When MaddyChristine Hope Brokopp was diagnosed with terminal cancer in her 50s, she decided she wanted to shape one part of her own farewell: to have a casket made by hand. A web search led her to Mary Lauren Fraser, a Massachusetts basketmaker who has been crafting woven coffins and burial trays for years. Fraser offered to lead Brokopp and invited friends to spend a weekend at her studio making the piece together.
On a snowy Valentine’s Day in the Pioneer Valley, Brokopp arrived with a small caravan of friends. Fraser welcomed them with peppermint tea and showed them the workshop — part studio, part reference library, with shelves of books on basketry and death. Completed coffins and open-sided burial trays leaned against windows, their woven walls attached to pine frames. Fraser makes both sealed caskets and trays without lids; Brokopp chose a tray.
Fraser had already laid out five pine ribs that would form the tray’s base and marked the center rib to set the length. She explained she often soaks or even freezes willow to make it pliable for weaving. The construction relies on technical braids — waling and randing among them — to create pieces that are both beautiful and structurally sound. Fraser took responsibility for the most difficult steps; the friends would handle simpler, repetitive tasks under her guidance.
The group came from different chapters of Brokopp’s life. One friend, Cynthia Siegers, flew in from the Netherlands and happened to be celebrating her birthday. Though the work felt weighty, much of the weekend resembled an ordinary creative project: there was chocolate, shared stories about the drive and family, planning for spring, and the easy joking that comes with long friendships. One participant described the experience as a kind of team-building they were doing together.
On the first day Brokopp wove the initial rows of willow into the ribs. She liked the feel of the material — cool and wet — and said she wasn’t swept up in grief while she worked. For her, the weekend was as much about gathering people she loved as it was about confronting mortality. She welcomed the chance for a meaningful, even lighthearted, shared experience and noted that she didn’t have to be crying while making the tray.
Others found the act more surreal. A friend sitting beside her took her hand and admitted none of them could truly imagine the tray’s future use. Another friend later said that even on the drive up they could not picture putting Brokopp on the woven platform; emotionally, they weren’t there yet.
By the second morning tall sides of woven willow had risen like grass around the frame. With the harder setup completed, everyone could work at once, each person braiding and pushing strands into place. Brokopp, tired from standing the day before, watched from the couch as Fraser supervised closely, corrected errors and, when necessary, unpicked sections to preserve the pattern and integrity. Fraser emphasized how every step of traditional basketry is exacting and slow; friends were kept to simpler tasks so the most technical elements would be handled by an experienced hand.
There were small mistakes and moments of laughter when Fraser had to reweave a section, playful teasing passing between friends as the tray took shape. Fraser formed a hood at the head and stitched six cotton-rope handles into the sides. When the final ends were clipped and tucked, she asked Brokopp if she wanted to try lying in it. Brokopp declined — she had thought about it but felt it wasn’t the right moment, and her friends agreed.
Together they carried the finished tray out into the snow. The long basket, woven in pale browns, amber and green willow, felt like an object made of many hands and many stories. Brokopp reflected on the gift of their presence: that friends had driven in from far away, shown up despite their discomfort, and contributed their time and labor. She hoped the project might help others find ways to talk about death and to share meaningful rituals. By asking her friends to join her, she had given them a role in her final chapter — and she felt they had given her a profound, tangible expression of care.