# Are you planning to be buried? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 14, 2011, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241 "2011-09-14T02:54:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/143 "2019-10-16T19:18:53Z")
Fun seeing some of the dearly departed posters in the original thread! Me, my first pick would be to hang out w/ **dropzone** at the farm. Closest one to us is at SIU! And after the soft bits drop off, they articulate your skeleton! YAY! There is one in TX where bodies are scavenged by coyotes and vultures! I even picked out my outfit! But they don’t pay transport. My wife says I apparently want to continue being a pain in the ass AFTER I die… Second choice is to let anyone harvest whatever they want, and then compost the rest. (Not yet legal in IL.) Hell, some irrational part of me thinks I’d rather have organs/tissue harvested, but when I think about it, I really don’t care if I’m dissected, used as a crashtest dummy, or simply mulched. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/144 "2019-10-16T19:36:49Z")
> [@Lubricious\_Integument](#): > > Motivated by [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=624081): > > When your time on this mortal coil passes do you want to be buried? Frankly I don’t see the point. My final college courses will be at a medical school, and when they’re done with me whatever is left will be cremated. The family can pick up the ashes if they want but I don’t–and certainly won’t–care. > > Of course my original plan was to have my remains converted into a [diamond](http://www.cremationsolutions.com/Cremation-Diamonds-Made-From-Ashes-c39.html) to be used as dental bling for my wife, but she gently reminded me that her oath to me ends upon my death. > > Her plan is to spend eternity in [Knoxville](http://web.utk.edu/~fac/). Organ donor here, though frankly I doubt anyone would want my old parts at this point, but after that my plan is cremation. Though I have thought about how cool it would be to get mummified and maybe put in a tomb to be found in a few thousand years. 😛 But, no…cremation is my plan for my old corpse after whatever parts might be useful are removed. ---
**Author:** ![Mallard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Mallard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mallard)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/145 "2019-10-16T19:55:01Z")
My wife and I are being buried right beside my parents and my maternal grandparents. Plots and headstones are paid for, so the kids don’t have to cough up anything for it. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/146 "2019-10-16T21:12:43Z")
I am but I want a green wedding with no attempt to preserve my body for a viewing. I’ve never liked those things anyways. Often they get things wrong. Just put me in a freezer and then into a pine box and bury me. In a few years I will be worm food and thats the way God intended. ---
**Author:** ![Kovitlac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/2bfe46/32.png) [@Kovitlac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kovitlac)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/147 "2019-10-17T21:12:45Z")
I want whatever family I have at the time to do whatever makes them feel better. Funerals are for the living, but the dead, so presuming it brings them comfort (it does me, when loved ones die), they’d have one. They’d probably bury me too, since it’s the custom in my family. That said, if I never get married out outlive a husband, I don’t really plan on having kids, so it’d probably be up to nieces and nephews to decide, at that point. Not a lot of people around to really remember me, which is painful to think about. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2019, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/148 "2019-10-18T11:59:04Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I am but I want a green wedding with no attempt to preserve my body for a viewing. Like a _Bride of Frankenstein_ sorta event?! ---
**Author:** ![MissTake](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misstake/32/3189_2.png) [@MissTake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MissTake)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2019, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/149 "2019-10-18T12:46:46Z")
My expressed plan is: donate anything usable, cremation, ashes into fireworks, blast off. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2019, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/150 "2019-10-18T12:54:31Z")
I’m a traditionalist. My fundamental feeling is that you bury loved ones and burn garbage. To me, a funeral is “closure” where you celebrate a person’s life and say good-bye. Having said that, I also want to add that I pass no judgments on others and believe people should do exactly what they want to do. After all, what could be more personal than one’s death? ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2019, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/151 "2019-10-18T14:11:46Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > I am surprised at all the graveyard hate! Have you ever visited Woodlawn or Green-Wood in New York? Lovely park-like cemeteries, chock full of gorgeous sculpture and historic monuments. I also love the old graveyards of Europe and New England: they are history lessons and art lessons in one. I also cut through the local graveyard near my house on the way to the market, and read the tombstones and look at the photos attached–_fascinating_. > > I won’t wind up in a cemetery, but I \*love \*'em. I agree - I love looking at old headstones and monuments. But the new parts of cemeteries are pretty boring. I don’t want to be in a box rotting/melting away for eternity. I HATE funerals with open caskets (I even hate the word “casket”). Everything about them is creepy and morbid. And a huge money-making scam. I want to be cremated. They can spread or keep my ashes. ---
**Author:** ![DummyGladHands](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/49beb7/32.png) [@DummyGladHands](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DummyGladHands)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2019, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/152 "2019-10-19T01:10:01Z")
Please do know that if you plan full body donation those arrangements must be made in advance. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2019, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/153 "2019-10-19T01:25:20Z")
nope. If I have any usable organs when I die, feel free to give them to whoever needs them. the rest you can shove in a furnace or throw to the pigs. ---
**Author:** ![Art\_Rock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/art_rock/32/525_2.png) [@Art\_Rock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Art_Rock)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2019, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/154 "2019-10-19T13:59:45Z")
When I’m dead, they can do with my remains whatever they want, I could not care less. In practice, this means that my wife will decide whatever she is most comfortable with. I will leave no wishes, let alone instructions. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2019, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/155 "2019-10-19T16:48:02Z")
I know I said cremated and scattered out in the desert in one of these threads, maybe even this one, but thumbing through the thread and thinking about it, a sort of modified sky burial. Strip my bones of all the flesh and organs and leave those out in the desert for the critters to eat and convert my skeleton into some sort of sculpture or furniture. A throne of bones as it were ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/156 "2019-10-22T13:40:22Z")
Well, when I die don’t you bury me at all Just nail my bones up on the wall Beneath those bones let these words be seen “This here’s the bloody gears of a boppin’ machine” – Lux Interior ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/157 "2019-10-22T14:24:41Z")
When you hear sweet syncopation And the music softly moans T ain’t no sin to take off your skin And dance around in your bones. –Tom Waits ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241/158 "2019-10-22T21:56:15Z")
“But please don’t bury me Down in that cold, cold ground I’d rather have 'em cut me up And pass me all around” “Throw my brain in a hurricane The blind can have my eyes And the deaf can take both of my ears If they don’t mind the size” –John Prine [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-planning-to-be-buried/596241.md?page=7)