I can guarantee that my kids would find no comfort in having Dad in a Box on the mantle, and I’d continue to be an annoyance long after I died (hmmm… evil cackle…).
I’ve long thought I should give the family a list of special places where I’d love (nay, demand!) to have my ashes scattered. And as they tried to puzzle out why Arcadia and Banff were special to me, they’d realize that I was really just getting them to go on some nice trips together.
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Our church has an inexpensive option: a columbarium, where they put you in a little safe deposit box in the wall. I’ll probably do that (keeping back a little bit of ash for those family trips…)
I’m of the position that when you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s the end of it. Despite fairy tales, nothing and no one is coming back to life or looking in on you from anywhere. To me, it would be best if, unless otherwise requested, the cremation place would simply get rid of the ashes. However apparently the law - at least around here - doesn’t allow for that. They are bound to deliver the ashes to next of kin, or I suppose whoever’s name is on the paperwork.
It can create a problem. Many jurisdictions regulate what can be done with ashes. Not sure why.
If one happens to own a home with a yard I suppose not much could stop you from making a burial site. But what if you decide to move?!
You can pay a funeral place an exorbitant fee to look after the deed, but if you’re like me and don’t like to be ripped off in such flagrant fashion, that’s a non starter.
My brother was easy. As a forces (Navy) retiree he had requested a sea burial. All I had to do was deliver his ashes to the base. At their convenience they took a war ship out of the harbour and with some ceremony, sunk him to the ocean bottom. It should be noted I had to pay a bit extra for an urn heavy enough that it wasn’t going to return to the surface. Anyway, thank you taxpayers for that!
My father’s ashes sat in my mom’s apartment for several years. Then she died. Now I have both of them sitting on a shelf in the garage. I thought I’d take them out into the lake. I don’t think that’s legal (around here) but I’m pretty sure I could have gotten away with it. Except my friend sold his boat.
I can’t just flush them. Well I could, but not in good conscience.
So, what to do? Maybe I’ll die and the problem will pass on down the line.
Dogs are different. Do you want ashes returned? Yes? No? Done.
I know, I have the same quandary. I think will leave instructions that I want their ashes mixed with mine before I am scattered somewhere.
For the OP, I am sorry you are having to deal with all this. Here is what I did with my parents - mom died first, and my dad thought it would be nice to scatter her ashes in the water near where they retired on the Olympic peninsula in Washington. Evidently, they attended a service like that for one of their friends, and mom stated she thought that was nice. Dad gathered a few friends of theirs, and I had the honor of pouring her ashes out in about 2 feet of water. When dad died three years later, the decision of what to do came to me, so I decided his ashes would go where mom is. This time it was just me and my wife. It’s a nice place on the north side of the peninsula, but I have only been back there once in the last ten years.
I joke that mom was resting peacefully in that beautiful place when I come along with dad a few years later, and now she’d gotta deal with him for eternity.
And no, we did not seek permission and get a permit to scatter the ashes where we did - we just did it. The urn thing - I just took the simple plastic container dad was in and packed it in my suitcase when we flew there. I think you are supposed to declare cremains when flying with them. Since we were not keeping his remains there was no need for a nice urn.
FIL died in January, and right now, his ashes are in a box in my husband’s office. His mom is 92, and when she dies, we’ll be taking both of their ashes to the Great Smoky National Park and scatter them at their request.
When my mom dies, she wants her ashes placed atop Dad’s casket - not sure why she chose cremation over burial. But that’s the plan.
My mother’s ashes are scattered in the gardens of a famous historical location that she loved to visit.
NB: This was totally illegal and my family and I did this on the sly. It was not a public, State, or Federal park. If you want more details, I believe I have described the situation in another thread.
My mom plans to be buried, and my dad has chosen cremation, so they will have a similar situation. If my dad goes first, or together, his ashes will go inside her casket.
My maternal grandparents were both buried and my paternal grandparents were both cremated, so it seems my parents are making the same choices as their parents.
My father-in-law died in late 2019, and was cremated. The family divided his ashes into two containers:
Half of the ashes are sealed in a “burial urn,” with the intent to have the urn buried at the cemetery plot where his parents are buried (a small cemetery in downstate Illinois)
The other half are in a temporary container, with the intent to have those ashes spread at sea, along with the ashes of his third wife, who died in 2008; that wife’s daughter (the stepsister of my wife) has been hanging onto her mother’s ashes, for that purpose.
The burial urn was supposed to be interred in late 2019, but my sister-in-law asked to have that put off, saying that “she wasn’t ready yet.” As for the other half, my wife had planned to bring that container with her to Florida, so that she could meet up with her stepsister, and they would be renting a boat to head out into the Atlantic and spread the ashes.
Well, then, COVID happened. Both containers are still sitting in our front hall closet.
My parents ashes are interred at Riverside National Cemetery, since dad was a veteran. My wife’s ashes are in an urn with butterflies on it which sits on the mantle. Except for a small amount that was secured in pendants for her sister and myself. The cats ashes are in small urns next to her, with their collars. “Responsible” people have been instructed that when I kick, all our ashes are to be mixed together and scattered on the Las Vegas Strip (preferably by a hot blonde in a red convertible at 3am on a windy Tuesday morning.)
My grandparents were both cremated and their ashes spread on the banks of a small creek at its confluence with the Zigzag river in the Mt. Hood National Forest. Both my grandparents, especially my grandmother, loved the woods and the spot was absolutely perfect. The only problem, such as it is, is that the spot is on a private lease and not accessible to the public. We had special one-time access to spread the ashes so there’s no way I’ll ever be able to visit the place again.
There was about 10 people there to help spread the ashes. We each had little (maybe 4 oz) plastic Tupperware containers that we used to take a scoop from the big urn and spread them along the banks of the creek and the Zigzag river. It wasn’t windy and the actual spreading of the ashes was uneventful, if emotional.
We did not seek or were granted any kind of “official” permission. The lessee of the property may have known what we were doing, but that’s it other than the people who were there to actually spread the ashes.
My grandmother passed first and my grandfather decided to keep a small potion of her ashes to be spread somewhere in the Alps, but he never specified where he was considering spreading them. After he passed my aunt and uncle, who had volunteered to go through their possessions and distribute as necessary, found the small urn with my grandmother’s remaining ashes. They gave it to me, so now I have a small urn with my grandmother’s remaining ashes that sit in the china hutch they gave me. I have no idea what to do with them, but I’ll probably never do anything with them: they’ll simply stay there in the china hutch.
Both my parents want to be cremated. They have some property along the Umpqua river and both have expressed a desire to have their ashes spread along the banks of the river. My mother would also like to have some of her ashes spread at the family cemetery in northern Montana. When that day comes, which may be sooner than later, I plan on erecting a cenotaph on the Oregon property on the banks above where her ashes will be spread and a headstone in the Montana cemetery. My father will likely get a cenotaph on the Oregon property as well.
Per their wishes, we buried the urns of my parents in the burial plots they had purchased years ago in their church cemetery. For each burial (they died five years apart) I had arranged with the sexton to have a 3’ deep hole dug, and that’s where we placed each urn. We had the pastor say a few words, and then my siblings and I each tossed a few shovels full of dirt in the hole. Friends and family also took part and the hole was soon filled.
Small amounts of the cremains of my DH (Kopek/Ruble on the SDMB) have been shot out of our friends’ cannons and muskets at an F&I War event, and some went into ground charges at said event.
A small amount of his cremains are in a pendant I wear, so he now rides all the roller coasters he wouldn’t ride before.
The rest are in a box on a bookcase and said box occasionally gets the one-finger salute from friends.
When my mother died , she was cremated in accordance with her wishes. My sisters kept the urn with them in their houses for about a year, except for a small portion we carried to Japan to be put into her family’s vault in their Buddhist temple.
After that time, we had the urn interred in a small urn vault in the plot where my father was already buried in a Western-style casket.
My parents’ ashes are in small urns, wooden boxes actually, and buried in a cemetery with the plot and marker stone purchased by them years before they died. When my mother died, we put the small box with their last dog’s ashes in with her.
My FIL’s ashes are somewhere in his son’s work shed, where they have been for several years. There is some confusion over which urn is his, which is the cat’s, and where either is. The plan is to bury FIL’ s ashes surreptiously beside his parents, in a cemetery that no longer accepts “clients.”
Apropos of little except the subject, here’s a photo that I have to share. Last week a well-respected retired teacher in our small town passed away. He taught driver’s education for decades; my wife and our kids all had him for driver’s ed. Everybody in town knew him.
Here’s a picture of the hearse in front of the church during his service.
My mom didn’t tell us what she wanted done with her ashes, so I’m apparently one of a growing number of adult children whose parents are essentially interred in hall closets. I’m trying to arrange things so that my kids don’t have the same dilemma, but it’s difficult, and it’s tempting to just not do anything. At some point, if we all do the same, there’s going to be a bushel of ashes for someone in a future generation to dispose of. Like many others, I also have a collection of pet cremains in containers of varying attractiveness on a shelf, so they could toss those in as well.
Luckily, my stepmother was much more decisive than my brother and I are, and we scattered my dad’s ashes on National Forest land in the Sandia mountains after they’d reposed in an urn on her mantel for a year. The only problem anyone has with that is that there’s no grave to visit. I don’t mind it, but some of the other relatives do.
