Bit of a morbid question

[John Adams]

I would prefer to have just a simple pine box and be buried in a small plot our family started for our dogs, located on a 3-acre wood lot across town. Next week will be two and three years (they passed on the same day - the same hour - exactly a year apart) respectively since we had to put them down. Dug the graves ourselves and placed them on their favorite beds. Similarly, I want no frills, no fluids, no nothing. Just stick my remains in the hole and let the carbons, hydrogens and other elements spring forth into new life. I've stated this to a few close friends and family. At this point, I don't see myself having kids or stuff like that... our dogs are like my sons... and if I do, I don't think my wishes will change.

 

Don't know whether that will fly with whatever authority controls these things. As I understand it, tho, the body can be released for private burial, and a number of people do this in so-called "green cemeteries" where the landscape isn't disturbed into a cookie-cutter flat lot of grass and marble. We've been to a number of funerals over the past several years and walking out of these places, I just have the feeling that I wouldn't want to be in a place like that, nor are those especially good for the environment. Better, I think, to keep the open space of a wooded area and tuck away graves here and there, with appropriate markers/planning.

 

When I was putting together my wishes, I looked into this since I agree with you that I'd like to think my dead body will go to pushing up daisies and feeding worm instead of locked in a concrete capped underground prison do no good whatsoever.

 

What I found was that there are very few of these green cemeteries and it's a pain to just push up daisies so I went with (1) "use any useful parts" (2) let students look at anything else (3) torch what's left and scatter it in a place that's meaningful.

[UConn James]

I signed my mortal coil over to UCinn. While one likes to think that one's carcass contributes to the education of young medical people, I know that that's not necessarily the case. They will try to harvest this or that, to sell (I hope they don't try to do that - after a lifetime of booze and cigs, my parts are very faulty and I am diseased).

 

They also will try to charge my estate with the transportation cost to their icebox facility. I wish them luck. My wife will sing loud and clear to the media - plenty of them out there that would jump on such a juicy story...

 

UCinn says that eventually, my wife will get some ashes that may or may not be mine. They offer the dumping of same in some sort of memorial site they pay for.

 

 

Geo. Carlin once remarked that he would like his ashes put into a pepper mill at a pretentious restaurant .

 

This is a pretty good article about the procurer of donated cadavers at my alma mater's med school.... Gotta say that this is a worthy cause to help advance science and medicine, for those who are comfortable with the idea.

 

Because the university pays to cremate the bodies, some people want to donate themselves to spare their relatives the cost of a funeral. But most - often those who had a doctor in the family - want to help.

 

"Some are parents of doctors who have heard stories of how their children benefited from a donated body," Casso said.

 

No one else works for the program. So Casso, whose office is at UConn Health Center, is in charge of everything. He arranges the donations and drives anywhere in the state to pick them up. He prepares the bodies in a lab right next to his office, stores them for the students and arranges to have them cremated.

 

Around springtime, he contacts relatives to tell them the ashes are ready. Most people pick them up. About a quarter don't, he said.

 

Since the school doesn't get rid of donor ashes, they are stored at the health center, he said. There are ashes dating to the late 1970s, he said.

[UConn James]

When I was putting together my wishes, I looked into this since I agree with you that I'd like to think my dead body will go to pushing up daisies and feeding worm instead of locked in a concrete capped underground prison do no good whatsoever.

 

What I found was that there are very few of these green cemeteries and it's a pain to just push up daisies so I went with (1) "use any useful parts" (2) let students look at anything else (3) torch what's left and scatter it in a place that's meaningful.

 

I believe there is a certain acreage requirement here, but I think you need to contact your local town hall for a permit to establish a small family plot on private land.

 

Here's another link that ran in the NYT last year about the 'home burial' process.

 

Advocates say the number of home funerals, where everything from caring for the dead to the visiting hours to the building of the coffin is done at home, has soared in the last five years, putting the funerals “where home births were 30 years ago,” according to Chuck Lakin, a home funeral proponent and coffin builder in Waterville, Me.

 

The cost savings can be substantial, all the more important in an economic downturn. The average American funeral costs about $6,000 for the services of a funeral home, in addition to the costs of cremation or burial. A home funeral can be as inexpensive as the cost of pine for a coffin (for a backyard burial) or a few hundred dollars for cremation or several hundred dollars for cemetery costs.

...

During her battle with cancer, Diane Manahan also requested a home funeral, and the family did not know then how much it would help them with their grief.

 

“There’s something about touching, watching, sitting with a body that lets you know the person is no longer there,” Nancy Manahan said. “We didn’t even realize how emotionally meaningful those rituals are, doing it ourselves, until we did it.”

[The Dean]

I went with (1) "use any useful parts" (2) let students look at anything else

 

 

That's precisely what I have chosen. I didn't know there was option #3 if you chose #1 and #2.

[John Adams]

That's precisely what I have chosen. I didn't know there was option #3 if you chose #1 and #2.

 

#3: Hang my skeleton from the oak tree on Halloween.

[damj]

The best thing you can do is sit down with loved ones and talk about death and your wishes. My wife of forty years passed suddenly last week,and if we had not had communicated to family about this subject it would have been much harder to think.

To make sure everyone knows is not morbid- it is a comfort in an impossible time.

My most sincere condolences on your loss.

 

Though I probably have another 40+ years, WNY is getting a national cemetary, so I would like to be buried there.

[Chef Jim]

#3: Hang my skeleton from the oak tree on Halloween.

 

I say hang it from the tree on halloween after the med students have had their way with it but before it has skeletonized, that would be much scarier. So you have to time your death sometime mid-October.

[damj]

So you have to time your death sometime mid-October.

Good point ... let us know if you need our help John

[Cugalabanza]

I would like very much to be made into a piñata. Then let the local kids have at me as “Death of a Clown” by the Kinks is blasting.

 

I have no interest in taking up space in the ground.

[Chef Jim]

Good point ... let us know if you need our help John

 

He'll take care of it himself I have a feeling. Oh and JA, don't forget the t-shirt.