When MaddyChristine Hope Brokopp was diagnosed with terminal cancer in her 50s, she decided she wanted to make her own casket. An online search led her to Mary Lauren Fraser, a Massachusetts basketmaker who has spent more than a decade weaving caskets and burial trays — and who agreed to teach Brokopp and a handful of friends how to build one.
They gathered on Valentine’s Day while winter still gripped the Pioneer Valley. Friends drove in from Pennsylvania and farther afield, parking on packed snow outside Fraser’s workshop. Fraser welcomed them with peppermint tea and a tour: shelves split between basketry manuals and books about death, finished trays, baskets, bassinets, and a few caskets propped by the windows. Fraser combines woven sides and lids with pine boards, offering both closed caskets and open “burial trays.” Brokopp picked a tray; Fraser had already cut five pine ribs for the base and penciled a line to size it to Brokopp’s height.
They started with the simple but essential work of slotting wet willow between the ribs. Brokopp chose to go first. She said she liked the feel of the material — cool and damp — and that, despite the circumstances, her emotions were restrained. The project wasn’t meant as a mournful ritual so much as an invitation to be together. “I just wanted to have a fun time doing this,” she said. “I don’t need to be crying here doing this.”
Across two days the mood often felt like an ordinary weekend away: chocolate, stories about the drive, family updates, and the steady rhythm of hands weaving. There were jokes and easy camaraderie; David D’Amico likened it to a team-building exercise. At times the work felt surreal, and friends wrestled with imagining the moment they might lay Brokopp on the finished tray. Sitting beside her, Nita Landis took Brokopp’s hand and said softly, “I don’t think any of us can.”
Fraser’s technique is meticulous. She soaks willow, wraps it in wool and sometimes freezes it to keep it pliable. The weaving requires technical braids — waling, randing and other patterns that create strength as well as beauty. Fraser guided the group through manageable tasks, correcting mistakes, undoing miswoven sections and teaching as she went. Laughter and gentle blame filled the workshop as they worked under her steady direction.
By the second morning the almost-finished tray stood in the center of the room, long willow strips rising like grass. Everyone dove in at once, each taking a section. Brokopp, tired from the first day, watched from the couch more than she worked. Fraser shaped a sloped hood for the head, trimmed excess, stitched on a white cotton rope that became six handles, and finished the final details.
When Fraser asked if Brokopp wanted to try the tray on she declined. “I thought about it,” she said, “and I think that I do not want to try it on.” Her friends agreed — “It’s not time yet,” Landis said.
When the tray was done — woven in pale browns, oranges and greenish willow, its hooded headrest complete — the group lifted it together and carried it out into the snow. For Brokopp the project was more than making a container: it was a way to invite easier conversation about mortality and to give her friends a different kind of closeness. She thanked them for pushing past discomfort to be there, calling their presence a gift and hoping she had given one in return — the chance to confront death simply and humanly while making something by hand for someone they love.