DEATH BECOMES HER

I AM lying awake in bed, thinking about what it will be like to lie in my coffin. I am curious, excited and strangely peaceful at the prospect. I feel the echoes of willow scraping across my palms and fingers.

My mind replays the day’s hard-learnt cleaving and weaving techniques. I’m experiencing an unexpected version of mal de débarquement, that sensation when your body ebbs and flows at night with the memory of a lengthy sea voyage, long after disembarkation.

Instead of wobbly legs, my coffin-making hands are keeping me from floating into sleep. One fingernail throbs with a blood blister, a knuckle is bruised. My upper arm muscles grumble of the day’s labour.

My mother and I had decided to make our willow caskets a while back, but because of lockdowns and restrictions only got around to carrying out our plan towards the middle of last year.

I have been drawn to exploring how to have a good death for a while and this seemed like a very deliberate but gentle confrontation of mortality – surely making my coffin would encourage me to meditate on my life and inevitable death?

Slightly nervously I asked my mother if she would like to join me. She was delighted and it was her suggestion that