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How are you going to be "disposed" of?

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15:48 / 01.03.06

I've been thinking about this for awhile, thoughts of mortality, that is, and I wanted to know what other people think.

When I die, I plan to give my corpse up for medical training, if possible. Med students need to learn on something, right? I thought this gesture would give something back to the world, maybe.

What about you, 'lithers? How do you want your corpse disposed of?

(Another way to think of this is to question why burial is becoming so (relatively) unfashionable. Cremation seems to be the most popular thing in my city, as per statistics I read in the paper. I'm sure there's a cultural reason why burial is going out...)

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:57 / 01.03.06

I like the idea of cremation.

Ideally I would like my ashes mixed with something and used in a work of art...that would be displayed in a museum wing bearing my name.

If I die at my current socio-economic level i am likely to be cremated and my ashes will sit in the plain black plastic box they come in on a shelf in a closet, just like grandma.

At any rate, I think being buried is just seen as very old fashioned, and it takes up a lot of space.

Ex

16:04 / 01.03.06

It's a good point, but cremation uses a lot of fuel. I haven't checked the green credentials of either in a while, though - what's released at what stage...

I don't really mind what happens to my remains, but I like graveyards as green spaces in urban centres. So I'd ideally go for a woodland burial, or similar, whereby if my mouldering remains can persuade someone not to build over every square inch of the country, I'm all for it. Biodegradable casket (wicker for preference), organ donation if there's anything worth using. And the small bunnies will hop above me.

Jeremy Hardy's comment on Radio 4 this week: 'I'd like to be scattered. Not cremated first, just scattered. Leave me in bags at motorway service stations...'

Ex

16:18 / 01.03.06

(And cremation has been gaining popularity since the first test case burning of Jesus Christ Price. There was hideous overcrowding in Victorian urban England, but cremation [although possible] wasn't popular. Then WWI caused a kind of mental break between the presence of the body and the acts of mourning [because so many soldiers' bodies weren't found or returned]. And the Christian belief in the literal resurection of the body sort of had to be abandoned or it would have messed with everyone's head on a national scale. All of which enabled cremation to take off. Vigor Mortis by Kate Berridge has a history of the switch.
These days, it's infinitely cheaper to cremate, I believe, as it doesn't involve buying a 100 year lease on the plot of land under which you wish to be buried.)

16:20 / 01.03.06

I've opted for organ donation first (but odds are nobody's going to want them) and then body donation to a medical school. I think the trend away from burial isn't just a waste of space issue, but a waste of money one. The nicest urn for your ashes doesn't cost anywhere near as much as the nicest casket, plus the cost of real estate (your funeral plot), plus headstone, plus whatever. I find it difficult to talk to those adamant that full-body burial is the only way to go without using the word "wormfood". In the end, we all disintegrate - cremation just does it faster than decomposition. In most lives, the most expensive and extravagant day is your wedding day. It seems a little silly to me that on your second most expensive and extravagant day, you're too dead to enjoy it, and nobody's likely to take any pictures to help remember the occasion.

pointless & uncalled for

16:27 / 01.03.06

I'd like to go for organ donation and medical research but it's unlikely.

By that time I'll be dictator for life on some distant planet that they'll obviously have to blow the fuck up in my honour.

Should warrant a tree in Hyde Park though.

17:05 / 01.03.06

Burning boat.

I don't care if it's illegal.

17:38 / 01.03.06

I would like to have a 'Woodland Burial,'

Natural Death Centre

It's cheaper than conventional burial, and avoids the environmental pollution of cremation.

17:47 / 01.03.06

A MAN SHALL MARK HIS DEATH BY A MIGHTY PYRE OF HIS LONGBOAT AND CHARIOTS WHILE HIS BONDSMEN GNASH THEIR TEETH AND REND THEIR BEARDS IN SORROW AND HIS WOMEN WEEP AND WAIL. THE GODS THEMSELVES WILL SEND A COMET, MAYBE AN ECLIPSE, I HAVEN'T DECIDED YET,TO MARK HIS ASCENT TO VALHALLA

17:55 / 01.03.06

I hope to die in a spaceship, so that they can shoot me in the vacuum, like they to in the Star Trek movies

18:15 / 01.03.06

So you can become a frozen missile to destroy other ships? I always wondered about Spock's corpse. What if another ship is going really fast, but not Warp, and it crosses paths with the corpse. The corpse will never slow down and it will be completely frozen. A ship going pretty fucking fast and a corpse going decently fast? That's going to damaging for the ship, I don't care who the corpse is.

pointless & uncalled for

18:25 / 01.03.06

That's what the shields are for dude.

emailme 20 marlboroasap

18:27 / 01.03.06

Seems as good a place as any to 'hello all'.

Went to a funeral (cremation) back home just last week and got to talking to the old home town friends about the whole death thing. Turns out about eight of us wanted to go the same way: to be sent out to sea on a burning boat with a party on the beach afterwards. Funnily enough I was the only one to want the boat to explode after a safe distance.

And instead of music being played I'm making up a set of CD's and digipack cases of the songs that meant a lot to me to pass out to thems as wants. Much better than sitting in a crem and having the disc skip whilst you're being wheeled into the furnace... yup, it happened. Always gives people an uncomfortable feeling.

All four of the funerals I've been to have had problems somewhere along the line so I guess whatever you choose it'll never go the way you plan anyway.

18:32 / 01.03.06

So you can become a frozen missile to destroy other ships?

Actually, I was thinking of the possibility of crashing into a primitive M class planet (I'm assuming the coffin is pretty resistant) and my body becoming some sort of idol/god to the natives...

20:22 / 01.03.06

That's actually not a bad idea.

20:26 / 01.03.06

A real, honest-to-god funeral pyre somewhere in the woods, and a raucous wake with great music and lots of booze for all my friends would be great.

But since I live in one of the most densely populated areas of the world and local law enforcement does not approve of such gatherings, I'll probably have to settle for a standard cremation and having my ashes scattered afterward in whatever bit of nature is still left by then.
(even that is illegal here, ashes may only be scattered in a designated area in the local graveyard — but what the hell, can't give in all the way right...)

None of those fancy tricks like having my ashes worked into jewels, etc... If there are any useful organs left in me when I kick the bucket they can have those, but after that I want to be left in peace.

"All four of the funerals I've been to have had problems somewhere along the line so I guess whatever you choose it'll never go the way you plan anyway."

There's a valuable lesson in there somewhere, I guess - as long as it's nothing too serious and you can still put it in perspective. Though the times I remember something like that happened, I simply didn't give a damn.

Speaking of which, there was an article in a local newspaper a couple of days ago about a pit that had been dug with the wrong dimensions, where the mourning family got to watch as two gloriously inept gravediggers spent over half an hour trying to squeeze and wring granny's coffin into the grave, damaging coffin and headstone in the process and cursing all the way. Top-notch comedy if you see it on the telly, but to have that happen to you for real...

20:36 / 01.03.06

I want to meet Chuck Norris.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

01:21 / 02.03.06

I've notified my family and friends that I wish to be eaten. By them. So you sort of live in them forever, kind of thing. Knowing that only my weirdest friends would even consider it and my family won't let them anyway, I asked to be cremated and have the ashes made into soap and used to clean my family and friends. Given that that probably won't happen either, I asked to have my body taken out to the desert behind my house and thrown naked to the wild animals, or at least dumped naked into the ocean.

In the end I think my sister talked me down into cremation and maybe scattering the ashes somewhere naturey. But really, I plan on going out in some way so spectacular that my body can't be found or identified anyway, so it won't matter. Like a supernova. Or maybe being taken whole into the afterlife so I can continue training in the martial arts.

01:27 / 02.03.06

In William Gaddis' novel The Recognitions, the main character's father gets cremated and then with the ashes, made into a loaf of bread which the main character then eats in a pseudo-Mass type thing. It's not played for laughs in the novel, and you have to be extremely observant to catch this.

Bubblegum Death

01:34 / 02.03.06

I'll probably be taken out back and shot.

01:50 / 02.03.06

But what will we do with your rotting smelling putrid corpse?

01:52 / 02.03.06

You know, I wouldn't mind being eaten by a gigantic cat.

01:58 / 02.03.06

Ew. No matter how much I loved someone I could never agree to eat their body.

I always wanted to be buried without being embalmed, in a plain box, so I'd rot at a natural pace. I've only recently come to realize this is an increasingly popular option. My boyfriend just tonight said he wants to be cremated and then the urn placed in my arms when I die and get buried. I think he was mostly joking, but hell, why not.

I am not an organ donor and have always resisted the idea of donating, because I have a reflexive distaste for the disassembly of my body, even in a postmortem scenario. But I think it's a silly position to take and I think I'm slowly getting over it.

A more immediate concern (I hope - I mean I hope I outlive my dog) is what will I do with my little canine buddy's body when he passes? Probably cremation, since I don't own a house or a single scrap of lawn. Do they have doggy organ donation?

02:00 / 02.03.06

By the way I just read in TIME magazine that having your remains shot into space is cheaper (about $5K) than the average funeral prep/services.

02:04 / 02.03.06

Not that I know of, ibis. My best pal in the world (a nice beautiful fun dog) is in a little urn that sits on top of my bookshelf in the arms of the teddybear from my childhood. *sniffs, wipes away tear*

02:04 / 02.03.06

plastination, the only way to fly...

be dead AND scare small children. cool.

not so sure about any old blanket leave-myself-to-science thing, though. lots of stories from med students make one shudder to think... brrrr.

am fond of the idea of an american forensic lab somewhere leaves you out in a field and watched the rate of decomposition, for science. at least i'd get some air.

02:06 / 02.03.06

One of my favorite comic writers when I was a little kid was Mark Gruenwald. When he died they mixed his ashes in with the ink for the 1st printing of his Squadron Supreme TPB.

02:10 / 02.03.06

Denfeld, you might be interested in these looks at Da Gru, here and here.

Bubblegum Death

02:11 / 02.03.06

"But what will we do with your rotting smelling putrid corpse?"

Oh, I won't be needing it. You can reanimate. Put it to work.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

02:11 / 02.03.06

I'd either like to be eaten (once the medical profession has got all the organs it needs) in a large banquetty-wake type thing, or shot into the sky in fireworks. Definitely couldn't stand the idea of burial, partly because of the "buried alive" possibility and slight claustrophobia, and also becase I've no intention of decomposing if I can avoid it. Which makes me wonder really: to what extent are our burial requests predicated upon our phobias in life (I know I'd really, really hate the idea of being dropped intact into the sea, and I have an intense fear of drowning)? Furthermore, could it be said that our choice of body-disposal method reflects our intended manner of death - could it be that, for example, my wanting to "go out with a bang" relates to the above preferences? And can this be expanded into a wider cultural context? Does the preferred means of burial say something profound about the culture that employs it? Certainly, it would be easy to say something profound about the present-day Western prediliction for enbalming and (to a statistically much smaller but symbolically interesting extent) cryrogenics and the supposed "cult of youth" and search for medical immortality?

All Acting Regiment

02:22 / 02.03.06

Swelled up real big and be a second moon.

02:24 / 02.03.06

If you survive embalming, digging your way out of a live burial oughtta be a cinch. Additionally, if you survive embalming and can dig your way out of your own grave!!, you are one of the undead, and so this whole subject is pretty much academic. Good for you!

I dunno. For me, it's pretty much cut me up, give whatever still works to someone who can still use it, bury the rest in a garden so it can do some good. I have some romantic notions about what should be done with my ashes, but it seems more important to do something that benefits the people who are still here; whatever happens next, I'll be beyond caring (hell, sometimes I'm beyond caring right now).

02:35 / 02.03.06

Hey, thanks matthesis! That brought back some memories.

03:58 / 02.03.06

give whatever still works to someone who can still use it, bury the rest in a garden so it can do some good

Perfectly stated.

06:26 / 02.03.06

organ donation and cremation for me.

I have a friend who wishes to be buried in a glass coffin and positioned inside it so it looks like he's trying to break out. I like this idea a lot!

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