What are your plans for your "former self"?

Tech11

Tech11

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2007
Location
Greensboro
I recently had to have a hand in some burial arrangements for a relative and it really blew my mind the costs to for all intents and purposes dispose of a corpse.

I have an entirely different outlook on things when it comes to the end of the road as it were. I'm not sad for that person, or the situation, while they will be missed, generally they are done. Their struggle is over. Aches pains, day to day worries and aggravations, all of that, done. Their race is finished. We on the other hand are still plodding along towards our own finish line.

My body/corpse is going to the Body Farm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm.
http://fac.utk.edu/donationfaqs.html

Unless I move I'm set to go to the one at UT. It won't cost my family anything. So there done. Now I would like for there to be a memorial service/wake/good riddance party. Music, food and drink. I imagine an open bar, and food can all be done for way less than the cheapest of wooden boxes and grave markers. I want there to be laughing and crying, hell a good fight, and maybe someone to get naked. I haven't explained any of this to my grandma, she doesn't understand cremations or any kind of nontraditional burials. Hopefully, I won't have to.
 
All this crap about "permanently" preserving a body is just a passing fad, fueled by the greed of the funeral homes. It's only been done for what, 75 years or so. (modern methods, mummies notwithstanding). Sooner or later, the enviro-mentalists are going to get on it.

I got a couple of friends lined up to take me to the mountains and bury me shallow for the worms and maggots to share. They know the place.
 
I tried to talk my wife in to giving me a viking funeral, but she wouldn't go for it.

It depends on when I die. If I die early I want my ashes to be kept in an urn on the mantle, that way if my wife remarries that bastard will know that I was there first. If we both die old, we want our ashes scattered together somewhere in the mountains.
 
I told my wife that I am going to build my own casket when I get close to death. She thought that was creepy.
 
kaiser715 said:
All this crap about "permanently" preserving a body is just a passing fad, fueled by the greed of the funeral homes. It's only been done for what, 75 years or so. (modern methods, mummies notwithstanding). Sooner or later, the enviro-mentalists are going to get on it.
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Not quite. Try 147+ years. Modern embalming process came about during the Civil War. Attempts to bring dead soldiers remains back to their families didn't work too well over the long distances often required. They needed some way to preserve the bodies so they didn't begin to decompose on the trip. In fact, Abraham Lincoln's body was embalmed, and then went on a train tour of the US for about three weeks.
 
If you haven't yet, it's not a bad idea to look into it now. You can't imagine the amount of paperwork, and regulations dealing with the deceased.....officially.
 
My father has something like this set up with Wake Forest here in Winston-Salem.
 
Macdaddy4738 said:
Not quite. Try 147+ years. Modern embalming process came about during the Civil War. Attempts to bring dead soldiers remains back to their families didn't work too well over the long distances often required. They needed some way to preserve the bodies so they didn't begin to decompose on the trip. In fact, Abraham Lincoln's body was embalmed, and then went on a train tour of the US for about three weeks.
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Damn... very good info 100% correct are you a historian or just read alot? lol didnt expect someone to know that, only reason i do is cause i read alot into wartime history...
 
C.Berry said:
Damn... very good info 100% correct are you a historian or just read alot? lol didnt expect someone to know that, only reason i do is cause i read alot into wartime history...
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I cant remember where I saw it. It was a history channel show, maybe Modern Marvels (about the only useful show still on that channel). I think it was an episode on things "made to last" and they were at a company that makes solid steel caskets and went into detail on the history of embalming for a bit.
 
We have discussed this before and if I die before my son is grown and on his own I am to be cremated,no need to dump 8-10K in the ground when she will have to finish raising our son w one income.I told her where I wanted the funeral/celebration of life/wing ding/goin away party/or whatever you want to call it,to be and who was to speak/roast.I was raised in a strong southern baptist home so cremation is kinda taboo w my mom and grandmother.I know a guy,who knows a guy,who digs graves and does cremations and he says the guy has a bin that he puts all the titanuim hardware in after the cremations are done.Says in some cases he makes more off the scrap titanium than the cremation.
 
Sooner or later, the enviro-mentalists are going to get on it.
[/quote]


They already have. There are some chemicals that are more environment friendly, but they don't work nearly as well. All the "fluids" go right into the city sewer system. How's your tea?
 
Your Hot Dog Guy! said:
My father has something like this set up with Wake Forest here in Winston-Salem.
Click to expand...

I know the guys that run that program, it's hosted by the dept I was in for grad school.
Really is the way to go IMO, your body is used to train medical students and young scientists. Better for them to learn to cut on dead people before the living!
And if you're really lucky, the brain is extracted and used by volunteers of the Brain Awareness Council who take it to schools in a bucket and show off to kids... :massey:
one of my favorite pics of my son is him touching a cadaver brain I'm holding in my hand.

This is what's happening to me, donated to science. Might as well make use of the remains.
I do think it's still good to have a headstone someplace just so family/friends have a place to go for remembrance etc, but no point in littering the ground w/ a casket etc.
 
RatLabGuy said:
I know the guys that run that program, it's hosted by the dept I was in for grad school.
Really is the way to go IMO, your body is used to train medical students and young scientists. Better for them to learn to cut on dead people before the living!
And if you're really lucky, the brain is extracted and used by volunteers of the Brain Awareness Council who take it to schools in a bucket and show off to kids... :massey:
one of my favorite pics of my son is him touching a cadaver brain I'm holding in my hand.

This is what's happening to me, donated to science. Might as well make use of the remains.
I do think it's still good to have a headstone someplace just so family/friends have a place to go for remembrance etc, but no point in littering the ground w/ a casket etc.
Click to expand...
Makes good since to me also.
 
frankenyoter said:
Cream me and dump me in a stream at Tellico!!!
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Frank, remember our big black dog named Drifter? He loved the river at Telico, Colorado river in Moab, and the Tennesee river in Dayton. That is where his ashes are, gives us another reason to revisit.
 
Popcorn Sutton bought his casket before he killed himself and his footstone that reads "Popcorn said fuck you". I can't wait to visit his gravesight when I go back home for Thanksgiving.
 
I like the Viking idea best. :D

The cheaper the better for my wife... It's all up to her at the time. Who knows what technology awaits for cremation or cheaper alternatives???
 
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