Bill Edgar never set out to be a coffin confessor. I mean, it’s not exactly a job you go to university for. But now, Bill is paid a handsome sum by people at the end of their lives to disrupt their own funerals. Whether it’s removing unwanted family members from the audience or saying the words they couldn’t say in life, Bill has spoken on behalf of his dead clients at funerals both locally and internationally.
How the hell do you become a funeral crasher? In 2018, Bill, who also works as a private investigator in the fraud and theft sector, had a client named Graham. As Bill was helping Graham sort out his financial issues, he discovered that Graham was dying of terminal cancer.
Graham had the idea of playing a recording out at his own funeral; a way to get some things off his chest but shrugged it off as a silly idea due to families being the ones to call the shots on your day… seeing as you’re not there and all.
“Out of a joke, and only a joke, I said, ‘I’ll crash your funeral for you’,” says Bill.
“We sat together and he wrote it out and put it in an envelope. The day of his funeral was the day that I interrupted it and read aloud exactly what he wanted.”
What Bill ended up reading out was a message to Graham’s so-called “best friend” who’d been “trying to screw” Graham’s wife as her husband lay on his deathbed.
“He’s on his deathbed in his own house. He can see up the hallway to the kitchen, and [sees] his best mate trying to take advantage of his wife and she wasn’t taking any of it,” Bill says.
“But he couldn’t get out of bed, he couldn’t yell, he couldn’t scream, couldn’t shout. It was just horrific.”
After the private investigator set up a camera and caught the “best mate” red-handed, Bill told Graham that he’d crash his funeral for him.
“I said, ‘I’ve got no problem at all standing up and telling him to fuck off’. And whilst he was performing the eulogy, I stood up and said ‘Mate, sit down, shut up. Graham in the coffin’s got something to say and this is what it is.’”
It sounds like a fictional crime series, but the Queensland-based PI is the only person in the world to offer the service of coffin confessor.
Ahead of his talk at TEDxSydney on the 1st of September, I sat down with Bill to learn more about his profession and to hear what he’s learnt after working with clients who are knocking on death’s door.
Don’t leave things unsaid
Sure, not every one of your inner thoughts needs to be shared with your best friend. But, the big stuff? Telling the person you love how you really feel. Having open and honest conversations when someone dear to you hurts you. That shit is important.
One of Bill’s elderly clients was on her deathbed when she shared that she had been in love with her best friend of 45 years.
“She wanted to be with this lady. She was married and had three children and her best friend was married with two children.”
As per his client’s wishes, Bill read this fact out loud at the woman’s funeral.
“Her husband was happy with it. No one was offended. It was just a true love story,” Bill says.
“When I was leaving that funeral, the lady in reference to the best friend came up to me and she said, ‘I felt the same way but I could never bring myself to tell her.’”
My heart. Don’t leave it to someone else to confess your true feelings to a person. Wear your heart on your sleeve now, because one day it may be too late.
Time is our most precious resource
As humans, the concept of our mortality is so petrifying, that we avoid it. We think we have an infinite number of new days, of new chances, of getting a coffee in the morning. But, time is the one thing we mere mortals cannot control.
“Every person I’ve sat with on their deathbed, every one of them has said exactly the same thing and, it’s time. You cannot buy time and time is what they want,” says Bill.
The coffin confessor’s message is to use the time you have to the best of your ability.
“A lot of people, they just live dying, they don’t die living. And that’s a big problem. You’ve got to die living, you’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing.”
What do you want for your own funeral?
In our Western society, we push thoughts of our own death to the never-go-there box. But, the fact is, it’s coming for us all. Bill’s youngest client is a healthy 26-year-old woman who just wants to get her affairs in order for peace of mind. Go off, Virgo queen.
Yes, you may not need to have a coffin confessor but do you know if you want to be cremated or buried? What music do you want played? Who do you want to be there? Or, maybe more importantly, who don’t you want there?
It may seem morbid (okay, it is morbid) but having even a casual conversation about it with friends and family could mean that when it’s your time (hopefully many decades away), you’ll have a send-off that represents you.
“At least leave something behind, or talk to your loved ones,” says Bill. “Tell them exactly what you want at your funeral. And don’t bullshit around. If they don’t like it or they don’t do it. Then… you hire a coffin confessor.”
Want to hear more? There are still tickets available at TEDxSydney now. Buy Bill Edgar’s memoir The Coffin Confessor, here.