Tylar Sutton
At a certain point, we all deal with life’s big questions: Who am I? Why am I here? When will I die? If we’re lucky, this last question doesn’t really surface until pretty late in life. More often than not, though, that question smacks us in the face when we least expect it.
In his latest book, “Furnishing Eternity: A Father, a Son, and a Measure of a Life” (Scribner, $24), Akron author David Giffels broaches these and other big questions in a rather unusual way. He and his father embark on a woodworking project — to build the author’s coffin.
“It was sort of a gag,” Giffels says about the project, “but I have a long history of getting myself into things that pride won’t let me back out of.”
Both devout Catholics, Giffels and his wife, Gina, had mostly traditional ideas about funerals. Still, they engaged in a long-running quasi-serious debate about Giffels’ desire to be buried in a cardboard box in defiance of the expense caskets and funerals often incur. This frugal idea led Giffels to approach his handy retired engineer father about undertaking the project to not only save money, but to spend constructive time together. The idea of writing about the experience was secondary but loomed larger when the inevitable existential questions moved from theoretical to all-too-real.
“Initially it was 70 percent we’re thinking of building a coffin together as a sort of weird father-son woodworking project, 30 percent thinking this would be interesting to write about,” he says. “[Then] life said, that’s not how you engage with those ideas. Here’s how you engage with those ideas: People really die, and you really feel grief. And it’s confusing and chaotic, and you might not figure anything out from it.”
In the midst of writing about building a coffin, Giffels’ mother died suddenly. Then his best friend since childhood died. These events changed forever not only the author’s life, but the trajectory of his literary project.
“It became the hardest writing process I’ve ever experienced, but it also taught me the most about what it really means to write something important about your life,” he says.
Giffels’ previous books concerned much lighter fare. “All the Way Home” (2008) detailed how Giffels bought and restored a crumbling house in West Akron as he and Gina were starting their family. “The Hard Way on Purpose” (2014) comprised essays about the quirks of Northeast Ohio life, including Giffels’ time as a towel boy for the Cleveland Cavaliers. And who can forget “Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!” (2003), wherein Giffels and co-author Jade Dellinger trace the rise of one of Akron’s most famous and unusual musical icons.
“The main way this was different is that the last two books I wrote were in retrospect of years if not decades,” he says. “I was writing this book not only as the events were happening, but as some of the most dramatic and traumatic events of my life — that I didn’t see coming — were happening.”
Writing about one’s own life can be difficult, both emotionally and objectively. Giffels’ background as a journalist — he wrote for the Akron Beacon Journal for 18 years — informs his diligence in fact-checking and corroborating his memory through research. “Your memory is not your main tool. It is a first tool,” he says. Google Maps and the internet in general make this obligation a bit easier for modern writers. And sometimes research can unearth the dark humor underneath an emotionally weighty topic. “I had a blast researching the weird commerce of caskets and just the idea that you can buy a casket from overstock.com.”
Without reaching for lofty answers to big questions, Giffels brings some insight about the nature of life and loss to his memoir. “This book I guess is about the humility of understanding that we don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think we can ultimately find the answers to the big questions. But it’s worthwhile to think about, even though it hurts to do it.”
Despite its somber subject matter, “Furnishing Eternity” ultimately becomes a love letter to Giffels’ life — to Life with a capital L, with all its messy, chaotic, incomprehensible beauty that could never fit into such a small box. After all, this is not really a book about a coffin.
