Anybody read Alan Weisman's The World Without Us? There's an interesting chapter about the death industry, and the millions of dollars, millions of feet of lumber, and millions of pounds of noxious chemicals used every year to preserve dead people.

It is pretty stupid to go to so much expense over someone who will be underground and out of sight for all eternity, isn't it? A lot of folks don't know that embalming is not a requirement for burial (at least this is true in Texas, and I suspect it is the same everywhere else). What sense does it make to spend thousands on highly-polished mahagony coffins and embalming fluids?

My last wish is to be placed in a cardboard box without being embalmed. If you don't want me to stink up the place, then get me in the ground in a hurry. It seems to me that anyone who respects God's creation would want to take a final step toward conserving it.

No but I want it...gift me a copy?

solutions: recycled cardboard coffins, fertiliser, the Body Project,

SOYLENT green!

It's on my "To be Read" shelf. Is it any good?

BTW, I can't believe you're going to go to all the trouble and expense of a cardboard box. what a selfish bastard!. I'm thinking nekkid and in the back yard.

Thats IT! I am going to get a laminater and laminate your body into useful furniture!

Lumpy_the_Great:

It's on my "To be Read" shelf. Is it any good?

BTW, I can't believe you're going to go to all the trouble and expense of a cardboard box. what a selfish bastard!. I'm thinking nekkid and in the back yard.

lol...true enough. Just toss me nekkid in a hole and I'll be fine.

The book was much better than I thought it would be. Some of it is a bit overwrought, I think; he describes the Houston petrochemical industry in such a way that one might think it's a half-step from blowing the whole Texas Gulf Coast to hell. In other words, the tone of the book is sometimes a bit over-the-top with the doomsday scenarios. But it's very interesting to read, in painstaking detail, how Manhatten would essentially fall to pieces within 100 years of humanity's sudden disappearance.

My personal hope is that I'll have the Big One while in my deep woods and the coyotes will take care of business and keep my body chemicals recycling through my place.

Having an ounce or two of me end up in an oak tree would be good, another pound or two in the grasses I've worked so hard to establish in the meadows, maybe some more dropped on the neighbor's place as buzzard poop, more yet washing downstream to the Sac, then Osage, then the Missouri, the Mississippi, then to the Gulf to enter the worldwide cesspool.

Should I die in civilization, the orders are to take what parts are useful, cremate the rest, and leave the box on a high ridge somewhere off the beaten path.

The cult of the dead is idolatrous and wasteful, as well as a little sick.

Following the harvest of all useful organs, of course. Wrap me in a shroud, put me in the ground (yes, I'm wasteful, but I want a shroud).

I DO expect some ritual recognition by friends and family. Something involving whiskey. And loud music. And maybe bare-knuckle boxing. I call it the Fight Club wake.

It's on my "To be Read" shelf. Is it any good?

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Its pretty darned good! I loved his approach (though I suppose you'd really have to love nature to truly get into it :)).

This much-loved old guy at our church died recently, and his wife of 57 years spoke at his memorial (she is the most no-nonsense 79 yr old I know), and basically said how THEIR parents had reserved these 'crypts' for them (I had no idea you could reserve 'crypts') as part of inheritance. Bunch of nonsense, she declared, so they'd sold off the reservations and spent the money while living. And after her husband died, she did what had always been his explicit wishes, gave his body so all organs and every bit of other usable tissue could be harvested, then cremated the remaining, and scattered the ashes in the garden of their lakehouse, which they'd made together and they both loved.

Way to go! That's MY plan too......

I want to be stuffed...I wonder how many taxidermists are experienced with stuffing humans? (Pun wasn't actually intended, but noted.)

And I want to be eternally in that "angry bear" pose so I can scare the crap out of people when they come around the corner in the dark, with those freaky glass eyes that aren't quite pointing in the right directions.

What sense does it make to spend thousands on highly-polished mahagony coffins and embalming fluids?

Defeats the whole "dust you were, to dust you return" part, doesn't it ?!?

I may have to rethink my burial plans. You're onto something there . . .

There is a whole new meaning to "Stuffed and mounted!"

Several years ago, I worked for a holding company that acquired and opearated inner-city funeral homes and cemetaries -- primarily serving the African-American community. This was the time the HBO series "6 Feed Under" debuted. Interesting that the show was very well received within the industry.

For many people, the ritual of the funeral IS important, and it does seem that some families find some sympolic value in spending money on expensive caskets and fleets of limos for the ceremony -- but I personally do not get that part of it.

I actually think that sometimes the memorial ceremony is more meaningful if held somewhat later. This is what was done for my good friend Tom, who died following a 15-year battle with AIDS. His partner held his memorial about 6 months later, and it was an all-day affair for friends from all over the Southwest. There was a great amount of laughter, a number of poignent moments as well, as people remembered not only Tom, but also many of the other friends they had lost to AIDS. Great food, wine, a little weed -- that is the way to memorialize someone, IMHO.

You feeling alright?

When my grandfather died, my uncle and his family had a little memorial to give my grandmother some immediate closure, but about 6 months after she died (almost 18 months after he died) we had a proper memorial for both of them with family and close and extended friends.

All the family members went up to the podium and said our little piece, then I opened it up for anyone else who wanted to to say a few words. They just passed the mic around and everyone had great little stories and enecdotes and a lovely old gentleman gave me a letter that my grandfather had written to him 30 years before (that was hilarious) and then we all mingled and ate and drank and it was quite nice to have all these people who had been connected to my grandparents connect to each other because we all knew of each other through my grandparents, but many of us had never actually met each other.

Afterwards family and close friends went back to their old house (which is now owned by close family friends) and scattered their ashes in the ocean. The older folks stayed up on the lawn with binoculars and the nimble went on down to the rocks (which is when I inadvertantly ingested some of my grandfather - remember to check wind direction next time). And after they were released they all clapped and cheered and we went back in for more eating, drinking and mingling.

After my grandfather was cremated, my uncle kept him down in the basement. When I called my grandmother one time and she got all weepy over his death, I couldn't think of anything to say that might soothe her, so I fell back on the old "he's in a better place now" line and she said, "no, he's not, he's in a box!"

So I argued that sitting in a box in my uncle's basement shop was technically "a better place" than some old nursing home, since he spent a great deal of his time alive in his own basement shop, that he would have liked it better. She finally agreed. ;)