I never thought that after the death of someone I loved, I would keep their remains inside the house, e.g. keeping the ashes of someone incinerated in an urn on the mantelpiece.
Does someone at the board do that? Would you do that?
If I did do that, I might consider turning the ashes into death beads, as described in this article (South Korea firm turns human ashes into beads; January 21, 2012 | By Jung-yoon Choi, Los Angeles Times). The beads look pretty to me. On the other hand, if I wanted a bowl of pretty beads in the living room, I could get some that weren’t made from the ashes of a family member.
P.S. In case someone is wondering, my plan for my loved ones would be to respect their wishes: i.e. if they want a grave in a cemetery or a mausoleum, that’s what they get. If they want to be incinerated and scattered in the ocean, ditto. In my case, if someone asked my preference for what to do with my body, I would say organ donor / donate it to science (link goes to straight dope article on the topic.)
I kept my mother’s ashes in one of her favorite Chinese brass vases from the time she died in January till we all got together and scattered her in April.
Creeped me out. I cannot *imagine *keeping them long-term. I have my cats’ ashes in little wooden boxes with their photos on top, but that’s not quite the same thing.
Grandfather is still in my parents’ spare room, though that’s supposed to be temporary. See, Grandma’s ashes were scattered at a bush park the family used to picnic at in my father’s childhood. It’s not far out of town, pretty little spot, and it has been there for decades - it made sense. The plan was to take Grandfather’s ashes there too. Then this happened. Last time we went out for a look, the place was unrecognizable. (Dad said “I never expected Grandma’s place to burn down”). No trees left. Everything, destroyed. So, we haven’t decided what to do with Grandfather yet. It’s not the same, scattering his ashes in a burnt out, treeless, ugly former park.
Mum also still has the ashes of her two dogs (on her dressing table) but says she plans to scatter them at the beach someday
It would creep me the hell out. Beyond that, it would just be a constant reminder of the loss, which would be incredibly depressing.
I want to be cremated myself and the ashes buried in the cemetary where the rest of my family is. I can’t imagine spending forever on someone’s mantelpiece like a bowling trophy, either
I have kitteh ashes on a shelf in my craft room, but I don’t know about human ashes. If it was what one of my loved ones wanted, I’d probably honor their wishes, but otherwise I think I’d scatter them somewhere nice. The critters would most likely knock over the urn inside a month and vacuuming up Granny just isn’t something I want to have to deal with.
I wouldn’t. We have the cat’s ashes in a nice tin next to her photo, and my wife’s old dog in a wooden box next to another photo. But human remains is going too far for me.
My mom and I have had this conversation, I have instructions on the places where she wants some ashes sprinkled, and then step-dad and I will split the rest. I was relieved when she revealed her preference for cremation, because it’s my preference, too. I’ll gladly keep an urn on the mantle, and even if it ends up in a drawer, I’ll take her out for parties and at Christmastime if she wants!
I’m so grateful my family is not so weird and squeamish about death and dying, as it’s as much a fact of life as birth, marriage and divorce. We miss our family and loved ones, but it’s not the end of life for the living.
My sister had some of the ashes of our parents incorporated into some kind of glass ornaments. She offered me a set, but I wasn’t interested (not because it’s oogy, but just because I don’t have much interest in memorabilia of that sort).
So she had the ashes for a while, but I think she scattered them somewhere. I wasn’t very interested in the final location of the ashes, I just knew I didn’t want to keep them.
I think the Japanese have the right idea, there is a family plot in the local Buddhist church grounds where each individual’s ashes are added when their time comes. There is a stone monument, and family members come every so often to wash off the dust and to put a few offerings (flowers, food). Once in a while there are family disputes around this sort of thing, but mostly they seem to handle them pretty well.
Roddy
Some of what’s left of my mom resides in a small mother-of-pearl and brass urn on my nightstand. So yes.
I didn’t sit down an plan that out, it’s just that the urn and the ashes were available and dad asked if I wanted to take some of mom home with me. I said yes on the spur of the moment, with the spouse’s encouragement.
I kept my mother’s remains in this house for months until my dad was able to go to India and release them into the Ganga. No one else in the family wanted to; they were all creeped out. I don’t understand. She’s my mom. We didn’t have a great relationship, but she took care of me - I can’t do this much for her?
My great aunt (in ash form) has been at my mom’s for YEARS (like 25+ years) because we didn’t know what we were supposed to do with her. We’re Catholic, and for a long time, Catholics weren’t supposed to be cremated, and even after the rule changed, we just didn’t have any cultural context for it.
Then, we kinda forgot about her.
She’s still in a cardboard box in the back of the liquor cabinet.
My dad kept his dad’s ashes in our house while I was growing up. I wasn’t creeped out by it, and still am not, but we discovered a very good reason not to keep them in the same house as children and pets. My little sister was dancing around and doing handstands in the living room (ahh, youth) and accidentally flung her foot into the bookcase where we kept the urn (we didn’t have a fireplace, so no mantle). It went flying, and my mom had the fun task of cramming as much of grandpa back into the vase as she could, then vacuuming the rest of him off the carpet.
She swore us to secrecy (I think I was 10 or so). As far as I know, dad never found out.
I wouldn’t keep them around the house, but not out of any feeling of fear or repulsion. None of my loved ones would stand for anything like that. Most of us are going for research and then cremation with scattering in assorted locations.
I did keep my cat’s ashes for a while because I knew we’d be moving and I wanted to scatter them on our new place, so now they’re part of the soil in our vast animal cemetery.
I wish I had my father’s cremains here instead of the cold rural mausoleum-type place they’re in now in West Texas. I’ve toyed off and on with the idea of going to fetch him, but not sure what the legalities are, and that is supposedly where he said to put him anyway.
Both my parents’ ashes are here, on the shelf in the bookcase in the living room. After my father died, his ashes stayed in the cardboard box for several years, until the family kind of decided that something needed to be done. I think Mom found it kind of comforting to have him there on top of the refrigerator.
At that point my brother made two nice urns/boxes, using wood from a black walnut branch that broke off of the tree in the yard. After Mom died, we had her ashes put into the second urn and now they’re here. A friend of my husband’s made nice brass nameplates for them.
Neither my parents nor I want to be kept somewhere, not even in a cemetery. My mom once said she doesn’t want there to be a place where people go to visit and grieve over her remains. I think she finds it depressing, and would prefer people move on with their lives.
My older family members keep shrines to the departed, but there are no remains, just photos, food offerings, incense, and ceremonial items. They’re nice, giving the person a presence without literally being there, though they’re a minor hassle to maintain. We don’t want this either.
We all independently decided we want to be cremated and our ashes spread somewhere nice. I kinda like the idea of sky burials, but as I’m a city-dwelling non-Tibetan Buddhist, it probably isn’t an option.
My mother died in November and donated her body to Harvard Medical School as per her wishes. About a month later, HMS sent me a letter asking me what I would like to do with her remains after they were finished with them – they can cremate them and bury them in their own plot in a local cemetery (Pine Hill Cemetery? I can’t remember), they can cremate them and send them to me, or they can forgo cremation and send me the remains themselves (they wrote, “Please note that the remains will not be suitable for viewing,” which really freaked me out).
I chose for them to cremate her remains and send them to me. They have not arrived yet and I don’t know what I’ll do with them once they’re here. I had been thinking that I would be very disturbed to see them or know that what is left of my mother is in this here box, but… I’m not sure now. I was so sure I’d be completely incapable of seeing my mother’s body after she died, but I sat with her in her bed while we were waiting for the hospice nurse to come and pronounce her dead, and it wasn’t disturbing at all. She was still my mother, and she looked like she was sleeping, and I loved her.
So I think now that it wouldn’t disturb me to have her boxes in my house in a safe place. However, I’m leaning toward burying her ashes in the ground somewhere and planting a tree in the spot, so that her remains become part of the tree.
Just note: if you want your body donated to science, you need to arrange that with a specific teaching hospital / medical school well before you die, because there is a lot of paperwork that you need to fill out. My mother had not done any of that – she just told her family verbally that this was her wish – and my uncle had to go to Harvard Medical School in person and finagle something. (I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what kind of arrangements he made.) It was incredibly upsetting for us to think that her one dying wish might not be fulfilled because she hadn’t made the proper arrangements, so don’t do this to your family if this is what you want! Make the arrangements now.
