My grandfather asked that he be cremated and his ashes spread on the local Pizza/Beer joint. Classic grandpa. As it turns out, his wishes were not observed, as he never formalized those instructions. He is buried in the family plot alongside a bunch of mackeral snappers (the family is predominantly Catholic, but grandpa was C of E, I guess).
Hate to roil the waters, but med students only get intact cadavers. The choices are donate organs (or tissues), OR be used as a cadaver for med students. Hey, med students are confused enough without dealing with a dead guy with large holes in him.
I remember my first cadaver. We were all terrified of it (ah, those halcyon days of yout’). The bravest of us, a guy with some vet experience, tried really hard to find the brachial plexus. Damn thing kept branching and rebranching without ever showing off the W the textbooks said were there.
He worked for two days on it. Then the prosector comes by, says, “Oh, you’ve been dissecting the superficial veins. The brachial plexus is deep to that,” rips it all out, and leaves his hard work hanging in shreds.
No, medical students really can’t deal with a cadaver which has already been, uh, processed.
Not to mention which, you can’t leave your cadaver for med students if you die of a communicable disease. No AIDS, hepatitis, MRSA, meningitis. An alternate plan is advisable.
Most people don’t know that “to leave your body to a medical school for med students” and “to leave your body to science” are, in practice, interchangeable. Regular science doesn’t want your dead body. It’s been a couple of centuries since scientists were interested in dead bodies. “Give my creature… LIFE!” Naah, no more.
But WhyNot is on the right track with forensic science. Leave my body to Dr. Bill Bass (or his heirs, more likely - he’s twenty years older than I am) to let it decompose on the Body Farm.
Decomposing for science. Now that’s what I call a fitting end for my corpus delicti.
I want to be cremated. The idea of being buried alive is highly disturbing, and I figure that if I don’t wake up when they turn on the flames, I’m probably really gone for good. I also dislike the fact that so much land that could be put to better use is taken up by dead bodies. Now, if they did that cemetary-golf course thing people talk about sometimes, that’d be better.
Cremated, and my ashes divided into a number of pretty, ornamental glass vials (I’ll look like coke, I just realized… 
). Then, those who are willing can each take a bit of my ashes and scatter somewhere really cool while they are on vacation.
I could end up at Ankor Wat, on Everest, in Antarctica… any place. I think it would be cool!
My dad heard my idea and I think he might do it too.
I’d prefer to be cremated after whatever is useful has been done. Either organ donations, or med school. I shudder at the Bodyworks type thing, for some reason. Let me be actually useful to someone who can use my liver or needs to know just where exactly a liver is, not just an object lesson for the masses.
Isn’t embalming routinely done in the US? If so then you would be dead before you were buried. Also true if you donate your organs.
There are environmental concerns with cremation as well. (Greenhouse gases)
Still, I think I would rather be cremated as well. The thought of one day being under the ground, in a coffin is very disturbing.
elflin477 has, perhaps, read too much Edgar Allen Poe.
I want my body laid out in a faux-Victorian subway car filled with high explosives and sent down the rails to where it will impact directly under the Houses of Parliament, igniting the Revolution and bringing the downfall of a fascist dictatorship.
Barring that, I’ll go with regular old cremation.
I’d like to be mummified. I’m too claustrophobic to be buried, and cremation doesn’t appeal to me all that much, either.
I don’t recall the branding of the procedure, but an emerging trend in final disposal involves freeze drying the remains, chopping them up a la cremation, only without the massive energy use used in cremation.
I am fond of the funeral orchards coined by Frank Herbert in Duen Heretic and Chapterhouse Planet: wrap the body in permeable, breathable cloth, drill a hole under a tree, and inter the remains like a person-sized plant-food-stick.
Cremated --then my ashes mixed with some dried rose petals from my father’s garden where I grew up and scattered in a favorite childhood spot or two
I’d like a lock of my hair buried with my husband’s ashes in Alabama when his time comes – before or after mine.
WAR EAGLE, BABY!
Cremated. Half my ashes go to my husband (or daughter if he’s predeceased me) and they get buried in the garden, preferably under a rose bush. The other half I have promised to a friend who has been threatening to trundle me into the trebuchet basket at the Renaissance faire - I told him he can launch my ashes into the lake there.
I’ve never liked cremation, personally…I’ve always wanted to end up as a skeleton, at least.
I’m thinking I’m going to ask that someone “borrow” my body from the funeral home, haul it high up into the sierras, somewhere, and bury it in a cave that never thaws completely. (Antarctica might do, too.)
With any luck, I’ll end up on the cover of National Geographic in a few hundred years.
All y’all who are having fun imagining a NOT QUITE DEAD YET person feeling the flames of the crematory tickle his toes, or the terror of the slam of the coffin lid over his face, or the agony of the embalming needle before he needs it, or even the vicious and cruel surgeons starting to take out his living organs for another person, will I rain on your premature Hallowe’en parade if I remind you of one little thing?
The EEG.
In the United States at least, you are not pronounced dead until you are BRAIN DEAD… EEG flatline… unless, of course, you are decomposing and very very obviously long past dead. Or, perhaps, ventilated with 2 dozen holes… in which case you are not pronounced dead until your EKG is flatline.
Either no heart, or no brain, or you don’t go, baby.
The reason the Poe stories touched a nerve is they had had a couple of premature burials, and a number of urban legends of premature burials. But that was because they had no EKG. And no EEG. Nowadays the docs don’t stop trying to bring you back until it is really clear from a tracing on a digital screen that there is absolutely no point in trying to bring you back. Cause you’re really most sincerely dead.
Gabriela, expert in really most sincerely dead
You have a touching faith in the permanence of National Geographic.
Also a faith I wouldn’t mind being able to hold myself in the permanence of Antarctic ice.
In Spain you can do both. Cadavers that have been used for donation are properly marked, of course.
I’ve heard quite a few stories about students plucking out of the corpses some bit they couldn’t find without the maps, in order to be able to say, in all honesty “uh, I can’t find it” during the exam… and have the examiner also not find it.
I have to find out whether burial at sea is legal here. If not, dump me into the family dump in Pamplona, it belongs to the paternals and most of my family trouble is with the maternals so that’s OK. In any case, preceded by organ donation.
That’s interesting. Poor Spanish medical students. How tough.
My long-deceased grandfather (embalmed and buried, by my mother’s decision) used to have a favorite joke he loved springing on unsuspecting new victims. If the conversation turned to topics like these he would say, “I would never want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered over water like so many people do.” UNV would take the bait, “Why not?”, and my grandfather would open wide blue eyes and say, “I can’t swim!”
Left the occasional UNV gasping too hard for words.
To me, caring whether you’ll be claustrophobic after you die (sorry MissGypsy), or being disturbed by being one day under the ground (sorry Imasquare), or even shuddering at the Body Farm type thing (sorry Frank - also, presumed you meant Body Farm when you wrote Bodyworks), is like my grandfather’s joke. It’s like worrying your cremated ashes can’t swim.
So far I like Cerberus’ idea of being a plant-sized food stick the best. If jurisdictional regulations don’t allow it, then LifeOnWry’s idea of at least feeding the roses with one’s ashes is lovely. But if nobody scatters my ashes on water, it won’t bother me that I can’t swim.
Sorry Frank, meant to bold you too. To boldly go where Frank desires to go when he’s gone.
Take it all; give it to people who need it. Whatever is left, give it to people who want it. Organs go to some needy young man on the brink of death; fat goes to some vain old woman who wants puffier lips.
If anything is left after that, let the med students cut it up. If anything is left after that, let someone make art out of it or something. Seriously, I’m not using it.
I’m surprised nobody wants to be frozen by Alcor. They have a fascinating (and brief) description of their procedure here. A more in-depth description of their procedure is outlined here. If you’ve got time, there is a case report on Patient A-1068. They also offer Free Tours of their facility on Tuesdays and Fridays!