Yeah, that made me almost wonder if the whole thing is a joke. Who would that cover be for? I’d assume a man, but it looks like we’re supposed to be looking into the grave at the naked dead girl who has been plastic-wrapped down.
I’m with you on this. I have no particular concerns as to what is done with my corpse, but it’s getting harder and harder to avoid paying exorbitant sums to the funeral racket once you die. They can advertize whatever they like on my tombstone as long as my family isn’t stuck with an umpteen thousand dollar bill.
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My friend just killed himself, and his mum & sister had a Humanist speak at his funeral. The kindest, wisest words I have ever heard at such a gathering. He’d have gotten a kick out of the part where the guy said, ‘Now, if any of you have any religious affiliations, please take a moment, to yourselves to pray, or whatever it is you need to do’. Then he put Carry on My Wayward Son by Kansas on. The one bright point of a sad day.
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I’m sorry about your friend. That’s always so very sad. But it sounds like a very nice service. I generally find the baptist funerals, where they spend half the service proselytizing to be alienating as an agnostic.
When my dad died last year, he had decided to have a mass, since he was a lapsed catholic (he was raised, but never practiced my whole life, though he had thought about becoming a priest when he was a teenager and he got last rites towards the end). There wasn’t much proselytizing during the service, though. I didn’t mind the ritual and they always have the part where catholics take communion as the part where everyone else reflects for a few moments and I dont’ find that nearly as irritating. Also, one thing for a catholic service, you’re too busy to cry (stand up, sit down, chant, kneel, etc). Well, until you get to the end, and they wheel the body out and the family follows. Then you have the time to bawl your eyes out.
You know, now I’m wondering what my dad would think of the new pope and if he would have started going back to mass? My catholic aunt loves him.
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Tackiest shit ever.
I saw a few digital printed grave markers in a cemetery in South India, back in 2008. Not quite the full wrap treatment, and maybe not as, er, geocities-ified as this French company’s stuff, but I don’t doubt a lot more digital print covered graves have shown up there in the past six years…
It’s coming up on three years since my best friend died. His folks had him cremated, but I think he would have liked something like this, with a big gaudy gold Buddha maybe.
I sat in the funeral service thinking how much he would have hated the religious part of it, but even at that devastated moment I knew that the service was most of all for his mom, and maybe the religion made her feel better. He would have wanted whatever could have brought her any comfort, and out of the 100 or so people in the room, he would have cared most about her at that moment. She picked a beautiful and very tasteful marble box for his cremains, and he would have liked that too.
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Thank you. There’s been too many this year gone, and all tragically young.
I know, a friend of mine’s family are Catholic and when he died, the service was somewhat tiring, physically. Mainly I didn’t like the priest arrogating all his kindness, good works and achievements (of which their were many) to a creed he personally had no time for. It gave his parents peace though, and I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?
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That is the reason I don’t want to be buried – someone in the family starts messing with your tombstone and before you know it, you got Hello Kitty sitting on your cadaver.
I want a Viking funeral…
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Where else can a loyal member of the KISS Army find their eternal rest, but in a KISS Kasket?
Differing tastes are everywhere in life, why shouldn’t they follow us into the grave?
When I was younger, I thought it would be cool to be, well, stuffed. Taxidermied, like Roy Rogers’ horse Trigger:
Or maybe just like Lenin. I don’t need crowds of people filing past to pay their respects or anything (I’ve never expected to be missed or mourned by anyone except close friends and family, and then only by the ones tolerant enough to like me), but the thought of being stood in some quasi-heroic pose, maybe dressed in a toga and spray-painted white, tickles the hell out of me.
Or maybe I’ll leave instructions for my cleaned and varnished skull to be mounted on the newel post at the foot of the stairs. People could rub my noggin for good luck. Or a curse, if so deserving.
Check out these groovy caskets from Ghana. These guys have the right attitude about it, if you ask me.
A friend of mine died almost two years ago. I never, ever thought I would become that person who goes and sits in a graveyard talking to a tombstone but I have been. His friends have left guitar strings and a few assorted little things at his stone - most of them are in a jar to keep them safe. Some total asshole started complaining to the city that this was some horrendous violation of the cemetery regulations (dead people’s HOA?) and wants the city to forcibly remove this stuff - as well as the wind chimes someone hung in a tree over a father’s grave, flags on someone else’s grave, etc. I can only imagine the freakout this guy would have over these markers.
Sky Burial is a Tibetan practice. The body is given to a certain caste of folks whose lot it is render the remains and deposit them along side the mountain where carrion birds dispose of them without wasting ground space or materials .I believe some First Nation People had a similar practice. Build a tall platform and simply place the body out there for the birds and other elements to clean up. From the Earth to the Earth.
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My main reaction to such things is “If my spirit is anywhere, it ain’t gonna be in a graveyard.” I think I’ll pick (or endow) a favorite sculpture somewhere and tell folks to meet me there.
Actually, the graveyard near my place has a few monuments which are pretty decent statuary, if your tastes run to classically draped ladies pondering mortality. I hope the folks whom they memorialize had a chance to enjoy them as sculpture while still alive.
Maybe this is like ancient Egyptian, Viking or Chinese customs where you get to take some stuff with you when you die?
I kinda want to be dynamited, and leave a crater.
As long as I get a coffin from these [NSFW] Polish manufacturers I’ll be happy.
I think one of the reasons for sky burial in Tibet is also that bodies wouldn’t decompose as quickly at that altitude if they were buried. I like the idea of taking up as few resources as possible when I die (or giving back anything of value), but I can imagine something like that being worse in many contexts than burial. Cremation is ok, but it takes a lot of energy (enough on a large scale to at least partially heat a swimming pool, apparently). Burial is OK in principle, but I’ve discussed this with my wife and we’re probably not going to assign much importance to the other’s grave if we die second. You can be buried on private land, which would take some of the burden away from loved ones, and a cardboard coffin would be cheaper and would only take a few years to decompose. I think I’ll just donate my organs and the rest of my body to science, which is free and probably as close to the spirit of a sky burial as any other common option.
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Imagine if every smoker who died of lung cancer had a grave wrapped to look like a pack of their favorite brand.
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I’ve thought about science donation too but I’m not sure yet. Another thought that I’ve been playing with is to just leave my body in the jungle and let nature do it’s handy work there. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Amazon River Basin in Peru and observed just how quickly a dead animal gets picked clean. Deposit yourself or have your remains deposited on a good size anthill and it won’t take long. Even burial in the jungle results in a rather quick tidying up process. This would take a bit of foresight to arrange but I have family in Peru so it could happen. That certainly has more appeal that the plastic wrap thing that looks like an item from the frozen food section of some store.
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For me or my loved ones this would require air travel to a suitable place, which would negate any potential environmental benefit and would probably be unfeasible on a large scale in any case. Anything like this would have to be organised properly, as finding discreet burial sites where remains can decompose quickly is an intersection on the environmentally conscious person/serial killer Venn diagram. You occasionally get parts of people who were buried at sea turning up on beaches, which causes some distress for anyone there and would probably also cause an investigation. I’d say my ability to benefit others through giving doctors material to train with and donor recipients more years of life would outweigh my value as compost or carrion, and would avoid any chance that my family could be adversely affected. It’s kind of conventional, but it would be significant to me.
Although funerals won’t mean anything to the person themselves, they often function as times when family can get together and express their collective identity or just reconnect. For that reason, I wouldn’t express many preferences as to my own funeral, as I don’t think it needs to be all about me at all. I guess it would be good to reflect something about my outlook on life and the things and people who were important to me, but right now I don’t have any strong feelings about it.
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