SmithWife and I have debated on several occassions the “best method” of settling our remains when once we have shuffled off this mortal coil. I think I’d like to be cremated - it seems like a socially responsible way to go, and perhaps have my ashes scattered in the ocean near my home (for a touch of romance - I’d be fine if my ashes were tossed in the rubbish). My wife wants to be buried, and wants me buried next to her - gruesome, eh? But that seems customary. There are other options, I suppose - burial at sea comes to mind, or being shot into space (ha!).
What would you like your loved ones to do with you, when the time comes?
Well they’re both nasty. If we burn you, you get stuffed in the flames, crackle, crackle, crackle, which is a bit of a shock if you’re not quite dead. But quick. And then they get a box of ashes which they can pretend are yours.
if you don’t wanna be fried, you can be buried. And then you’ll get eaten up by maggots and weevils, nibble, nibble, nibble, which isn’t so hot if, as I said, you’re not quite dead.
I have explicitly told my brother exactly what I want done with me. Not sure how legal either of these are, but there are two options I would prefer.
Using money I will have set aside for the purpose (including my life insurance if I have no dependents at time of death) I want an impressive mausoleum built, at least several thousand square feet. Adorning the mausoleum will be statues of me in impressive, iconic, poses. Inside the walls will be carved with the story of my life (heavily embellished, if not entirely falsified, to make me sound more impressive). I will be mummified and sealed in an air tight sarcophagus to ensure that my remains will last as long as possible.
If option 1 is for some reason infeasible I want to go with the Viking funeral style cremation, including flaming arrow to begin ignition.
Cremation, absolutely. (After they pick out whatever can be useful to others or to science, of course.) I find funerals disturbing, as well as the idea of being buried and of having people come to visit my “place”–it gives me shivers just to think about it. Just burn me and dump me in the river, it is not like I am going to care anyway.
I wish to be cremated and my ashes placed in an inverted collared urn within an arc of a stone kerb surrounding a small, polygonal cist and a blaze erected after intombation.
I would like to be buried in a vegetable garden, as ashes or otherwise. I do like to be useful.
Since death rites are for the living and not for the dead, I have exactly zero hope that this will happen if Dearly Beloved should survive me. The idea of eating food nourished by his wife’s remains squicks him out.
I’d like all my useful organs harvested for folks who need 'em, and the rest of the carcass used for forensic or medical research. If at all possible and legal, I’d like a small bit of blood (a cup or so), to be buried underneath the sapling of a flowering tree, and a stone or concrete bench placed nearby with my name and some insipid verse on it, inviting folks to have a seat and enjoy the view.
Cremation. Ashes spread at Yellowstone. Organ harvesting is okay, but I’m in no mood to be a med school cadaver. Maybe if the med school paid me, now, up front, I’d reconsider.
Ideally a Viking funeral, on Back Lake or Catamount Pond, both of which are in NH and are fairly signifigent bodies of water to me. But I doubt that’s feasible. Barring that a run of the mill funeral pyre would do. Barring that ordinary cremation…although being stuffed in an oven seems kind of depressing.
I know I should make myself useful and donate myself but the idea seriously disturbs me. I just want my body to go away once I’m not there to look out of it.
Thank God I live in an area with lots of medical schools. Let their students paw over my mortal remains. It’s both prosocial and cheap – what’s not to like? And by the way, I think they cremate the leftovers.
When my mother died, a relative asked me what I wanted to happen to my body after I died. I told them to charter a helicopter and drop my body on the nearest Republican.
More seriously, I’ve told my relatives to do whatever is cheapest; I don’t care.
Chopped and flushed. It’s probably the most eco-friendly way to dispose of yourself. They’ve got things set up to use waste gasses to power the sewage plant, and all the bio-waste they get ends up as fertilizer.
