What happens when I die ?

( . )( . )

ie, what if i don't want the "traditional" funeral / cremation with prayers and that crap?

are there other alternatives ?

Zombrex

Donate your body to medical science, for example to Trinity College

They will handle the removal of your body, and then in two years they will organize a small memorial for you out in Glasnevin cemetery

Both my grandparents on my mothers side did this and while I was young when they died I remember it being handled very well and also taking a lot of stress off my mothers family.

I plan to do it. Assuming medical science will want my debauched body to begin with

Zillah

They can conclude what exactly you did to cause such a catastophc sabotage

enda1

Well in RCSI i saw some of the bodies that were there for thirty years easy. Is it only 2 years in Trinity?

It is a good idea though to do this. Very helpful for med students. Trinity only gets about 15 dies a year as far as I remember. Its a serious problem for them getting fresh meat!!

Zombrex

enda1 wrote:

Well in RCSI i saw some of the bodies that were there for thirty years easy. Is it only 2 years in Trinity?

Well we didn't ask exactly what comes back after 2 years .. there certainly wasn't enough to fill a coffin! :eek:

But sure I'll be dead, I won't care. And it still gives my family something to actually focus around

DinoBot

( . )( . ) wrote:

ie, what if i don't want the "traditional" funeral / cremation with prayers and that crap?

are there other alternatives ?

Of course. A friend of mine asked me about my wedding in the registry office: "Was the priest okay coming to the office to do the wedding"

I tried explaing to him that only christians need a priest to be married, not sure if I got through to him

My point is, you can do whatever you want. My plan would be simple, bring the body home to be laid out and allow family and friends call over then have a someone say some words then proceed to the grave or cremation (still undecided over that bit) It would be as a church funeral without the church

Dades

OP, if you're interested in other options for funerals etc check out this recent thread:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055078028
Cremation seems popular, as does getting blasted into space...

( . )( . )

ok thanks

, sorry but that just made me laugh about blasted into space bit, i was at a cremation recently and one of my 1st cousins who is a children's entertainer and part time comedian said he's like to be dressed as a clown and shot from a canon ...

PDN

Just make sure they put you in the black wheelie bin. The green one is only for metal, paper and cardboard.

robindch

Wouldn't mind coming back as a tree:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/28/wfreez28.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/09/28/ixportal.html

( . )( . )

robindch wrote:

Wouldn't mind coming back as a tree:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/28/wfreez28.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/09/28/ixportal.html

That's a fantastic idea, I love it.

Dades

"Mulching was nature's original plan for us".

I've always genuinely had a real thing for mulch. Mulch me up!

MeditationMom

If you really don't care .............. out of compassion, allow your mother to bury you in the way it would be meaningful to her, or any other loved ones, like children or friends who would have trouble putting you into a mulcher.

All these burial ideas are still ideas by people who think they are their bodies, but know they are not. An atheist's zen koan. Perfect!

MoominPapa

The Atheist wrote:

"Mulching was nature's original plan for us".

I've always genuinely had a real thing for mulch. Mulch me up!

The Ethical Man piece on Newsnight last week looked at mulching being the most green option, it also had a guy supplying cardboard coffins with his own graveyard which will have no headstones just tress planted on each grave

Zombrex

MeditationMom wrote:

If you really don't care .............. out of compassion, allow your mother to bury you in the way it would be meaningful to her, or any other loved ones, like children or friends who would have trouble putting you into a mulcher.

Screw them ... I want my death to make a statement about who I was ... it is after all my death.

I would hope that any "loved ones" would respect that

oh and BTW I would hope to long out live my mother .... now where did I leave that home made rocket launcher and acid...?

MeditationMom

LOL - I'll be there. Your funeral is going to be fun. And, yes, outliving your mother is a good idea. I hope I die before my children.

What did they say on that show? Why the need to be mulched first? We're 90% water - pretty wet mulch. I guess they would just add "us", mulched, to other stuff.

I see the bags at the nursery now. High fat content mulch, high protein mulch, high glucose mulch, soft mulch from young cadavers, abortions only mulch - the possibilities are endless. Would it be ok to take the skin off first to make lampshades? You must forgive me. I am playing very ugly devil's advocate here. The Nazis had a very efficient operation going "processing" dead bodies for useful after death use. Very cold, very scientific. Can we take the gold out of teeth before mulching? I think you get my point and I appologize for bringing up these awful images? But we really can never afford to forget.

It might be environmental, make a lot of sense scientifically - maybe we can be processed in a way that can run cars even, mix us with gasoline instead of dirt - but... to turn the human body into a usefel product I think is a very dangerous path. Even without considering anything religious. Already people get kidnapped and killed for their kidneys. Overall, something is lost. Call it dignity or whatever you will. Dignity, of course, can be a joke, and that is when it gets genuinely funny to do something to wake everyone up, especially if it represents who you were in life.


That's one way to look at it. I don't really know how to look at it. I guess as long as everyone is still free to chose how, it is all ok and about that person's beliefs and choices, and you're right, loved ones would respect it and rejoice in it. Best thing at a funeral to make them laugh, for sure. But once a law were to be passed, and there always is - once there is money in it, for mulch for example, we are going to not have those choices. So I am not saying you're wrong, just wondering how dangerous it may be to go in that direction.

Sorry if I made this all so serious. Makes me want to go back to dressin up like a clown and getting shot out of a cannon.

Zombrex

MeditationMom wrote:

I see the bags at the nursery now. High fat content mulch, high protein mulch, high glucose mulch, soft mulch from young cadavers, abortions only mulch - the possibilities are endless. Would it be ok to take the skin off first to make lampshades? You must forgive me. I am playing very ugly devil's advocate here. The Nazis had a very efficient operation going "processing" dead bodies for useful after death use. Very cold, very scientific. Can we take the gold out of teeth before mulching? I think you get my point and I appologize for bringing up these awful images? But we really can never afford to forget.

Er ... ok ...

I would point out that taking fillings out of bodies to be recycled is not only a good re-use of material that often damages the Earth when it is first dug up, it is also harmful when reburied or burnt. So I would be all for people having fillings removed before they are either buried or cremated.

Not quite sure where the Nazis came into all of this though ....

MeditationMom wrote:

to turn the human body into a usefel product I think is a very dangerous path.

Why?

MeditationMom wrote:

Already people get kidnapped and killed for their kidneys.

There is a big (BIG) difference between a person wishing that their body be put to some good practical use after they are dead, and killing someone to put their body to a good practical use.

I'm almost a little shocked I have to actually point that out ...

MeditationMom wrote:

But once a law were to be passed, and there always is - once there is money in it, for mulch for example, we are going to not have those choices.

I don't think human "mulch" is worth that much .. were don't make good fertilizer or carbon fuels. People like the Nazis didn't kill humans for the products they could make from them. That was a secondary aspect, the people were killed so they would be dead.

MeditationMom

by Wicknight -I'm almost a little shocked I have to actually point that out ...

You didn't have to, but I am glad you did anyway - I thought of that after I posted but had no time left to go back to clarify that. Of course that is a huge difference!!!

There's a movie - "Fargo" - where the killer puts his victims into a mulcher after he kills them - so I didn't have the best picture in my mind.

It reminded me of the Holocaust because the corpses were a huge disposal problem for the Nazis. "Disposal problem" that needs a green solution seemed to be the argument.

Turning it into something useful reminded me of the "economic wisdom" of harvesting the body first for valuables. There is no doubt about the economic wisdom of this -as in recycling - but "economic wisdom" is not "plain wisdom". Most of the time it is actually the opposite.

Remember playing devil's advocate is supposed to be a little bit shocking - not my usual mode. I had to even apologize right then, and do it again now. You guys shocked me a little first, with everyone wanting to get mulched because of one green documentary on TV.

I get your take on the whole thing as to wanting to be useful, actually compassionate and intelligent, in death. Even the idea of a crazy funeral just to make your friends and family laugh one more time. I commend you on that. Same reason we donate organs etc. and of course that makes a lot of sense.

People either want to be buried with dignity, with meaning or with purpose, somehow representative of who they were or stood for. Maybe if I had seen the whole documentary and it would all make more sense to me I could find more value in this idea of mulching because it is green. As always on boards - I'll have to read more about it

robindch

Good heavens, the Nazis seem to turn up almost every day between here and the Other Place!

I'd like to be come back from the morgue as fertilizer coz I'd like to be remembered some way more personal than a gravestone that somebody shows up at once a year for a year or two, then never again. I'd like what makes me up to be living again, perhaps in a tree or a flowerbed at the bottom of the garden -- isn't being alive in that way much nicer than being stuck under a cold stone that nobody cares about or visits?

Fallen Seraph

robindch wrote:

Good heavens, the Nazis seem to turn up almost every day between here and the Other Place!

See Godwin's rule.

I think it'll either be science or cremated and scattered for me. I can't understand non-belivers being buried, what a waste of space frankly...

Also, I was under the impression that when one donates their body to science that it is always shipped for use in a different country so that no poor med student comes in for their lab only to run out crying :"grandpa!" ?

MeditationMom

Hmmm!

I request special dispensation, though, because I grew up in Germany, with the children of the people who put Hitler in power as my teachers during my highschool years - a long, long time ago . In German Literature, Social studies, History, and as constant sideline comment in all other subject, Biology, Physics and Chemistry, Art, on and on, everything was always referenced back to the Nazis in a commendable, but also paranoid effort to understand how this all could have happened in Germany. Germany has, and always did have a highly educated, cultivated, religious, even enlightened population - depending where you look.

If anyone is sick of it it is me. Back then we even got to the point of asking our teachers to please stop. I am still an idiot in many ways on line :rolleyes: as this is all new territory to me. Thanks to you, Fallen Seraph, now less so in the future. No more Nazi references, even when appropriate. I can be more creative than that. Thanks.