A brief but ghoulish poll suggested by the weekly *Pushing Daisies *thread, which is otherwise irrelevant.
What do you want done with your body after you die?
a. Burial without embalming and with a minimum of fuss–as plain a casket as possible, a minimalist headstone, etc.
b. Burial with embalming but otherwise minimalist.
c. Burial with embalming, in an expensive coffin, with an elaborate headstone.
d. Burial, embalming, expensive coffin, and in a mausoleum so big that the fellowship of the ring will have room to fight Orcs.
e. Cremation with your ashes kept in a nice urn on someone’s mantle.
f. Cremation with your ashes scattered in an appropriate place.
g. Something I didn’t think of (please elaborate).
What’s your second choice?
If you died today, would your wishes be respected? Why or why not?
If your answer to (3) was no, how much does that bother you?
To answer my own questions:
F- Cremation with my ashes scattered over the Mississippi River would be nice.
E.
Probaby not. My wife believes in a bodily resurrection, so she wants me intact so we can be together in heaven. :rolleyes: We’ve compromised on as close to option A as possible.
No, I’ll be too busy being dead to worry about crap like that.
I would like for my body to be grafted into a set of powered body armor and weaponry so I can be reanimated and serve as a peacekeeper for the 21st century and bring peace and safety to Detroit.
Cremated. Don’t care what they do with the ashes. It’s just a body at that point and I’ll be dead so if someone decides they want to erect a massive mausoleum with fresh flowers daily, incense and armed guards I won’t be around to object. I really don’t want a funeral service either, I just don’t get into having a fuss made over me.
f. Cremation with your ashes scattered in an appropriate place. (over a river for me, I’d prefer the Ganga but that’s a lot of trouble for someone to go. I’d prefer to go home to India though.)
2. What’s your second choice?
Cremation with your ashes kept in a nice urn on someone’s mantle.
If you died today, would your wishes be respected? Why or why not?
My SO absolutely would. I fear a little i a lot of things, that my parents might get in the way, but cremation and the river thing are common things in my culture, so I don’t think they’d stop this.
If your answer to (3) was no, how much does that bother you?
N/A…but why would I care? I’d be dead.
I’m obviously with you with regards to the cremation, but I think you’re wrong about the funeral. A friend of mine died a few years ago, and quite expressly didn’t want any memorial at all. This was a huge mistake, as it denied the many people who loved him the chance to gather and mourn together, to draw solace from their shared grief. So we spoke with his pastor and had a service that was a funeral in all but name, and felt much better.
This experience also convinced me of the utility of obituaries. I wouldn’t want an elaborate one, but a public notification of someone’s death and announcement of the date of services is helpful in making a bad time more tolerable.
I wouldn’t expressly ask for no service because I know it’s gonna happen anyway. But you did ask what our wishes were. I won’t get my way on this so let them do whatever they want after I no longer inhabit this body.
g. I want to be cremated and turned into a Life Gem, in an understated setting. This way, if anyone cared it would serve as a nice memento, and if nobody wants it you can sell it or give it away as an estate piece and no one would be the wiser.
Plain old cremation would be fine.
Yes, my husband would carry out my wishes and we’ve discussed it before.
Honestly I don’t really care too much what happens to my body. I don’t want a lot of money being spent, and I know my family and loved ones already care and will remember me in their own ways so that’s all that matters.
I want to be cremated and have my ashes sprinkled around my garden or at least into the compost pile. I don’t want services if there is anything religious involved. If I have to have a second choice it would be the urn but that’s kind of creepy to me. Someone gave me some of the ashes from a friend’s death and as cold as it sounds all I could think of was “WTF am I supposed to do with these? Drag them around with me forever?” I can remember the person just fine without the constant grim reminder of having to dust an urn once a week. I don’t have any wishes to be respected so my partner can do whatever he wants, including doing a private Sioux death ritual if he makes him feel better.
I think that this stuff probably matters more to people who believe in an afterlife.
1. What do you want done with your body after you die?
I’ve been thinking very seriously lately that I want to be a medical school cadaver, but I hear there’s a pretty strict set of rules you have to sign off on even to be considered – like current living habits – that I probably wouldn’t pass.
2. What’s your second choice?
Other than that, if I have to forward my wishes, I say cremate me and chuck me to the winds. I’ve told my family, in as much of a living will as I have, that I really don’t care what they do with my corpse, but it would be silly to have a religious funeral for me. And I really hate the notion of people having to congregate at a specific spot (like a graveyard) to remember me.
3. If you died today, would your wishes be respected? Why or why not?
Probably. My parents are pretty level headed about things like this.
4. If your answer to (3) was no, how much does that bother you?
It doesn’t really bother me at all. I mean, what the hell will I care after the fact. I like David Cross’s idea of being donated to a group of necrophiliacs … I’ll spare this delicate forum the details of his comedy bit on the subject.
People always get freaked out when I reveal this, but I actually took the organ donor sticker off my DL at one time because my mother, a nurse got SO upset about it. She told me that when you’re an organ donor, they rush the family out of the room because they want to take everything right away, and if I loved her I wouldn’t do that. I talked to my father, and he felt the same way. Until they pass, I won’t change my donor status out of consideration for them.
Donate every scrap of me that can be used by someone in need, cremate the rest and use it as fertilizer for a nice tree in a pretty spot. At my funeral it’s fine if people get weepy but there’d better be a lot of laughter as well, I don’t want folks being miserable all day on my account.
Second choice? Well if I don’t get my first choice I won’t be in a position to have any say in the matter.
Haven’t written down my choice or really had that discussion with my family members (I’m only 38) so if I got hit by a bus hopefully they’d notice the organ dot on my driver’s license and my family would respect my wishes in that regard. Otherwise, probably be a fairly standard Jewish burial.
If I had made my wishes clearly known and my family disregarded them after my death that would bug me. Again, not much I’d be able to do about it at that point.
F- Cremation with my ashes scattered mixed into clay and made into a sculpture of a dropped ice cream cone. If there’s no room for it in someone’s house, it can be put on someone’s lawn.
Cremation and whatever anyone wants to do with the ashes.
Probaby not. I haven’t put any effort into documenting it or finding an artist.
1. What do you want done with your body after you die?
g. Donate all the organs that are in usable condition, send all the ones that aren’t to science (my smoker’s lungs will probably fall under that heading), and use the rest for fertiliser.
2. What’s your second choice?
f. Cremation, with my ashes scattered from the top of the CN Tower. Take that, Toronto!
3. If you died today, would your wishes be respected? Why or why not?
Yes. My soon-to-be-ex-husband agreed with me on most of these types of things (although he would probably be irritated by the CN Tower part), so wouldn’t fight it. Once it’s no longer his problem, it would be up to my mother to see it through and I don’t forsee any issues there.
4. If your answer to (3) was no, how much does that bother you?
N/A, but if I felt the default executors would not follow my wishes, I’d be amending my will to specify someone who would.
Scoop out whatever you can use. The kideys are shot, but the heart, lungs, liver and eyes are all good.
Cremate the rest, and scatter my ashes over Focus on the Family. Maybe I’ll get in their coffees or other assorted drinks and try to change them from the inside.*
*Yes, I know it won’t work like that, but it’s worth a shot.
