My wife’s father and uncle were veterans. We go up to the veteran’s cemetery at Bourne every Memorial Day to lay flowers and just sit and remember them. I suppose one could think of a person anywhere, but there’s something about being right next to their final resting places contemplating the scenery (Bourne is beautiful.) in peace and quiet that makes the memories more reachable.
I like cemeteries. As for whether or not I’d like to wind up in one, I’ll let my wife decide after I’m dead, and if I don’t like her decision, I’ll pop right up out of the hole and tell her so.
I’m sorta in the “waste of space” category but only if they were made into parks. Golf courses or strip malls would be a lot worse than a cemetary. Me and my friends used to go up to a local cemetary (that hadn’t had any new corpses in almost 100 years) and drink beers there at night, it was quite pleasant and the cops wouldn’t bother us.
That said, I’m all for elaborate ceremonies when it comes to funerals. Not just parties, mind you, which I feel should be a requirement. If everyone’s not drunk at my funeral they’re doing it wrong. But I definitely want to be taken out to international waters, have my corpse laid out on a boat and set adrift, then have my closest friends take turns shooting fire arrows at me until the boat/pyre burns up. I’m sure they’ll need to get some expensive permits or something to do this but I don’t care, I’m totally worth it =)
When I die I want my body donated to science. As for graveyards/cemetaries themselves, I love 'em. I love reading the headstones and such. They’re historical parks.
I’m an organ/tissue donor (after I die, of course, and assuming there’s anything recyclable.) Other than that, this ol’ carcass will be cremated and the ashes disposed of respectfully but privately and legally. I want no headstone; my life will be my legacy, such as it was lived, and if I change one person’s life for the better, well, then the journey was worthwhile.
I’m decidedly an atheist, and I can certainly appreciate where people are coming from with the ‘waste of space’ arguement, but I can’t help myself, I love a good graveyard. They’re just so peaceful - growing up I loved to wander in the graveyard by the river in my town, reading the stones and imagining the lives of those people who lived so long ago. There was one young man who died at 20, lost in a snow storm, ‘but a few feet from his back door’. That particularly held me (I think I found the idea of dying young unspeakably romantic back then - I got over that one).
I also like churches for their quiet and their peace, but I feel the same way about libraries and museums, so I don’t think it has anything to do with a god experience.
In my town there is a great old graveyard that lies directly behind the hospital. As in, the patient rooms overlook it. I always picture the nurses threatening the patients:
I like reading epitaths but mostly I can’t help thinking “Wow, the grass is really green here” Which leads to a lot of other morbidly humourous thoughts. I prefer older ones to newer. I find old catholics cemetaries a little off putting but then I find the thought of angels watching over us off putting. It’s only gotten worse since I saw Dogma. Personally I want to be parted out like an oldsmobile and burn the rest.
I haven’t really decided yet. I don’t see any need to spend a lot of money on a coffin or headstone. Cremation is probably fine. Having a small grave marker might be cool though. And those “eco” burials they showed on Six Feet Under seem cool too. Especially like in the movie The Fountain where they planted a tree on the spot. So maybe either cremation or eco burial, with a tree planted on top of me and a small marker.
I love graveyards. I love the history- wandering around, contemplating people’s stories. I love the varied monuments. I love how different each cemetery is- some are overgrown, some are neatly trimmed, some are wandering and maze like, some are in neat rows. The only thing I dislike is modern cemeteries with identical nameplates in rows flush to the ground. I mean, most of us will never build a building. Our memories will fade in a couple short generations. The least we can leave is a cool tombstone.
As for the waste of space- when graveyards take up too much space, we get something even cooler- catacombs! How cool are catacombs!
I agree the modern funeral industry is obscene. I also want to be as environmentally friendly as possible. I’m wondering if I could do some kind of cremation and monument thing. Or maybe a bench in a public place with some creepy thing carved on it. I may be dead, but I can keep existing in the world of the living for at least a bit longer!
I’ve always wanted to visit the catacombs under Paris and Prague, maybe one day I’ll save up and go. I may have difficulty persuading the wife and kids though.
Where I worked in Thailand after the tsunami, most of the bodies were either lost to sea, completely mashed up, or had been taken to the mainland and burned.
There was a banyan tree that had been deemed sacred by the Buddhists, and there was a mosque for the Muslims.
Even though there were no graves, the bereaved of those denominations had a clear choice of place to pay their respects.
However, there was no focal point for bereavement for Christians, Jews, atheists and others.
One of the tasks the group I worked for undertook was to create a garden of remembrance. It was entirely unreligious, but allowed people to have somewhere to go and pray, or if they weren’t religious, somewhere to spend time in contemplation of those who had been lost. It was immensely valuable to the thousands of people who came to mourn.
When I go, I don’t care what happens to me - why should I? While I’m alive, I want the bereaved at my death to do what makes them feel better; religious or not.
I actually find comfort in graveyards. Not like in a creapy weegie board way, though. A lot of times when I was a teenager and havin a rough dealing with my father, I would often go to my grandparent’s grave. I will admit whenever I go there the first few minutes are uncomforatble to me because I am talking to a stone. Or feels like it anyways…
Though I find comfort knowing that they are there. Or that their bodies are there. And I feel better when I leave. It’s just a release.
When I die, I will probably be buried. I really haven’t thought about what to do with my body after I’m gone. I’d like to think that I would leave behind people that care about me or would miss me. They can do whatever they wish. I’m dead. What do I care?
I like graveyards for the peace and for the history. There’s a cemetery in Michigan that houses several generations of my ancestors and the amateur genealogist in me greatly appreciates that. I’d much rather be buried than cremated, even if it is a waste of space. My reasoning isn’t so sound though - I think of the archaeologists in the future having no skeletons from our era to study! (Guess they can make do with the landfills…)
I like the idea of having a tree planted over me, with a small stone at the foot. I guess I just want to leave something physical behind.
I rather like old graveyards, both for historical interest and much less of a sense that there is someone’s fresh dead body under my feet.
Hopefully, when I die they will have made the ashes-into-diamonds thing possible. A book I read once had a memorial park where these diamonds were then embedded into a dome ceiling to make up constellations mirroring the night sky… I’d love that.
Absolutely, except graveyards are worse because we’re cursing the short-term future; there will be some spiritual issue about using the “land of our ancestors” and digging up bones and having haunted buildings and shit.
I also find the whole funeral idea a bit bizarre, as some others have described. I hope to avoid any more in life, if someone’s dead I don’t want to be near the dead body, or see the box containing it being lowered into the waste of real estate. Silly barbaric ceremonial nonsense. :mad:
Funerals are not for the dead, and they’re needn’t be about magic. They’re about grieving and saying good-bye, and having the actual dead body there is a useful part of that. (Which, I suppose, goes against my opposition to embalming, unless everyone who needs to come can get there within 24 hours).
Historical parks – I like that notion – and space is something we have (in proportion to our small population).
I find graveyards fascinating and peaceful, and enjoy finding interesting epitaphs or quirky markers (there’s one near my mother’s grave with a headstone in the shape of two pyramids and an inscription that talks about the “freedom of a dove” and the “wisdom of a snake”). I also like the old fashioned ones with pre-Raphaelite styled angels sounding trumpets and the like… but I suspect that as an atheistically-leaning agnostic requesting one of those for my headstone may confuse some people. (I just think they’re cool).
Perhaps a little oddly, being neither from the US nor a veteran of any sort, I would very much one day like to visit Arlington cemetery.
For myself, I quite like the idea of an eco-funeral of some sort… and a wake… oh… and a piper! If I’m still here when my Dad dies (likely, but the world is unpredictable) then I’ll be suggesting a piper politely to my step-mother, and engaging one separately if she doesn’t see the light.
While not an atheist, I’m not so convinced that burial or cremation really has much theological significance except to the most crazily devout.
Like others have said, cemeteries are for the living, and generally speaking do a decent job of being good places for people to remember their loved ones after death.
I do think that we’ll eventually go toward more cremations/columbariums and mausoleums as space gets limited in certain parts of the country.
As for me, I kind of like the idea of being buried somewhere rather low-lying, so that some flooding can occur in conjunction with a natural disaster, and my coffin and corpse can float out and horrify people.
I wish to be cremated, and my ashes molded into some sort of curio that sits on a coffee table of a design that almost demands to be picked up and fiddled with, and looks nothing like an object a sane person would have their ashes kept in. Then when the time is right, and somebody is fiddling with me to ascertain my purpose as a trinket, whoever has possession of me at the time can say “Oh! I see you’ve met Nick!”. Hilarity ensues.
I’m more of an agnostic than an atheist, I love old cemeteries. The wife is uncomfortable in them, as are most Thais, but she’s come to accept this farang foible of mine. Theer’s some neat old ones in Hawaii, and Melaka, Malaysia, has the largest Chinese cemetery outside of China. I can wander around them for quite a while.
I don’t really care what happens to my own remains. I’ve told the wife I hate funerals and consider them nothing but an inconvenience for people to have to attend, but she rightly points out she would lose a lot of face if she did not hold one for me. So I’ll let her do whatever she thinks best.
(I just think they’re cool).
