From tractors to bag pipes: My ‘Dead Happy’ deathwishes #AD

When I was a young child, I told my mother I wanted to be buried at sea. I’m really not sure where my obsession with a sea burial came from. I look back on it now with some irony as I didn’t even start learning to swim until I was eight.

Now I’m older, my ‘deathwishes’ have changed somewhat. The life insurance provider Dead Happy has challenged me to come up with some deathwishes of my own. Here you are, a few ideas as to what I think would be fun and memorable ways to acknowledge my passing:

A Ghanaian funeral procession

If you haven’t seen one of these, just take a look at this clip on YouTube. Ghanaian’s often do death and burial with style. I quite like the idea of leaving innocent bystanders stunned, perplexed and horrified as my coffin is thrown into the air, danced around and jumped over on the way to its final resting place.

Burial in a cardboard coffin

This might make a Ghanaian funeral procession a bit more tricky, but I’m thinking about the environment here.  When Mrs Adams and I wrote our wills, we initially requested wicker caskets. We were advised to reconsider and cardboard was suggested as an alternative. Apparently, wicker coffins are more expensive than solid wood because of all the hours taken to produce one.

Transport by tractor

In deference to my country-boy roots, I’d request to have the casket loaded onto an open sided trailer and taken to the cemetery by tractor.

I would, however, leave strict, written instructions insisting the tractor pull over every now and again to let traffic pass. The living, after all, need to get on with their lives and I’d hate to inconvenience anyone.

Sell off my land, bit by bit

Thinking of the environment again, I’d buy some woodland towards the end of my time on this mortal coil. Once passed away, I’d leave instructions for this to be sold off in five-centimetre plots to preserve the trees and make it harder to develop.

Have a piper

At the funeral itself, I’d like a bagpiper to play Amazing Grace. It is the most amazing tune when played on the bagpipes (as was done at my uncle’s funeral). If the congregation were not in floods of tears by the end of the song, I’d want the piper to play the song again and again and again until they were, either through bereavement-induced sorrow or through bagpipe fatigue!

How many adults don’t have life insurance?

Those were a few, fun deathwishes that I’ve come up with. The serious side to all of this is that Dead Happy says there are 8 million adults in the UK without life insurance. That’s a staggering number and the cost of death is something we should all be more open about.

Funerals cost a fortune and those you leave behind may be left with mortgages or other fees to pay. Life insurance really is something we should all have in place, especially if we have dependents, be they our children, spouses, partners or even our parents.

Of course, the cost isn’t purely financial. The emotional cost of being bereaved, especially if it’s someone very close, should not be underestimated. If there’s a financial shortfall, it simply adds to the stress.

If you are one of the 8 million adults without life insurance or you are looking to review your existing policy, why not visit the Dead Happy website and see the company can help? It’s worth visiting the website purely for the imaginative photographs! I guarantee you won’t have seen a site like this before which is great as the Dead Happy team has a very refreshing approach both to death and financial products.

Disclosure: This post was produced in association with Dead Happy.