Since I’m going to die any minute every day since 9-11-2001 I think about death a lot. Then I think about gravestones and what I’d want on my stone. (Except I don’t want a stone–just wondering.)
And maybe your Fam will go with RIP Sweet Joe Blow, Beloved Daddy and Husband or whatever they put on them these days. But you don’t want that…
WHat would you really want? (Poll to follow.) And of course unless you are a billionaire every letter costs an additional 1K–so bear that in mind.
What would be your top 3 choices?
Me?
I should’ve whined more. (budget version) Or, if I had it to do again I would’ve whined more.
2-3) For fun but I’m serious with number 1:
"Get off my lawn."
Actually I don’t have a good three.
Now–the poll:
I’m a dreamer. I come up with wacky ideas. Sometimes they sell and sometimes they don’t. So I sez to myself…
If there was a place designed specifically for headstones only and you had the money (not a hell of a lot) for an Alt-Stone would you buy yourself one. In a place designed just for ‘Alt-Stones’ where the public could wonder around for a fee which would cover perpetual care and so on?
I would.
OK. So I’d like to hear your honest dream stone ideas if you have any and to answer the poll…
I chose other because I do not want a gravestone. I don’t want to be buried. I want my organs donated if possible and the rest cremated and thrown off Mt. Greylock or my body donated to a body farm if organ donation is not possible. I see no point in a marker to mark the place where my body isn’t.
Now I’m wondering if I should have made this public. Maybe people wouldn’t want to answer this publicly.
Why a fee to see? Well it would cover maintenance and nobody would have to worry about that. However the details aren’t that important at this point. I’m going with the assumption that if somebody wanted to say something special they’d want people to see it. And I’m factoring in that 99% of us couldn’t afford a “perpetual care” plan and/or wouldn’t want it. e.g. What if somebody wanted to leave, say, “My wife did this to me” or, well, that kind of thing.
Anyway if you click Other because it’s public maybe we can fix it or PM me.
I once saw a ceramic sculpture of a two foot tall soft serve ice cream cone . . . that had been dropped and landed on its side. The step-cone had deflated and the ice cream had started to spread. I thought it would make a perfect tombstone, just as is.
Other - don’t want, much less have the money for, a gravestone. I wish to be cremated and have my ashes scattered from the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. Probably end up in a potters field or whatever they do today.
Without even shopping aroundI see that I can get a 24x30 headstone with 40 free characters for $699, and $2 for each additional characeter. So maybe the cost factor isn’t as big a thing as you think it is.
And I can walk around any cemetary for free and see lots of headstones with odd messages in them, so I’m not particularly interested in paying for the entertainment.
As for an alt-stone, my wife was a teacher. Instead of a granite monument, she wants a whiteboard with “Mrs. Kunimoto” written in marker.
Ask either of my kids what Mom wants on her gravestone, and they will recite, “I did not take those vitamins, and I did not quit my job because Deana told me to.”
Truthfully, I hope nobody spends any money disposing of me. Sell the meat to the cat-food factory.
But I’m another who doesn’t want to take up real estate after my death. Harvest what you can for living folks and turn the rest over to students to learn from.
I would like a small monumentish stone or resin bench at the spot that means the most to me: just outside the First Aid Shack at my favorite festival campground. I’m pretty sure it can be arranged, if the ownership of the land remains in the family that now owns it.
I’d like it to have my name and dates and then “Drink More Water”. That’s what I spend most of my time at First Aid saying to people. I’ll keep saying it in perpetuity, and provide a spot for people to sit at the same time.
That sums me up pretty well. A bit smart alecky, but genuinely concerned with the welfare of others. I can [del]live with[/del] die with that.
The stories aren’t that great themselves, but I like to think that someday I will have the last word…besides, think how it will puzzle all those who read it!
When my brother and I were very small, my mother found a dried-up little Flintstones vitamin in the living room shag. We both denied having helped ourselves to any delicious candy-like cartoon-shaped goodness, but Mom felt like she really needed to get to the bottom of the mystery. When neither of us would own up, she told us to put our shoes on so we could go to the hospital and have our stomachs pumped. She had us all the way out in the driveway and getting into the car when I heroically saved us both by confessing to the crime. A few years later, when I felt we were safe, I retracted my confession but no one believed me, not even my brother. Ungrateful brat.
When I was a teenager, I was working at McDonald’s one evening when I felt a sick headache coming on. I asked the manager to let me leave, but instead, she sent me to cook fries. I took one look at those fries and decided instead to leave forever. One of my friends (the famous Deana) was eating in the lobby and agreed to give me a ride home. However, on the way, she wanted to stop at the bowling alley to see if certain really cute guys were in there. She went inside while I stayed in the parking lot to throw up. After a while, Deana realized that I wasn’t going to get any funner and she took me home. By that time, McDonald’s had called trying to find me and my grandma was freaking out. This event is embedded in my grandma’s mind as “the time that girl told you to quit your job”.
