The National Museum of Funeral History

Adventure has had an evolving definition for me over the course my travels, one of the great joys of my life.  But the more I see, the harder it has become to make me say…wow.

My definition now includes standing at a museum before a giant wooden onion. And if that wasn’t enough to inspire a wow, the fact that this particular giant vegetable is also a coffin certainly was. 

I think at this point you know enough to toss aside any expectations you might hold as you read on about the National Museum of Funeral History.  

“The purpose of those coffins is to be a vessel of representation of what somebody did in his life. Or how they might like to live in the afterlife,” explained Genevieve Keeney, the Houston, Texas, museum’s president and curator. 

The museum’s collection of “fantasy coffins” from Ghana is the largest such collection outside that country. So the onion (a shallot, to be precise) might have represented the life of an onion farmer, or a chef.  A tiger might be chosen to represent strength. A hen, motherly instincts. There’s even a Mercedes and a Yamaha outboard motor, perhaps offering two perspectives on how to best navigate the afterlife. 

The story of how Keeney came to hold her current position is, unsurprisingly, an interesting one. 

She was a student at the Commonwealth Institute of Funeral Service  which shares a campus with the museum, about twenty-five minutes north of downtown Houston. An important part of a funeral director’s job is to help families say goodbye to a loved one.  For some, that includes the opportunity to see their loved one one last time, and it’s important that they look as natural as possible. Which in some cases requires extensive restoration.  

“You have to learn to restore facial features,” said Keeney. “My final project for restorative art was to recreate an entire head.” She chose to replicate the head of Pope John Paul ll, who has since been sainted. “He’s a very well known worldwide recognizable figure,” she added. “It was a challenge. That became part of my résumé.”

As it happens, the museum was in the process of expanding and creating an exhibit about papal funeral rituals, Celebrating the Lives and Deaths of the Popes, when Keeney was hired. “I became a project manager, museum director, and curator all at once.”

The sections on papal funerals and Ghanaian fantasy caskets are among fifteen permanent exhibits in the museum, which collectively provide the kind of experience every museum should. They inform, provoke thought, and even entertain. 

“That’s the challenge I have as the museum’s curator,” said Keeney. “How to present a museum that is all about death, but do it in a way that is interesting, somewhat entertaining, but respectful.”

After spending a couple of hours wandering its displays, I’d say the museum manages to do just that. 

“That’s the challenge I have as the museum’s curator,” said Keeney. “How to present a museum that is all about death, but do it in a way that is interesting, somewhat entertaining, but respectful.”

For the history buff, there’s a riveting exhibit about Abraham Lincoln, the first president ever embalmed.  “Embalming came to America during the civil war,” explained Keeney. It was deployed in the battlefield to allow soldiers to be returned home for burial but also to disinfect and to preserve the strength of fighting soldiers by preventing the spread of disease.

Embalming made the seventeen-hundred-mile journey on Lincoln’s funeral train possible, allowing Americans across a broad swath of the country to share in his funeral.

I was fascinated by the museum’s collection of vintage and modern day hearses—including the one that bore the caskets of Presidents Reagan and Ford as well as several of rather unusual construction. There were hearse sleighs … and a funeral bus.  

“Who would have ever thought that there was a funeral bus?” asked Keeney. The idea of allowing the whole family to ride together with their loved one to the cemetery seemed like a great idea, but there was a design flaw. “It was designed for the trolley tracks of San Francisco, but it should have had another axle in the back to withstand the weight differential when you’re going up the steep hills.”

On one of its first journeys, gravity took over, the bus tipped up, and the casket was ... disturbed. 

“In the funeral profession we are perfectionists. You never want to do anything to create an upset,” said Keeney. Which is exactly what the bus created, figuratively and literally.  So that was the end of service for this innovative vehicle.

Another personal favorite was the exhibit featuring artifacts from celebrity funerals, which also includes an interactive display that lets you guess the epitaphs of famous comedians. Like Rodney Dangerfield. Okay, that one’s easy. 

The museum’s newest permanent exhibit explores cremation and includes examples of some of the imaginative things we can choose to have done with our cremated remains.  There is for example, a “memorial diamond” on display, fashioned by cutting edge technology from the remains of a beloved family member.

There’s also an exhibit of unusual caskets, including a casket made for three. After the loss of a child, the grief-stricken parents felt as if they couldn’t go on; they ordered a casket in which the entire family could be buried together. Later they had second thoughts and requested their money back. Unfortunately by then, it was already completed.  And so it found its way to the museum’s collection. 

It would be easy to see this piece as macabre, but Keeney has a different take. “That triple casket is a tangible way to explain the impact of grief.”

She has an equally engaging take on the museum’s mission. We’re so exposed to death every day in the news, video games, and movies, explained Keeney, that it’s become a form of acceptable entertainment: “Death is disconnected in popular culture.” She believes things are very different when it’s personal. “When we experience the death of a loved one, all of a sudden we are experiencing different and sometimes unfamiliar emotions.”

For Keeney the museum is “a neutral environment to really come and talk about death ... to come and explore that taboo topic so many people try to avoid.  We talk about death as it takes place in life. You’re not going to see anything morbid, anything scary. If we as a society can start understanding how death fits into life … we can learn to live a fuller life.”

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what there is to explore here, both in the museum surroundings and in the internal conversation those surroundings prompt.  But then if I told you everything, I’d rob you of the opportunity to experience the “wow” moment, as I did on my first visit. (Also I’d be way over my assigned word limit.)

[Read this: Houston Without a Parking Spot.]

I happened upon the museum the first time because my in-laws live nearby, in and around the lovely planned community of The Woodlands. (Several of those relatives are the delighted recipients of items from the museum’s remarkable gift shop.  Who doesn’t want a mug that reads “Every day above ground is a good one”? Or a T-shirt emblazoned with “Cremation: The last thing to light your fire”?)

So what else might you do if you don’t feel like venturing into Houston proper? Something about a visit to this museum always puts me in the mood to get my life in order, so I head straight from there to that shining beacon of organization that somehow hasn’t yet come to Louisiana ... the Container Store. It’s fifteen minutes away, tucked tastefully behind the trees with the other commercial ventures in The Woodlands.  Beyond the Container Store, there’s more than enough to fill a long weekend without ever venturing south of the I-610 loop around Houston.  

The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in the Woodlands plays host to frequent performances by the Houston Symphony, Houston Ballet, and Houston Grand Opera as well as myriad celebrity entertainers. (Jimmy Buffett will be there in June.) 

You can shop for a Tesla and other upscale baubles at the Market Street shopping district.  There’s a Hyatt in the center of that action.

Or for a funkier vibe, wander through the shops that now occupy the old houses in Old Town Spring and stay nearby at Hotel Blue, a former motel that’s been recently redone into budget accomodations with groovy décor. It’s handily next door to Dosey Doe, featuring fun food and live music in a barn. (A shout out to Cousin Courtney for this recommendation and several other of the tidbits here. She and I are actually somewhat tenuously related, but she’s so much fun I’ve dubbed her a “Chosen Cousin.”)

My go-to dining when I’m not eating with the family there is Taco Cabana (now featuring all day breakfast tacos ... woohoo.) But for those who would rather not carry their meal on a tray, I’m also a fan of the northern outpost of the beautiful and popular Houston Mexican eatery Guadalajara Hacienda.  And there is a new location of local Houston favorite Mia’s Table. 

And for me, their tacos with pulled pork, goat cheese, and chipotle mayo certainly qualify as part of “...living a fuller life.”  

National Museum of Funeral History

415 Barren Springs Drive

Houston, Texas 

(281) 876-3063 • nmfh.org

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