Being Hindu, I find myself to be intensely averse to the whole burying thing. It’s funny how some things you can throw off and some things stay with you, deep in your soul. And I hate open casket wakes, I admit, with Grandma all tarted up and staring at you.
I also signed my organ donor card and my SO knows to take care of it with the minimum of fuss. I’ve told him to do whatever he needs to say goodbye and no more.
Agreed, the mannequin show is a horrible event. But I know people who
fight over the can of ashes too, so you just can’t win.
I have told my husband-- who bought a 500 dollar pillow to put under his mother’s head in her coffin because “She hated getting dirty”-- that if he dared spend all that money to bury me, I’d come back to haunt his ass.
No burial.
Sentiment 1 is that I am repulsed by the idea of being sealed in a successive layer of boxes for eternity. I’m done with my body, so the constituent molecules should return to biological circulation.
Sentiment 2 is that I have no one particular place I want to be buried. Instead, I have n relatives geographically separated, and I’d like to be with them all. At the same time, I also love the Smokey Mountains, and I’d like to be there.
Solution: cremation. Most of my carbon and water goes up the smokestack immediately, and the calcium left behind will become mostly fertilizer. Split my ashes n+1 ways, with representative samples to spread on the graves of the dead relatives, and a sealed thimblefull to be buried with the ones who outlive me. That last portion is to go to Tennessee or North Carolina, to be spread under a bridge carrying an active railroad over a body of water where the fish are biting, on a warm and sunny morning.
Yeah, I like trains, fishing, and summer.
ETA: I want my after funeral doin’s to be a kegger, not a mopefest.
$500 pillow?! to go in a casket?! in the ground?! wow…lol i don’t blame you for threatening the haunt!
Nope. Cremated and scattered in the same pond where my Mom’s ashes are.
I used to say I didn’t care what happened to my body after I died, but having attended a couple of plastinated bodies exhibits I will say I’d rather not be on display, particularly with a basketball or in a tapdance position or under a sign that says “The Dangers of Fried Food” or whatever. Beyond that I don’t have much preference other than take anything that’s usable. Personally I would prefer cremation- I like the finality and “cleanness” of it- but I’ll leave it to the discretion of my survivors.
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.
SiL’s Dad’s ashes finally got scattered last August, two years after his death. SiL just got sick of not being allowed to do it because there was always some relative for whom the set date wasn’t convenient. One of the lines reported by Mom was “he couldn’t be arsed come to the funeral or the cremation, I refuse to be arsed wait for his there-are-children-in-the-room convenience!”
SiL’s very nice and all that, but when she gets fed up it’s best not to be in her path.
I’d like to be stuffed and placed in my chair in front of the TV, and taken on vacation a la Weekend at Bernie’s. Might as well get some amusement out of me, what the hell will I care?
I find them a waste of space, to be honest! I am not going to be one to propose they all get ripped out as I know how dear they are to people, but I certainly do think you should only get a temporary lease on the space. Just look at England where they are rapidly running out of room.
And yes, I admit I don’t find them beautiful at all, but rather…creepy and disturbing. A monument to rotting flesh in the ground.
I’ve just made it clear to my wife that when I die, my organs are to be donated, what’s left to be cremated and shot into space.
She said, “Okay.”
Cool.
I’m looking to be cremated, though on review I really should make it clear that I am to be burned after any usable organs are donated. I really hope I live longer than my father and a certain older sister, because they’d both give my wife shit for following my wishes. My older brother and baby sister will have her back, luckily, and my little sister will just stay out of it.
I find open casket funerals beyond gross. If you have ever read true crime books or books about what happens to the body after death, you would agree. As for me, cremation all the way! MUCH less expensive. I had my mom cremated last year, and she sits in an urn on my dresser. In my grief, it sounded like a good idea, but I probably will scatter her ashes in the near future. I wanted to bury the urn in a plot so I would have a place to visit her, but I don’t visit her on my dresser, so what’s the point???
Agreed, except I’d say “wildly unethical” rather than “stupid.” My family isn’t wild about organ donation - they find it squicky. Frankly, however, I don’t much care. I love my family, but if the cost of saving someone else’s life is that my parents and sister get a bit squicked out - sorry, guys, but that’s how it goes. You can get therapy; dead people can’t.
I want one of those new foresty burials, where they wrap you in a sheet and stick you in a plain box and bung you into the ground without all the oogy embalming and concrete box stuff.
I quite like graveyards, but they have far too many icky regulations about concrete.
In fact, only being able to buy a temporary lease is pretty common in Europe. Normally renewable, but this only lasts as long as someone cares enough to pony up the money.
For instance, I don’t think it’s possible anymore in the Paris area to buy a spot for longer than 30 years. However, in smaller towns, “perpetual” (in reality 99 years, if I’m not mistaken) spots are available. In the small village I was brought up, they’re running out of space in the cemetery (although it is surrounded by woods and meadows, so enlarging it wouldn’t be an issue), so I understand they have begun to unearth the remains of the most ancient spots (though apparently, they don’t do it if there’s any kind of monument, including a mere tombstone).
Throw me in a ditch somewhere, it’s not as if it matters.
I haven’t given the burial vs. cremation idea much thought, really, but I surely do want any useful organs to be donated. And if I am buried, I want it to be a simple affair; no embalming, plain pine box, etc. I’m not a practicing member of any religion, but I was raised Jewish, and I do like the Jewish idea of a non-ostentatious casket, etc.
My Uncle Bob, who was filthy rich by my standards and could have had anything he wanted (and was conscious enough of his upcoming untimely death from cancer to plan his own funeral), had a plain pine box; I heard some in attendance at the funeral wondering why the plain pine box, but that was genuinely what he wanted.
There’s actually an old Soviet mother-in-law joke on that subject, burial space in Moscow being as scarce as it is…
Mother-in-law is worried that there won’t be anywhere to bury her when she dies. So her dutiful son-in-law comes home one day with some exciting news: he’s arranged for her to be buried in the Kremlin wall! (an honor normally reserved for famous artists, military heroes, etc.)
Mother-in-law is excited – one less thing to worry about, until the son-in-law explains “there’s just one catch; you have to do it tomorrow!”