I would like everyone to get together and tell stories about me, preferably hilarious ones that will make everybody laugh.
Touche’.
My Dad died 3 years ago and he stated that he did NOT want a funeral nor a burial; he wanted to be cremated. So we had him cremated and spread the majority of his ashes along his favourite walking trail. I say most, because I still have a baggie of him in my sock drawer! He’d have loved that.
Don’t worry, I won’t pull a Keith Richards and snort him or anything, but my intention was to scatter his ashes in his favourite walking trails in my neck of the woods. For some reason I prefer him in my sock drawer though. Weird? Perhaps. He wouldn’t have thought so though.
A few weeks later after we all had the chance to digest the death, we all – friends and family – got together at his golf and curling club for a celebration of his life. We had a few drinks, a few laughs, and a few sandwiches. It was very cathartic and served as closure for the family.
So, we have no specific headstone to visit or anything, only a mile or two of his favourite walking path, and of course, my sock drawer.
I’m OK with that and completely would want that for my inevitable death. I’m thinking my favourite golf course right now; why not? You could even sprinkle me in my most common “in the woods” places.
It’s the Superbowl, the losing team is down by one with only a couple seconds left on the clock. To win the game they have to make a 45 yard field goal. Not the easiest but totally doable. The teams form up at the line of scrimmage and the net is raised behind the goalpost.
Outside, agents working on behalf of the omgzebras’ estate are retracting the roof of a specially constructed semi-trailer carrying a powerful and highly accurate pneumatic catapult.
The ball is snapped.
The catapult is activated.
The ball is kicked, it sails toward the goalposts, every second of its flight recorded by HD cameras and broadcast live to millions of people worldwide.
“The kick is good! The kick is oh my sweet Jesus what the hell was that?! It… it just flew in from off camera and it’s hung up in the net! Oh my God! Oh my God it looks like a body, it looks like a body and it’s hung up in the net oh my God!”
And so, in death, I will secure my place in history. Ideally it will be the Broncos that win the game but I’m sure my corpse will have mummified by the time that happens so I’ll take whatever teams happen to be playing.
If the ingrates that I call my friends and family are unable to comply with this simple request, I guess just throw me in a ditch somewhere or something, I don’t really care.
I wish to be buried in the family plot near my ancestral home, over looking the bayou. No embalming. Worms gotta eat same as buzzards.
No funeral. If anybody bothers to do a graveside thing, I want them to play Free Bird, and Dixie (a slower, mournful version) one last time.
You know how those videos of people dancing to “Baby Got Back” or “Thriller” or tumbling down the aisle at their wedding are really popular right now? I wonder how long until a similar video involving a funeral goes viral, and then you know people will start copying it. With the attitudes I’ve seen in my lifetime towards funerals from baby boomers on, I think we’re in for some radical changes in this custom over the next 50 years or so.
Donate any sound bits of my body, cremate the rest, no fancification of the final resting place.
A wake sounds great, and I’m sure my friends would have one.
I would love to say “NO RELIGION at the funeral” but my family are all very religious so that wouldn’t fly too well.
I read this as “no fanfiction at the final resting place.” I was imagining… er… so, yeah.
I want any useful parts carved out and send to whoever might need them. At that point I’ll be done with them. Then I want to be disposed of in the least expensive way possible that makes my family happy.
I’m thinking a hefty bag dragged out to the curb on trash day. 
This means that I’ll have to shuffle off my mortal coil on a Monday or a Thursday. Leaving my corpse on the curb for the dogs and raccoons to chew on for a few days would be, well, disrespectful. 
And against our HOA rules. Aw, screw that - I’ll be dead, what’ll I care!
This has come up on the SDMB before. There’s this [thread=400622]thread[/thread], where I made a slightly more serious [post=8074695]suggestion[/post]. 
We’ve even talked about [post=10252283]music[/post]. Now all I need is the handbasket grease …
A close friend of mine wants this sung at his funeral, exactly as done here.
(prolly requires Flash Player 9+)
I have, over the years, planned my funeral out pretty thoroughly.
There will be no memorial other than the graveside service. Wooden pews will be set out, not folding chairs, and the bereaved will dress comfortably. Two of my good friends - one a tall, thin gay man, and the other a homophobic African-American Republican - will sing Amazing Grace standing at either end of my casket. At the end of the song, a few people will get up to tell a few choice stories about my life (the time I broke a toilet with my penis, the time I got drunk in college and shouted at my neighbors about my nipples for half an hour, etc.). The casket will then be opened at graveside to reveal a cake made as a life-size replica of Harriet Tubman. Everyone will eat it.
Meanwhile, I will have been cremated. After the cake, a select group of my best friends will open the urn containing my ashes, each smoke their favorite cigars into it, and then shoot the ashes out of a cannon.
This is pretty much my exact wish list, as well. I’ve already filed instructions (and discussed with my friends and family.)
If I’m terminally ill or mortally wounded, pull the plug. No heroics, please. DNR. After any useable organs are harvested, my body is to be donated to med school or to a forensic science laboratory. After they’re done with me, cremate whatever’s left, and scatter my ashes at sea. If there’s any money left, have a party.
I want them to drop me on top of those funeral protesters. I want a large coffin so I can nail them all.
Skip the hysterics. Let organ donors and then a body farm have at my body. Don’t even think about a burial, clergy, weepy service anywhere, or anything ridiculous like that. If you want, go out and get drunk and tell stories and sing songs - use it as an excuse for a party. Nothing more.
Though really, I’m not going to know the difference, so you could mummify my body, string it up and use it as a terrible, terrible piñata for all the difference it’ll make to me at that point.
Oh, I forgot. I want to donate my body to scientists, but not scientists of today. I want to donate my body to scientists living 1,000 to 10,000 years in the future.
I’d like them to sing “I Know Whom I Have Believed”–my favorite hymn. We sang it when I was baptized, at my wedding and at my husband’s funeral. I know it will comfort my family–it is a marvelous affirmation of what I believe. I hope my funeral is a celebration of faith and joy.
<I now return you to your non-religious funerals.>
I want them to play the Alan Parsons Project’s “Old and Wise.”
I want my headstone to have the quote from Albus Dumbledore: “To the well ordered mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
I don’t want a fortune spent on it. A simple pine box is fine (I took a death and dying class in college, and found out what happens to bodies hermetically sealed in those fancy coffins–and aside from that, there’s no point in spending thousands of dollars on something that will be buried. I won’t be offended).
Since most of my family (especially on the spouse’s side) is religious, I probably won’t be able to avoid that, but no touchy-feely “nice” religion. At least keep it dignified and classy. And please, if you must play hymns, play classic/classical ones. None of this modern-day saccharine “Jesus music.” That stuff puts me to sleep.
Do not dress me in any kind of dress or feminine clothes. Maybe a nice pantsuit in a neutral color or something. I didn’t wear girly stuff in life, and I certainly don’t want to be remembered in it.
Also, please don’t talk about what a nice, sweet person I was. Yeah, I’m nice. I’m not sweet, though. I’m the world’s biggest tomboy nerd/geek, and I’d like to be remembered for that. Talk about my current nerdy obsession (whatever it is as the time), how I loved cats and books and gaming…but don’t give me the “generic woman treatment.” Basically give me the same funeral you’d give a male geek, but change the pronouns and talk about my husband instead of my wife.
I think it would be great if there could be a wake. I am half Irish after all. But I doubt that would fly, since I wouldn’t be there to supervise.
I’d rather have nothing. Just cremate me and dispose of the ashes. But then a funeral isn’t really about the person that died, it’s for those that are still here, so they can do whatever they like.
Agree wholeheartedly. I am amazed by these responses! I expected you to all talk about traditional, religious funerals. I know this is a biased sample, but I am totally thrilled to see such realistic responses. I’m with all the ‘use my body for science if you have any use for it’ people and the no-religion people. I want any money to be used by my family. My parents stipulated no funeral, memorial or service of any kind. Some found that hard after my mother died last year, so they had a gathering to scatter the ashes with Dad’s in a forest. I couldn’t attend without feeling it was a betrayal of Mum’s wishes.
So my instructions to my daughter are: Preferably no funeral, certainly no religion, but it’s you who will live with the memory of what you do, so do what you want. And the money’s all yours.
Cool! I was just discussing this for a living will, in case another coma happens and I won’t be waking up.
I have decided if the plug is pulled (or if I live to be 122) I want a natural burial. No headstone. I hope a fruitful tree can grow outta me that I shall personally fertilize.
I’m kind of with the Kingons on this. The body’s an empty shell. The person is no longer with it. So, recycle me.
Part of me just wants my corpse to be dumped somewhere where it can decompose peacefully. Hell, once I’m dead my body is just a shell. I am religious, but I certainly won’t be needing that body by any metaphysical theory once I’ve stopped breathing.
Another part of me likes the idea of the over-the-top ceremony. While I’m still alive, I love the idea of getting a full-on viking “burial”. Load my corpse and numerous treasures (gold, jewels, etc.) on a boat. Set that boat to sailing on my home waters (any of the Great Lakes would suffice, though I’m partial to Lake Superior or Michigan). Set the boat alight; my corpse with its treasure sinks forever. I think I best like the anachronism of this, as well as the mind-fuck it might offer to some of my friends and family.
What will probably happen - I’ll tell whatever family at the time, bury me cheaply. I’ll probably have at that point (I’m hoping to die much older than I am now, knock on wood) a decent insurance plan that covers a modest burial. I would hope my family at the time did the cheapest ceremony for me that was still meaningful to them. And I would hope insurance would cover it all.
I place almost zero importance onto what happens to my corpse after I’m gone. It means nothing to me, I would only be interested in burials or cemeteries that would have meaning to people I leave behind. If I find in the future that my family would want a fancy funeral and/or burial I’d probably go along; if they share my view that its a pointless treatment of a piece of dead meat I wouldn’t mind them tossing my corpse in an empty field.
Dust to dust, and whatnot. I still don’t understand why even religous people place importance on what seems just an empty shell once the soul is gone.