What happens if I don’t buy a burial plot, and what if I have no life insurance to pay for a funeral, and what if no one else wants to pay for it, either? Does it all come down to what day is trash pick-up?
Just wondering…
- Jinx
It’s definitely illegal to improperly dispose of a body, and the trash is definitely not an option. I think most municipalities have a potter’s field for unclaimed bodies. Many of the bodies dissected by my friends in medical school were apparently John Does, unidentified dead people. I don’t know about other religious groups, but I know that Orthodox Jews will go to great lengths to make sure that deceased Jews get a proper burial, and therer are charitable societies that handle that sort of thing. (It’s why you see groups of volunteers on the scenes of Israeli bombings, gathering up any stray bits of flesh to make sure they’re properly buried; it’s considered disrespectful to the dead not to do so.)
The state would bury you in a cheapass coffin.