Would You Dig Your Own Grave in Advance?

Gabriel lives in the Southern Uganda district of Masaka. He is a 75-year-old former civil servant who had a prosperous life in the prime of his life. In 1985, he got a stroke that paralyzed him and greatly impaired his speech. Then his four sons started dying one by one leaving him apparently without any safety net to rely on in his condition. His wife left him immediately he got the stroke and all his hope was on his very well to do sons, most of who were prosperous businessmen.

When it became clear that the world was increasingly becoming kinless to Gabriel, he began to think about death, and how or even who would burry him. This is when the idea of digging his own grave came across his mind. He sold his piece of land and started building his own tomb.  He erected a nice little structure with colorful paintings and a beautiful cross over it.

The little building is furnished with a well-vanished Mahogany coffin that his grand children wipe every week. On the building there is an epitaph that reads Gabriel Bigirwa 1934-200- this is perhaps the most interesting part of this personal tomb. It was built in 1990 but in his own estimation, Gabriel believed that before 2010, he would be dead. As it is evidently turning out, Gabriel may look frail, but he is still very much alive. He may be around u to 2015 unless he decides to cut his life short so that he can die before 2010 as has already been inscribed on his tomb.

The story of Gabriel is very unusual, but he had good reasons to do the extraordinary thing of digging his own grave. I say this because many times we celebrate our birthdays but leave issues to do with our death days to other people-the precedence Gabriel has created is that we need to get involved in matters of our own death so that our send off from this world is done the way we really would have wanted it.