Buried my cat yesterday. This is sad, but he lived a long time (20 years), loved and was loved, a good life with no suffering until the very end.
What struck me was the simplicity of dealing with his body. Dig hole in back yard, fill with cat, cover, say a few words.
(This may not be strictly legal. I did not inquire. How bad could it be? It’s not like anybody is freaking out about the corpses of racoons, deer, squirrels, etc. that no doubt rest in the woods all around).
I haven’t been to that many funerals (10-15), but most of the ones I’ve been to left me wanting. This includes the only one I “planned” for my 4 month old daughter.
I’m curious what you would change not only about the funeral industry but our culture in this regard.
I would prefer what is lately known as “green burial.” Just put the body in the ground and let it recycle.
I really don’t like the idea of an “eternal” gravesite. There’s really no reason for a place to visit the dead that lasts longer than the lifetimes of the survivors. Actually personally I have no need for a gravesite at all. I commune with the dead in the privacy of my head and have never needed to go someplace, though I don’t mind that other people do.
Thinking out loud here…this probably already exists in California or Oregon…a “memorial park” that is really a park, just trees and bushes, paths and flowers. Nothing is engraved with anyone’s name or dates, but you know which tree or rock or bench is near where your loved one was buried. Once you’re gone, the tree or rock or bench is just a tree or rock or bench except to those who’ve taken it over for their loved ones.
With increased population and concentration of people in communities, regulations surrounding the disposal and burial of the dead were needed and required, especially with regard to groundwater issues, etc.
I personally want to be cremated and have my ashes spread over some of my favorite locations, so that my wife or children will remember me when they go there.
I do not care to have a grave with a marking. The closest family members I have that are dead are all four of my grandparents, and the only times I have been to their graves are when they were buried. It bothers me that my remains will sit buried beneath a plaque or headstone with my name on it and very few people will come to visit. I don’t want them to come and visit. I’d rather them remember me in the places they know l loved.
If it could be done (it can’t - I’ve looked), I’d like the option to have someone dig a deep hole, throw my naked husk into the hole, and plant a tree atop it.
Practically speaking, I’d like to see some kind of ‘bereaved’s advocate’ system set up. Too often, people pay for things they don’t need, at fairly high prices, for funerals. An advocacy setup, where a non-distressed person with knowlege of the possibliities can check everything over would go a long way towards upholding trust in the system without breaking the industry.
There are now more options. You can’t just throw a body in the ground in a city cemetery–there are all sorts of rules about that–but now there are indeed burial parks that will allow you to put an unembalmed body in a cardboard coffin and bury it. That’s what I’d really prefer. Embalming and all that elaborate stuff is oogy.
Well, I generally can always do without seeing the dead body. I’ve seen people who died of natural causes, and some who died in car wrecks, and invariably, none of them look like they did when they were alive. The cosmeticians always do something funny like set their jaws wrong, etc…
I know they’re dead- I don’t need some sort of macabre viewing to reinforce that idea.
Other than that, I guess there ought to be more options beyond regular embalming and burial or cremation. Maybe some kind of composting, or some other way to dispose of the body in a way that might actually be useful.
And… after having gone to Rome and driving by the Pyramid of Cestius, I kind of like the idea of being an archaeological curiosity. I’d like a 30’ solid cube of reinforced concrete with my casket at the dead center. The outside of the cube would be covered in bas-relief technological diagrams and inscriptions so that it might be used for people to rediscover civilization in the future.
I also find the typical funeral rituals (embalming, viewing, burial) disquieting to say the least. The deceased never look like themselves at the viewing and while I understand these things are supposedly done to comfort the living, they never helped me feel better.
When I go, I’m getting creamated and hopefully my best friend will hike my ashes out to Eagle Creek and scatter them.
I saw a thing the other day about cremation urns which are biodegradable and have seeds in them. Here it is -
That’s a planter made of biodegradable cardboard and coconut with peat inside it. You add your ashes and the seed of a tree of your choice and then plant the whole thing. Pretty cool, I think. If I was going to be cremated, I’d want to do this. But personally, I like the big hole - naked body approach better.
There’s probably other models for these urns too, if anyone wanted to Google around.
an adult live human can be flown across the continent for around $300 one way. To me that suggests that the equivalent corpse can also be flown for a similarly trivial amount of money to a location (whether in fly-over country or outside American borders) where funerary procedures (e.g. regular coffin burial) are sanely priced, i.e. where there is neither a gouging local monopoly nor an intrusive regulatory government authority.
That would not take care of the need for a memorial “grave” site, but such a memorial could be setup separately from the grave per se. Sort of like the commemoration tablet used to immure the cremation urns, only without the urn. Incidentally, the practice of setting up “graves” without the body is already attested, e.g. many people in Russia set them up after WW2 to commemorate KIA relatives whose bodies were never recovered.
I know this isn’t the question you asked, but this reminded me of when I was high school. It dawned on me that one we’d probably run out of places to burry people/store dead bodies. I’m not going to lie, I don’t really want to be cremated. We need to find a better way to depose of dead bodies. I like the tree idea.
About the funeral industry, I think they need to stop making their mark up so high. I’ve been to a lot of funerals that cost 20k and look like 2k was spent. I also think there should be more personalization. I think too many funerals are too cookie cutter.
I’d like to be cremated and scattered, but the biodegradable urn with ashes + tree idea sounds nice, too. Just plant “me” somewhere that the land won’t get bought up within a few years and turned into a parking lot!
People need closure, so some service is needed, and the typical one is a bit lacking in that, I’ve heard the typical Jewish one is much better.
Part of that is a ending or final resting spot, a place where it ends. Some places serve at that for people lost and presumed dead, such as a chapel for those lost at sea.
And in some respects we need a link to antiquity, perhaps not a a personal level, such as my great great great gra… grandfather was buried here, but that people from that time were buried hear.
WARNING! The Following Humble Opinion is Christian based.
I find the current treatment of the body excessive and over done. When Christians die, they are done with their body, ‘‘a discarded garnmet’’. Your dead body is not you. It is a waste to preserve it and restore it to looking like you did 20 years ago. I like my great, great, grandfather’s tombstone. It has a hand carved in it pointing upwards. He is not beneath it.
My family finds this website upsetting, http://www.lifequestanatomical.com/bodydonation.php It sounds like the cheapskates’ out still exists. I would very much like to do that. Maybe I can sell my family on donating my body to the med school of the university that my son in law works at.
For my father in law, we had a nice service without any remains. At the time his body was in storage at crematory.
I do like the screens with the pictures projected. Family and friends should gether and remember and celebrate their loved ones life. Skip the embalming, expensive casket, vault. tombstone, plot, the bulk of the flowers, and other fuss over the body.
Oh, and at the end of the service, I want the Salvation Army to show up and play ‘‘When the Saints Come Marching In’’ as the resessional.
We have too many regulations protecting the funeral directors and cemetaries. I understand in some states you must be embalmed before being cremated.
I would like to be rid of the funeral industry as it currently stands and start over. Having to make decisions in the $20,000 range when you’re at an emotional deficit is wrong on so many levels. You wouldn’t go out and buy a car the day after your loved one dies but you’re expected to spend a comparable amount on something that very few people will see or appreciate.
A funeral isn’t for me, but I don’t begrudge those who want one. Some form of the industry will survive but right now it’s a complete and total ripoff.
I want to be cremated too, and a cardboard casket will be just fine. There’s no reason my family needs to go in debt for the end of life. I want my MP3 player hooked up for the music and I don’t want a preacher of any kind, even if I have to write the eulogy myself.
My ashes can be scattered or they could use them for a reef ball, this is the ide i like more than a cemetery.
I’d like to see lower prices on nice caskets. It bothered me that my mother’s cost in the four digits. Yes, it was well-built, and finished nicely, but it was all-wood and cost far more than a living room set that was designed to last at least twenty years. Mom’s casket would last a few days, through the visitation and funeral, before it was buried and we would never see it again.
I could see $500 for the casket (heck, I bought a sectional sofa for $500), but $3500? No, that’s not right. Especially when the funeral home knows that they have us over a barrel at the moment of bereavement and we need something to put Mom’s remains in (as per her wishes). I’d ask the funeral industry to quit the unreasonable markups on such things as caskets and sell them at cost plus a reasonable percentage–but nothing exceeding 100%. My experience tells me that markups of 200 to 500% are common. If so, that’s not right. IMHO, anyway.
I’m no carpenter or upholsterer, but I do know carpenters who could put together something suitable, and finish it, and upholster it, in a few days for about half of what we paid for Mom’s casket. Their cost and markup would be, at most, about half what we paid. Even shipping from the factory wouldn’t reach what we paid.
As I recall, we have a Doper who is a funeral director: Coffin Man. If he reads this thread, perhaps he could comment.
This is sad, but he lived a long time (20 years), loved and was loved, a good life with no suffering until the very end.