I also plan to be cremated. My father died a couple of years ago and he was cremated. Our family owns a few acres in the country with a picnic area with tables, a creek that flows through, volleyball court and horse shoe area. We always enjoy our family gatherings there and so thats where he wanted to be for all times. We scattered his ashed there and just as we began it started to rain. My dad was such a prankster that our thoughts were...he planned this. Picture us....my three sisiters, mother, my brother, our spouces and all the grandkids trailing behind my brother as he scatters the ashes and we are all looking like drowned rats. We know he was watching us and laughing up a storm. (as soon as we finished spreading the ashes the rain quit) We all got tickled too just picturing him laughing at our expense as he always had a prank to play on us. It made the situation not as sad for us. My dad always said he didn't want to be pinned up in a casket but wanted to be set free to blow in the wind. I know that he wasn't there, but it makes us as his family a little happier knowing he is where he wanted to be. I also don't like the thought of being put in the ground to decay over a long period of time. I'd rather be done with it.
I am sorry for your and your daughters loss as well.
I too want to be cremated. It is easier on my family and I like the idea much better than burial, which honestly creeps me out. I wouldn't force the idea on anyone though just as long as they know what I want, to each is own.
I look at burial as one of those long standing rituals that we really don't need anymore. I just choose not to do something just because it is the norm. My son is not circumcised for the same reason, there is no real reason to bury, nor is there and real reason to mutilate. So I choose to make my own choice. Same goes for religion. --Sumi
I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. Even though you haven’t had any contact in years that doesn’t take away from the time you did have together, and losing someone you were once close to is always very difficult.
What deep and personal thoughts. Thanks to everyone for sharing.
I’ve always been of the mind that what happens to my remains isn’t too important, and I’d rather not have the expense/space/whatever used on the remains. Plus I think the traditional embalming and such really creeps me out and is very unnatural. My family traditionally goes that route and I really hate viewing a passed loved one in a casket. In fact, the least depressing service I’ve ever attended was for a friend in high school who ended up being cremated. They had a ceremony where anyone who wanted to come up and share stories could, and they released butterflies inside the church (she loved butterflies). Beats a bunch of morose people hanging around a casket in my book any day. Just my opinion, I know everyone has very different feelings about this.
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On the other hand, it is the wishes of my father that really throw me for a loop. He wants his body donated to science. He will be a cadaver for medical students. .....
Angie and I have placed these wishes with our children's "It's Time!" box...if at all possible to be used at UCSD.
Glory asked about organ donation. After having worked in the medical field for many, many years, I think that organ donation is the most wonderful and altruistic gift you can give. If any of my loved ones (and yes, even my children) were injured in such a way that there was no hope, I would not hesitate for a moment to donate their organs (despite how hard it would be).
My entire family have organ donor on our D.L. As I get older I don't think there is much of me that could be used...unless someone was looking for a model for their "Don't Do This To Yourself" Poster, that is why the cadaver intrigues me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melekalikimaka
...... I have told my husband that I wish to be cremated and then scattered--not at sea, because I don't really like the sea, .....
****~O NOELLE! Plus you can't swim!
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HEALTHY2BE~ Your father cracks me up! What a cool guy!
I know EXACTLY where I will be when I die. I have instructed my kids that if it is or close to trash day...bag me up! Save some $$$ for the PAR~TAY
All kidding aside, if my body cannot be used for some purpose medically, then the kids and Angie know to have me cremated. As a family unit we all agree on this for all of our remains. The Big Guy we believe in is not going to have any trouble "creating" us new ones! As far as the ashes...well, I have told my kids that if they want to do something with them, fine. As for me, I have told them I have no problem leaving them with the crematorium. Us guys at work joke around that when we go, we will put the ashes in our mud buckets and spread them on the walls of whatever house we were working on! Works for me
When my father passed away about 20 years ago, we were going to have him cremated, he had already made the arrangements...that was his wish. My grandmother, his mom, wanted NO part of that...the OLD SCHOOL thinking here. As a family we decided to honor our grandmother's wishes OVER our dad's...she was here and had feelings...he was long gone and didn't care! It was NOT a difficult decision for us. She flew him from California to Illinois in a box, buried him next to my twin brother, his father, grandfather and grandmother...grandma was buried next to them all 12 years later...she could've cared less then...but she cared for 12 years that dad was where she wanted him. We never looked back! Later Pops!
As a family we decided to honor our grandmother's wishes OVER our dad's...she was here and had feelings...he was long gone and didn't care! It was NOT a difficult decision for us.
dh has said that although he strongly prefers cremation, he thinks his mom might have a problem with it, so if he were to die before she did there would be that possibility. But I am pretty anti-burial, so she would have to express a strong feeling.
If we did bury, we would go with the non preserved body in a simple (decomposable) pine box. No preserved airtight wood that keeps things preserved. At least let us fertilize the soil. Its the embalming and airtight casket part that really bothers me --how many years do we need that body sitting there.
Hey Ennay, is there any way you three could "talk" that over before the day arrives? I know statistically YOU will be making the decision...but it doesn't always go that way of course. Those types of decisions have been very easy for us. Even my father in law...Catholic from day one..wouldn't even attend church with Angie and I, at our church, one Easter Sunday, had to go find a catholic one, when he was here visiting. He wanted to be cremated when he passed, my mother in law was totally against it, she asked their kids, 4 of them, if it was all right to bury him, they told her that cremation was what dad wanted and they were all in agreement with it..but...if it was a big problem with her, they would consider burial..she said she would honor dad's wishes. So it went easy...but might not have.
Did you know that there is a company that can take your ashes and create a "diamond" from them? It's horribly expensive, but pretty cool if you don't mind wearing someone!
First, I am so sorry for your loss. I can imagine his estrangement from your daughter is making the emotions much more complicated.
I'll jump in here with an experience I had that made me first consider cremation myself. First of all, two of my grandparents were cremated; the other two were buried. I've always known that my father's wish is to be cremated when his time comes. He has always said he wants half his ashes spread in the woods and half in the river. He loves to hunt and fish, so this makes sense, as well as going back to nature. So, I guess I never thought it was that odd, but more of an option.
Then, about 10 years ago I visited an area of Prague in the Czech Republic that had been a Jewish ghetto before WWII. The cemetary was so strange, yet interesting and thought provoking also. The conditions were so crowded in the ghetto that coffins were buried vertically, as well as several deep (horizontally) in spaces. The headstones were all just crammed everywhere. I was touched by the tragedy of a people who had to resort to this undignified way of burying loved ones, simply because there was no space to bury them decently. I remember my sister and I having a pretty deep discussion about all of this, and it is the first time that I thought seriously about cremation. I can totally understand your horror at imagining the cremation itself, but I believe, like many other posters that burning is no more gruesome (maybe less) than the embalming process.
Anyway, my thoughts and prayers are with you as you go through all of this. It has certainly provoked an interesting and different discussion here on 3FC!
Did you know that there is a company that can take your ashes and create a "diamond" from them? It's horribly expensive, but pretty cool if you don't mind wearing someone!
You can also get blasted into space...which would be dh's first choice.
Gary....welll....truthfully no. dh's mom isnt good with the topic and she already has lost one child. It took over 30 years before she could mention his name again and talk about him. (I had been with dh for over 5 years before I even found out he existed) I think SIL tried to talk about plans once and MIL just said she was going first so she didnt need to know about it. They are a good midwestern family...button everything up and dont talk about nuttin. (How did I get hooked up with that, huh?)
Firstly, as so many have said, I offer my condolences.
I also want to be cremated. Here are my reasons:
1. I don't want the worms to get me. Seriously, I have a crazy phobia to all wormy things.
2. I don't want to be on National Geographic Channel 5000 in a couple thousand years or end up on display in a museum.
3. I don't want for my bones to be forgotten and a house built over top of me in a millenia.
4. All silly reasons aside..... I also believe in organ donation. I don't need my organs at that point but other people do so why not just help some deserving people out. It can be my last good act, a final mitzvah. Also, this might actually help my loved ones cope with my eventual passing, because all of me won't be dead. Some part of me can live on in other people and enhance their lives. I don't believe that the spirit dies and this way my whole body needn't die immediately either.
5. Earth-friendly. There are too many people and too little space to bury everyone.
6. I want a pretty urn. A blue one with phoenixes on it.
7. When my loved ones come to "visit" me they can be inside from the cold and rain and heat (because I want to be in an above-ground mausoleum). And this way they don't have to worry about the gardening aspect of a tombstone.
8. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I just want the process sped along.
Last edited by shrinkingchica; 03-08-2007 at 08:37 PM.
First of all Techwife, I am so sorry for your loss. And that of your daughters. How sad. And he was so young. My heart goes out to you at this difficult time.
The Jewish people forbid cremation. And yes that was even before Hitler decided to cremate a bunch of us while still alive. Embalming is also forbidden. One is supposed to be buried as soon as possible, if not that very day then the next. In a simple wooden box. Naked, just like you came into the world. The dead body is never to be left unattend while awaiting burial. The body is to be treated with the utmost of respect. With all body parts in tact. Which is why donating organs is forbidden as well. If you've ever seen a broadcast of a bombing in Israel, you will see many volunteers scrapping up blood and bits of flesh so that that too can be buried with the body. Every part is sacred.
It bothers me terribly that organ donation is forbidden. I can't think of a better thing a person can possibly do for another person then to pass on his organs that he obviously has no more use for. I have a friend who received a cornea transplant and was so grateful and so sad that she could never reciprocate that she gave a large donation (and she is NOT a wealthy woman) to the hospital that did the surgery.
The Jewish people forbid cremation. And yes that was even before Hitler decided to cremate a bunch of us while still alive. Embalming is also forbidden. One is supposed to be buried as soon as possible, if not that very day then the next. In a simple wooden box. Naked, just like you came into the world. The dead body is never to be left unattend while awaiting burial. The body is to be treated with the utmost of respect. With all body parts in tact. Which is why donating organs is forbidden as well. If you've ever seen a broadcast of a bombing in Israel, you will see many volunteers scrapping up blood and bits of flesh so that that too can be buried with the body. Every part is sacred.
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The Catholic Church was of this opinion (the cremation bit, don't know about he organ donation) up until 50 years ago. Otherwise you couldn't be put to rest in consecrated ground. Same went for if you were a suicide (don't worry, about me though, I'm ok, I didn't want anyone to send me a hotline number because of that comment). But that obviously changed. Which is good for me, because who wants to be put in the "special section" of your own religion's cemetery?
Also, I know that some Christian religions believe that the whole body has to be kept intact because they will be risen during the Second Coming.
(Someone correct me if I am wrong, I am no expert).
I am also no expert on, umm, well anything but I think if you commit suicide you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery. And you're not allowed to be buried with tattoos either. There are a lot of DON'Ts and not alloweds in this religion.
cool guy! 
