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By Alex V. Cipolle, Minnesota Public Radio News

A recent Facebook Marketplace listing shows photos of a man posing in a wood casket. In one, he salutes the camera. In another, he reads Carl Sagan’s “Contact.” One hundred and fifty bucks, the listing says.

“So it’s new, only ‘tested out’ for photos,” the listing continues. “Needs to be picked up from downtown Minneapolis no later than Christmas.”

The man in the casket was Thomas Edison Hicks (he changed his name to add “Edison”), a local inventor, entrepreneur and educator, among other things. He took the photos a few months before he died in October, age 79, from cancer.

The listing reveals a story of a man who faced death with a sense of humor and adventure, and a family who made the science fiction lover’s end-of-life wishes a reality.

Hicks’ daughter Rachel Hicks posted the listing on Sunday.

“Within 24 hours, I’d received probably 50-plus messages from people, which was just so unexpected,” Rachel Hicks says. Sitting with her brother Caleb in her downtown Minneapolis apartment that overlooks the Basilica of St. Mary, she scrolls through the messages on her phone.

“One person said, ‘I just wanted to say this is the best ad I’ve ever seen. Thank you for this,’” she reads. “Another very kind person said, ‘His sense of humor and his poses made me laugh so hard for the first time in what feels like forever. Ha ha ha ha, I can’t help but immediately love him. And I’m not interested in the casket, but I love your dad OMG.’”

Another: “Hi Rachel. Does the man come with it?” She laughs.

None of the messages were from interested buyers, just folks who loved her father’s spirit. Rachel said she hadn’t intentionally tried to be funny when she created the listing; she was simply trying to sell the casket quickly to clear out his apartment.

And these photos, taken by Caleb, were the only ones available. They are typical of a Minneapolis man who lived a vibrant life, his family says.

His obituary describes him as a woodworker, voice-over actor, recording artist, percussionist, dairy goat farmer, KMOM radio announcer, Minnesota State Fair award-winning bread baker and the “self-proclaimed ‘World’s Second Best Santa.’”

“I think Renaissance man is a good way of putting it,” Caleb Hicks says.

“His fulfillment really came outside of work,” Rachel Hicks adds. “I felt this last year before he died, he talked a lot about the family.” This family includes siblings Megan Bekwelem, Whitney Heimerl and their mother Carol Hicks.

Hicks was diagnosed with terminal cancer in November 2022. Doctors gave him no more than a year to live. Shortly after, the family moved him into Rachel Hick’s building so she could care for him. Every Friday night they would watch their favorite sci-fi films and shows and talk about big ideas.

“It started this process of creating the bucket list, starting the planning for this FUN-eral,” she says.

“Putting the fun in funeral,” Caleb Hicks says. “The idea of a celebration of life always struck him as a little cliché, something that didn’t quite meet the level of excitement that he would have wanted.”

The FUN-eral was hosted in the building’s party room on Nov. 18. There were games and a raffle of his top 25 science fiction books, each inscribed with a personal note from Hicks. They served “Tom’s Favorite Lunch”: tuna fish sandwich, tomato soup, cottage cheese and peaches, chips and his favorite dessert, pineapple upside-down cake.

“I’ll set the scene,” says Rachel Hicks. “You walk in and there’s a life-size cutout of Tom in his full suit with a bow tie on and there’s a sign that says ‘Welcome to my FUN-eral. Take a selfie with me.’”

There was also an exhibition of his woodworking and inventions. These included spinning wheels, rocking chairs and a game called “spider chess.” There was also a “Tic Torch,” a sort of BIC lighter-pincer contraption, which advertised that it could grab a wood tick and “torch it” in one go.

Then there was the casket. Hicks had opted for hydro cremation instead, an alternative to traditional burial.

“When we toured the [hydro cremation] facility, it was clear that it was absolutely the perfect choice for him,” says Caleb Hicks, referencing his father’s love of science fiction. “Because aesthetically the design of the facility — it could have been taken right out of the old CD ROM video game Myst.”

They had played Myst growing up with their dad.

“The idea of going into this sort of stone dome, where there’s a little waterfall coming down, and there’s a glass viewing window that leads into a chamber with a large metallic tank,” Caleb Hicks says, “and that his body would be going into that tank, and then undergoing the alkaline hydrolysis there, was just perfect.”

Hicks lived with the casket in his downtown apartment for months. He wanted to convert it into a bookshelf to store his science fiction books. When he was unable to do so, Hicks decided to use the casket as a gag at his funeral instead.

“And there’s the coffin sitting out,” Rachel Hicks says. “If you’re brave enough to go over to the coffin and look inside, you’d see a life-sized skeleton, plastic skeleton and my dad’s ponytail” attached.

“His actual ponytail,” Caleb Hicks adds. The two laugh.

Caleb had also been collaborating with his father on a video about his life with photos and home videos. Hicks was supposed to narrate it, but when he became too ill to participate, his son turned to artificial intelligence.

“He has always loved sci-fi, loved thinking about the future,” Caleb Hicks says. “If he could have downloaded his consciousness to the cloud — or uploaded it — he would have done so. That was really the inspiration to think about how to bring AI into this project.”

Caleb Hicks uploaded voice recordings of his father to an AI voice generator app. He then wrote a script rooted in his dad’s philosophies and cadence, fed that to the AI and used this to narrate the video. In it, the voice usually comes from an AI-generated photo of Hicks, which is animated to talk. The family calls it “AI Tom.”

“Hello I’m Tom Hicks. Or at least a version of Tom,” the video begins. “During my brief stint on this spinning blue dot, I’ve had many iterations.”

Caleb Hicks says the use of AI after his father’s death does introduce some ethical questions.

“Those are good, those are absolutely right,” he says. “All I can say is, I know with certainty he would have loved it.”

The family offered to make AI Tom available to answer questions from MPR.

So we asked: What is your advice for those who fear death?

“I think it is normal for people to fear the unknown,” AI Tom responded. “For me, the unknown is an invitation. An invitation to wonder, to explore. Maybe even to learn. The way I look at it, being fearful of the unknown seems just as reasonable as being excited for it. Insofar as I have a choice, I choose the path of excitement.”

The Hicks say the entire process — the casket photos, the FUN-eral, the video — has made losing their dad easier.

“I’m walking away from this past year not having regrets,” Rachel Hicks says. “I can’t think of anything I would want to do differently in this situation. I feel so grateful to have had the time with him.”

As for the casket?

“I got a buyer!” Rachel Hicks says. She received a note from the buyer about the similarities he shared with her father. “I just felt like yep, it is going to the right person.”