Having worked for the state mortuary office several years ago, it pains me to see folks pour $$ into that industry out of guilt and/or ignorance. My kids know that I have no desire to take up ground space, and they can do what they wish with my cremains.
Funerals are for the living, not the dead. And that includes how bodies are disposed of.
My son didn't want a memorial and I didn't feel like I'd benefit from a public display of angst and sorrow as I wanted to remember him privately. So I got on the Internet, arranged for him to be cremated, and a box showed up on my doorstep a couple of weeks later. They sent someone to collect the body and take it straight to the crematorium after a stop for organ donation. It cost a few hundred bucks and did not add to our pain. My brother in law sent a memorial tree and my son's remains are buried under it in the back yard.
That's pretty much the way I'd imagine my ideal funeral, no muss, no fuss. But the truth is, at that point, I will not give a fig.
A couple of weeks ago my neighbor's wife died and we've been watching the parade of impertinent biddies "checking in" on him and giving him all sorts of unsolicited advice when he just needed some space to grieve and to the extent he needs company, he just needs them to sit respectfully and be present, not fix him.
After observing this, my wife and I made a pact that whichever of us survives the other, we'll bar the door and keep Other People from their ghastly need to get off on the drama. My neighbor plans a memorial service in the spring, but I suspect he's having second thoughts right about now, because all these people who never gave his wife the time of day in life now want to feast on her memory in death, as if they lose a single night's sleep about it. What all that is really about is the fear and loathing of their OWN mortality, which they are trying to ritualize away.
@sweetcharlotte The point of burying or scattering ashes is for the person to be re-absorbed into nature. So if I wanted to take him along I would probably transplant the bush (they call it a tree, but it's more of a bush really). His sister and biological mother are supposed to meet up at some point to scatter the other half of his ashes (they live almost a thousand miles apart). Ultimately his atoms will be everywhere so the tree is more a symbol than anything. He's not going to be lonely if I leave him there. Like I said, it's for me the living, not him the dead ... so it will be a decision based on how I feel about it at the time.
The organ donation people sent me a thank you gift of a small hand-knitted shawl and my wife put together a photo collage of my son for my office wall. I think I have attached more to those as touchstones and they will probably be adequate keepsakes.
And then of course there's 30 years of memories in between my ears.
Definitely cremated and sprinkled someplace I loved.
Composted! Freeze dry the corpse, mince, place in ground, plant tree.?
It really is a method practiced in Scandinavia. Less polluting, quicker breakdown, no risk of bacterial infection, which cadavers have an unfortunate reputation for.
Stiff by Mary Roach.
I want to be cremated and after that it's up to my daughter. I've told her I don't care what she does. I'll be gone -- not just dead -- but gone. I believe that after death the container isn't the being any more. That's why I've never visited my parents' crypt in Arlington Cemetery (and I never will) nor buried any of my pets when they have died.
“When I die I want to be buried, not cremated. Your body has an energy content that has been assembled since you were a child. Your body grew from these nutrients, supplied by the calories of the flora and fauna that you’ve consumed throughout your life. When I die that energy content is still there in my body. I want to be buried so that I can be dined upon by flora and fauna in death just as I have dined upon flora and fauna in life, thus completing the biologic process of life on this earth.” - Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Except in many localities you must be buried in a container and the grieving are often conned into 'forever' caskets and cement vaults which I think defeat the purpose of returning your energy into the universe.
I want my head frozen - though I know there's no realistic expectation that my brain will be reactivated and then my body wrapped in cloth and buried in a pine box in a cemetery that will allow nature to take its course before they bury another body in the same place. Unmarked of course - though were a tree allowed to grow in that spot that would be cool.
I'd quite like to be splattered. I'd like my obituary to say "The super-charged Citroen DS is estimated to have been traveling at around 500mph when it hit the convoy of trucks carrying high-explosives; firefighters were still hosing down a five-mile section of road six weeks later."
Although banned by the Coast Guard I’d like a viking burial at sea with my body on a burning boat. There has to be a loophole to get this done.
I'd far rather be buried, so that all the various bacteria and who knows what other organisms can immediately start work on returning the various stuff currently making up by body back into the food chain, just as has happened to the vast majority of things that ever lived and ever died. Nature has perfected this process; I see no reason to try to alter it by burning such useful nutrients.
Better still, just carry me out into a forest and leave me on the ground under a tree. Natural processes will take care of the rest.
In a way it doesnt matter charlotte ... does it?