“That’s a huge amount for our little club and it just shows the need that is out there in society,” club treasurer Cherie Hames said.
From talking to hospitals, she believes their club is the only group in New Zealand making this many baby coffins, but despite hospitals and birthing units needing more, they aren’t able to meet that demand.
“We are at a point where we don’t have the room to make any more,” Hames said. “We are basically at capacity of what we can make on the premises, we have to find new premises.”
The baby coffins are stored in a little room out the back of the main workshop, and inside each coffin lies a hand-knitted cuddly bear and blanket crafted by local women.
“It’s devastating,” volunteer Alan Monk said. “You can imagine a family expecting a newborn and, all of a sudden, it’s all over.
“That’s the last thing, the absolute last thing on the list that they would have even considered they had to get ready.”
The baby coffins are being made next to the club’s main workshop, in an old cold netball ablution block, where rusty cobweb-covered showerheads still stick out of the concrete walls.
Volunteer Don Mardle oversees the operation, which he said could produce more coffins, if they had a larger building and more volunteers.
“We’re restricted by space and labour,” he said.
“This year, we are up to 147 as of today and that’s only scratching the surface really.
“I’m a retired tradie, I came here to make adult coffins but found my space making baby coffins.”
Mardle volunteers more than 20 hours a week of labour to ensure enough baby coffins are made.
“It’s an incredible privilege to be doing this,” he said. “I love giving to our community and, if there are any tradies out there – joiners, cabinet makers – we’d love some help,” he said.
Hames said people volunteer from all walks of life and for all sorts of reasons.
“Some of the women have had miscarriages in the past and the way that was dealt with was not the nicest, so for them, it fills a real need,” he said.
“On the other side of it too, we have people that are in rest homes that are still useful. Just because you go into a rest home, doesn’t mean there isn’t an area you can fill.
“I don’t think volunteering and usefulness stops at a certain age.”
For the past 11 years, the Coffin Club has leased its buildings off the Hastings District Council on a six-month rolling contract.
The council told RNZ the area had not been earmarked for any particular activity or development to date.
“Decisions on its future will be made by council in consultation with the community, once strategic planning work being undertaken for Windsor Park, including Splash Planet, is completed and as resources allow,” a spokesperson said.
“Given that the future of the green space is undecided, council will not approve new buildings on it.”
The council said any club or organisation wishing to establish premises on council-owned land may submit an application, and it had not received an application from the Coffin Club.
Hames said the club was worried it would have to move, once a decision was made about the future of Windsor Park, so the group was hunting for land in Hastings to build a permanent home and continue the club’s legacy.
“We need to be somewhere we can expand and build or alter to fit our purposes.
“Anybody willing to help donate and get us to our goal, we would really appreciate that. We are a worthwhile cause.”
‘We have a lot of fun here’
Volunteer Pete Wolstenholme joined the club more than three years ago, although he’s yet to make his own coffin.
“When I retired, I needed something to do,” he said. “I saw it advertised and thought, ‘That sounds different, I’ll go down and have a look’.
“I had the thought that probably a lot of people have, that it’s a bit morbid, but it’s far from it. We have a lot of fun here, we’re always laughing.”
Pete’s friend, Alan Monk, has also volunteered for several years, helping many people design their final resting place. He said Kiwis’ attitudes towards death were evolving.
“More and more, there is an acceptance that I’ve got to get ready for that day, it’s going to come sometime, so I’ve got to help my family by putting things together.
“People sort of say, ‘Well, that’s my final bed’, so we talk about this as ‘underground furniture’,” Monk said.
For some, it’s an opportunity to have a bit of fun decorating their coffin. Wolstenholme and Monk laugh, as they remember one member who turned his coffin into a truck.
“He was a heavy truck driver and his coffin had big lights on the front, it had a sound-effect motor in it and lights actually working,” Monk said.
The friends enjoyed the camaraderie that came with being part of the club and the sense of purpose in giving back, which Hames said was a common feeling among members.
“You’ve got to be able to find a lightness in life, and sometimes it just comes through people getting together and having that same goal, making things better and being able to celebrate the last thing you can possibly do for somebody,” Hames said.
– RNZ