.500
something you never think about or until suddenly you have to think about it, but you can get, you know,
00:40:22.020
like you can get a casket from Amazon with overnight shipping, you know, like, and, and you can buy one
00:40:27.660
from overstocking, you can buy them from Walmart, eBay has listings, which was weird. Cause like the
00:40:33.240
eBay listings all use like sort of the standard eBay language. So it's like unisex casket, uh,
00:40:42.600
you know, like one size and, you know, like, and, you know, like overnight shipping available. And, but
00:40:49.600
then it would always say new and I'd be like new, like as opposed to used. So yeah. So that was weird.
00:40:58.560
But the weirdest was, yeah. Then all these novelty caskets and I discovered there's a company that
00:41:03.980
makes a base bacon casket and it's, it's, it's a steel casket, but it's encased in bacon and it has
00:41:11.860
these options. Like you can get a bacon air freshener for the inside and the ad, the marketing company said
00:41:17.980
for when you get that buried underground, not so fresh feeling. So yeah. Some really weird
00:41:24.160
ones, but you know, if you can make people laugh at your funeral, that's, that's a good thing.
00:41:30.480
Yeah. It's very Egyptian. When I read that, it was like, that's like something like an Egyptian
00:41:34.480
king would do. Like I'm going to be buried with bacon so that I can eat bacon on my journey to the
00:41:39.060
cool Egyptian king. Right. Cool. A cool Egyptian king. And there's also, you can just get a cardboard
00:41:44.200
box now and be buried in it. And I guess it's earth, you know, green or eco-friendly.
00:41:50.220
Yeah. I got really interested. Green burial is really, really growing. And I got really
00:41:54.440
interested in that. You know, my, my Sicilian Catholic wife will never probably go for that
00:42:00.160
because we have to be buried in, you know, near our family members because somehow we'll be,
00:42:04.160
you know, having parties there in the cemetery. But I really would, you know, love the idea of being
00:42:11.500
buried in one of these organic cemeteries where you basically, I mean, the ones that I am familiar
00:42:17.040
with, um, you put into the ground with the minimum of, you know, covering, you can just be
00:42:23.920
wrapped in cotton. Everything has to be biodegradable. Um, you could put a marker there, but it can't be
00:42:30.780
a polished stone. They want it to be a natural stone. And they like that because it provides habitat
00:42:36.220
for like, you know, salamanders and things. And there's something about that that's, that strikes
00:42:42.100
me as, you know, the way maybe we should be doing things. You know, I'm Catholic and, and so I know
00:42:49.080
what my traditions are, but, um, even like cremation was not a Catholic thing until very recently. And now
00:42:56.680
it's a huge growing trend. And, you know, there's something about just practical about the organic
00:43:04.380
possibilities of burial, but I think also, you know, sort of spiritual about it. Like,
00:43:10.620
you know, shouldn't I be a creating as little disruption and damage to the environment when
00:43:18.760
I'm no longer part of it and be, you know, sort of like recognizing that I'm not, you know,
00:43:24.540
what's the point of preserving the box that I'm buried in with a, with a concrete vault when,
00:43:31.820
you know, I'm going to be decomposed in a week.
00:43:35.180
Right. Dust thou art, none to dust shalt thou return.
00:43:45.180
You're kind of like, what is it? I wonder what decomposing is like. Is it, is, is he turning
00:43:49.660
to dust or is it sort of like you leak? But that's another thing people don't know about
00:43:53.220
coffins. Like you have to put in pans in the coffin because bodies leak, uh, whenever you're
00:44:00.840
buried. Yeah. One of the hilarious things when my dad and I were going through this,
00:44:05.360
like we'd go to the, to the hardware store, the lumber yard, and he'd be like, you know,
00:44:10.380
we'd be picking materials and he'd be like, well, I'd really like to do like cedar or redwood
00:44:14.440
because they're, they're less resistant to rot. And I'm like, dad, I'm not resistant to rot. So
00:44:21.480
like, what's the point? But he, you know, he's like very practical, but you know, I'd point these
00:44:26.980
things out and then he'd laugh, but you know, it was, yeah.
00:44:30.420
So coffins are big. Um, and so you're not dead yet. So you're not using it. So like,
00:44:36.240
where, what are you doing with your, your coffin right now?
00:44:39.120
Yeah. So like, I feel like I'm giving away all the spoilers. So anybody listening, you really
00:44:44.220
don't need to buy the book. Um, cause yeah, I'm telling you all the good stuff. So, um, no. So
00:44:50.100
at one point when we were, when we were doing this, you know, well, first of all, like there was
00:44:55.560
always this question between me and my wife, like, where are we going to store this thing?
00:44:59.660
And I would always just sort of bluff and say, oh, don't worry. I've got a plan, which, you know,
00:45:04.020
most men, when they say I have a plan, mean I've got no plan. So, um, but at one point we had to
00:45:11.500
stand it up on end in my dad's workshop to make some room for something. And when I looked at it,
00:45:16.740
I'm like, wow, dad, you know what, that would make like a really cool, nice bookcase. And so
00:45:24.440
that like, sort of like idea took hold. And so the, um, so I create, I made a set of
00:45:32.700
eventually removable shelves that insert into the standing up on end rectangular, um, piece of
00:45:39.140
furniture. And, um, and it's, it's sort of an elegant solution. Um, the only problem is that
00:45:46.440
um, when I started to figure out where in our house, this thing would fit, um, the only place
00:45:54.840
that it would work based on the way, the way the house is laid out and where furniture already is
00:45:58.940
and so forth is, um, on the second floor of our house where the bedrooms are, there's a big open
00:46:03.560
central hallway. And so, um, there was a perfect spot for it in that hallway. The only problem is
00:46:10.360
that when my wife and I get up in the morning, the first thing we see when we open our bedroom door
00:46:14.900
is the casket in which I will be buried someday, which is, um, would seem on the surface to be
00:46:21.560
kind of a morbid thing. But when I think about it, um, you know, if you wake up in the morning
00:46:28.380
and the first thing you realize is that I will die someday, it sort of puts you on your game for the
00:46:34.260
day. It's kind of like, yep, let's get coffee and get busy. You know? So, um, yeah. So the other
00:46:41.400
thing is, you know, when, um, when the book launch happened, it was at, uh, at the, at Akron's main
00:46:47.580
library has an auditorium and that's where the book launch event took place. And the library staff
00:46:53.360
made these, they reserved the first two rows of seats for my family and some, some guests. And
00:46:59.440
they made these, these cards, these laminated cards that had like my, my author headshot and it said,
00:47:06.020
reserved for our special guest. And my wife brought one of those home and she has attached it to the
00:47:11.120
side of the coffin. So it's my picture reserved for our special guest on the side of my, of my
00:47:19.840
Well, yeah, David, this is been a good conversation. Is there anywhere people can go to learn more about
00:47:29.260
Fantastic. Well, David Giffles, thanks for coming on. It's been a good conversation.
00:47:32.200
Oh, thanks so much for having me. This was a great conversation.
00:47:34.500
My guest, it was David Giffles. He's the author of the book, Furnishing Eternity. It's available
00:47:38.500
on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at
00:47:42.200
davidgiffles.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash giffles, where you find links to
00:47:48.200
resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:47:50.240
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and
00:48:06.440
advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy the
00:48:10.320
show, you've got something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes
00:48:13.140
or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the
00:48:17.160
show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always,
00:48:20.700
thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay