25 Oct 2020

I heard the other day about the funeral of someone who was an avid Dr Who fan. Their coffin was decorated as The Tardis.

My first thought was “That’s cool”, but the more I thought about it, the more impressed I got.

If you’re not a Dr Who fan, there’s a chance you may not be aware the the Tardis is the size of a phone box from the outside, but much much bigger on the inside.

Of course the Tardis isn’t the only literary example of this phenomenon – Harry Potter fans will know that a one person tent can hold the same interior facilities as a four bedroom house, and CS Lewis fans will know of something similar from The Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia.

So to have a Tardis coffin, to me, signals much more than a love of TV series. To me it tells the people attending the funeral that the deceased is much more than the dimensions of that box. Much more, in fact, than the dimensions of the deceased.

The life and love that person represents cannot possibly be contained in a box that size. The impact of their death on their loved ones is cavernous, far reaching, and seemingly endless.

I think we should all have Tardis coffins.

Not now.

Later.