She wouldn’t, now, of course, but that’s not the point. Presumably you spoke with her before she died about her wishes? At any rate she conveyed the information to people she trusted while she was alive. Would you have lied to her in that conversation near the end? Would you betray the trust placed in you by your (then) living friend? No, of course not.
Yes, but why did it make you feel good? Why honor the remains? Because it was the right thing to do. Because of the relationship with the living person, the respect you had and have for that person, and the trust she had in you. Right?
That a person has died does not make them less real, or our relationship with them less meaningful. It just means that they are no longer… present. A removal in time is not so different from a removal in space.
Dead or not, it’s still your loved one’s body. I’m getting teary-eyed at the very notion of not giving a crap about the body of my mom or dad, the people who gave me life and sat up with little kid me when I was sick and read me stories and showered me with love.
If your beloved mother or father died overseas, you would be content to just abandon the body there? What about saying your last goodbyes?
I think I need to go to bed because I’m fighting back tears here, literally.
My parents have given all of their kids the phone number of the funeral director who will take their bodies to the local university for use by medical students. They have also insisted that their be no formal funeral. Perfect.
I told my kids to just chuck my body in the Otto bin on the next garbage night.
On one side of my family, the bodies are returned for burial. On the other side, we “Let the chip fall where they may”. If my uncle dies outside of his county, we bury him where he died.
Many of my kin on that side of the family are buried over seas. One uncle on Bataan, another on the Normandy countryside. My great grandfather is in either Spain or Kenya, or buried at sea. We know not. One aunt is in Brazil. One of my great uncles just disappeared sometime after his 25th birthday. We think he was in, or near New Zealand.
As for myself, where ever I am, just leave me there. First harvest all of the usable parts, then if possible, use my body for education or research. Then burn the rest and spread the ashes over the ocean or forest. Do not keep my ashes in an urn. Throw them in the outhouse if you need, but do not keep them. No ancestor worship for me thank you!
Of course I would respect the last wishes of my parents relatives and friends. But I find myself puzzled-if you are a believer (that something like a soul survives death), what is the point of worrying about the remains?
Recently, I attended my aunt’s funeral-she was buried in the same cemetery that my paternal grandparents are interred in. naturally, we made a brief visit to the grave. I had no feeling that anything associated with these two fine people was there-just a stone marker and a few flowers.
Perhaps most people are at heart like the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the earthly body still offers a home to the soul (“ka”)?
I think the opposite would be great… for the poster above, I would love to have an excuse to take an annual trip to the Bahamas each year. Gotta visit Granny you know… it’s a sacrifice we have to make.
I’ve told my family they are fine to just toss my body in the dumpster behind the morgue. I’m sure though that they will end up with a box of ashes that they don’t know what to do with.
I call these “alien questions,” because they sound like they were written by some space creature who has no clue as to how humans think.
Seriously, you ship someone’s body home because you want to be able to visit their gravesite without having to hop on a plane to Elbonia or whatever far-flung locale they die in. It’s not complicated.
