fuck thousands for a coffin. or hundreds for an urn. can i legally be burried in butcher paper?
can i donate my body to science and skip burrial all together?
i want my final action to be a big middle finger to the funeral industry picking on people in their weakest moments.
Donate your body to science. My mother did that. She used to joke that they would put her body in a car trunk in the desert, or some other location, and see what time and decay did so they could measure the process. For all I know, that’s literally where her body is right now. They also do other experiments. Then, after a few years, they return cremated remains to you.
Try to find an institution that will take your body. I’ve looked into it. There’s a place in a neighboring state that will take mine, but if I die more than 100 miles from them, someone will need to arrange to transport the body to them. There’s not much more to it for me.
Edit to alter link to a better site
Word of warning though, check out the company before you do so. My mother in law was in the medical field and had a coworker that did this. The company ended up refusing the body because they had too many bodies. I’ve also heard of your body being used to test munitions, which is pretty much the opposite of what a lot of people would want.
Hey look, once my body is donated it’s not my business what they do with it. I’m the same way that once I hand over spare change to the guy on the street, it’s not my business what he does with it.
Yeah, but if, like OP, the intent of donating your body is to ensure that one exploitative industry (the funeral industry) doesn’t profit from your death, you probably also want to make sure that other industries (like the military industrial complex) that you also don’t like aren’t going to be able to benefit either.
Weapons are good enough, fuck those guys. If I’m donating my body I want it to be for something useful, like improving medicine or surgery
Sanity in the comments. Huh. Interesting find
In a sense, that’s true. But we’re also talking about making arrangements while we’re alive, knowing that our wishes now will translate into action later.
If I plant a tree so that my grandchildren might enjoy the shade, I’m still making a decision to do something based on what I believe the effects will be after I die.
So if we’re making decisions on where or how to donate our bodies after our deaths, we’d still generally want to choose a worthy cause.
Yes, that is possible. The paperwork for the place I am looking into specifically asks if you object to that and a number of other possible uses to which they may put your remains.
Not that I’d personally care, but I don’t know that I’d trust that they wouldn’t just ignore those instructions. Who would call them out?
Indeed, dead men tell no tales, right? I’m with you though, I said yes to all the questions. I don’t care if they shoot my corpse, or beat it with a bat, or use it as a party favor at the lab Christmas party. It’s just meat, as far as I’m concerned and if their experiments help posterity then I’m all for it.
i don’t care what my corpse is used for if it helps people
Testing how shit blows you up is a weird way to describe ‘helping people’
Hello Mythbusters? Hehe
Also keep in mind if this is your wish you can’t be an organ donor. Having a rotting corpse without any organs is a pretty unrealistic scenario and the data isn’t as useful.
Among the other warnings here, if getting the cremains is important to you, be careful; my mother did this and we never got anything back. We almost didn’t get anything of my father back, but my sister was tenacious.
I don’t understand why people care. My dad is gone. I can’t get help fixing my roof from his urn. Some people do talk to the remains of their loved ones, but they can’t hold a conversation so I have never seen the point.
Sure, I mostly agree with you, but some people do care. As such I just wanted to offer this warning.
However, I do have the cremains for my dogs and my dad on a small, out of the way shelf in my living room. In my more down moments, it’s been comforting to think of them as “there” even though I know they’re not. Also it can be a focal point when I’m putting effort into remembering them. Finally, I have a young kid; having a physical object to point at helps with explaining death to them in gentler terms.
In the Netherlands you don’t even get the cremains back. I have no idea where most of my dead relatives are. In Germany you get them back, but you must bury them. Putting them on the mantlepiece is not an option.
Fair enough, and perhaps not unreasonable. I know a lot of people want to spread them out, which I think is fine in a private area but at best debatable in a public area and definitely not in a protected area.
Grief is powerful and wild.