decisions regarding end of life and handling of remains

[Aemon Stark]

I think a R'hollr-style funeral pyre is appealing, but the Viking method seems best. Need to acquire appropriate arms and armour first though.

(In short, it's not something I seriously think about much, though I am a donor. Admittedly something more relevant if I have some kind of devastating brain injury.)

I'd like everything usable to go to someone who can use it but the idea or Med students making jokes about my body as they disect it in a gross anatomy lab gives me the willies.

Med students tend to be pretty meek and green when they enter the anatomy lab. I briefly became a vegetarian around that time.

You ought to be far more worried about the kinds of conversations that go on in the OR really.

[AndrewJ]

Stuffed and embalmed and posed riding a stuffed/embalmed tiger, wielding a broadsword.

ETA - and to clarify, I'm the one wielding the broadsword, not the tiger. I wouldn't want it to be silly, after all.

[Lightning Lord]

Donate everything that can be donated. Burn the rest. And if they feel the need to have a wake/gathering, there's damn well going to be a bouncy house and a sno-cone machine. I understand that the people who grieve may want to do something different, but I want them remembering that my life was about trying to find the joy... even if we're feeling sad. Maybe especially when we're feeling sad.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

LL,

When I was in college my friends and always said we wanted a "Keg Funeral".

[Lightning Lord]

LL,

When I was in college my friends and always said we wanted a "Keg Funeral".

That would be appropriate...but only if it's a keg of one of my favorite brews :) (Unapologetic IPA, I'm looking in your direction)

I have just always liked the idea of celebrating a life (hopefully) well-lived, rather than focusing solely on the mourning.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

LL,

I'd consent to an East Coast style IPA. Not a 4.5 month West Coast Style IPA.

;)

[Weeping Sore]

When I die I'd like to just keep sitting in the rocking chair in the attic for as long as possible.

[MercenaryChef]

my body will be given to science and medicine. All that they reject will be incinerated with my knives and other meaninful treasures and the ashes put in a vessel still undetermined.

This vessel will be at my going away party on the buffet. We will have all my favorite foods and drinks. Expect several smoked hogs, lots of scotch and beer. nobody will be allowed to leave until all food and drink is consumed.

There will be security goons who will taser anyone caught crying.

There will be a small video that I will have written about my life narrated by Liam Neeson.

We will first listen to this song http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U4_5c1OJXc4

Which will immediately transition into this one http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UnLNXquIBVs

We will be having a blast.

[Quorra]

I'm a little disturbed at my own lack of response when someone I have known has died. Someone I worked with died suddenly and I wonder at the absence of effect, and what it means; how the memory of the person doesn't naturally affect me and it's something I have to remind myself to think of. It's the same as if the person had just gone away, moved, took another job, but continued to live elsewhere.

And then there are those I've felt affection for who passed away, and their absence creeps up and surprises me. In the way that you can be holding something in your dream and, upon waking, feel surprised to look down at your empty clutching hands. But of course, it was only a dream. Of course, they're gone forever.

People wish that there could be some conscious effort to keep the dead in the forefront of our minds, in our lives. We think that commemorating the event or preserving a physical object will maintain the person who lived. But it's all an effort of the mind, a continual effort. A portrait, a monument, a rock or an urn of remains - those seem more appropriate if you wished to tell others about the legacy of someone they never knew. But if you knew the person who died, no event or object is effective. It's your own gesture to settle your emotional debt to the person.

With that in mind, who would I, or you, expect to remember you and miss you after you're gone? Only those who knew you? Do you expect a legacy of future generations of individuals who didn't personally know you to carry your existence in their lives?

And if you did, your actions would inspire some creation of a testament to your existence, or maybe the perpetuation of whatever you created that lives on.

[Frisco]

I still like growing a tree over my body after what is usable can be used. What is more fitting to memorialize someone's life than more life?

That's been my plan for a couple decades, since I read Speaker for the Dead. :p

Also, I sort of hope the fruit looks like me.

[Giles the Wizard]

I want to be cremated and my organs donated (if possible). I don't care what they do with the ashes afterwards- throw them out, scatter them somewhere, snort them- whatever. The one thing I do care about is my funeral. I've been to too many funerals where people sit quietly and cry as they all stare at the dead body. I decree that my funeral shall be a jovial affair- dancing, balloons, alcohol, cake, all that fun stuff. People can laugh or cry or sing, they can tell stories about all their fond memories of me or recall all the times I was a horrible person and made them want to strangle me.

[Lightning Lord]

LL,

I'd consent to an East Coast style IPA. Not a 4.5 month West Coast Style IPA.

;)

I suppose I'd best have several kegs on offer. A couple of my friends are stout folk, so something in the way of a coffee- or milk-stout would probably be in order. I'm going to need to take suggestions before kicking off. I suppose I could also get an East Coast IPA, though I've never seen the point of them :P

I'd need a local brew, so Steel Toe Size 7 would be in the mix. And for those who don't want snobby, hoity-toity, hipster beers, I'll have... hmm... a big ol' picture of me sticking my tongue out at them and suggesting that they can shove their Miller Lite up a chicken's butt and make everyone a nice moist roast and not waste anyone's time drinking swill. :)

I have to send some of this to my lawyer, make sure it gets in the will.

[MercenaryChef]

The world lost a wonderful cook and just brilliant human Friday. A buddy went from seemingly healthy to gone in under three weeks.

I flew and said my final words to him. We shared in jokes and talk of food.

People I never knew connected deeply with me as we shotgunned beers and killed Jameson shots sharing stories of our friend.

In a fitting departure we drank bourbon in his room as he slipped off.

I went back home but friends and loved ones have adorned themselves with a tattoo he possessed and are on a bus dribeing a city empty in the honor of this great man.

That is how one goes out.

[Tears of Lys]

I'd like everything usable to go to someone who can use it but the idea or Med students making jokes about my body as they disect it in a gross anatomy lab gives me the willies.

:lol: I always worry about that too.

I'll still do it, though.


@Chef: Sorry about your friend. That's hard when it's so sudden. Not that it's ever easy.

[Saint Alia]

After my little brother passed away, his body was cremated. My mother kept the ashes, it's kept in our house with a picture of him. 

I know it brings some people a sense of peace to have "a part" of the person you lost around, but personally I have no attachment towards it at all. 

The person I loved and lost was so much more than the contents of a little wooden box, and I prefer to keep a memory alive rather than a memento (or whatever you're supposed to call it, in this case). A body is just a vessel, a person is the sum of their thoughts, experiences and the feelings they left you with. 

 

 

I'm a registered organ donor, so when I die I hope that I haven't abused my organs too much and that they'd be usable to someone else and everything else can be burned, liquefied, donated to medicine or whatever else, as long as no one tries to shove it in a hole in the ground. 

Though, a funeral pyre or a Viking sendoff would be pretty awesome, I won't lie. 

 

As far as funerals are concerned, there better be a lot of tequila, sandwiches and bad drunken singing, and none of the morbid dressed in black wailing and gnashing of teeth. It'd rather have a life celebrated, than a death mourned.