h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I seem to remember that ashes are biodegradeable, so will vanish with time.

If I'm not burnt, I'd like to be stuck in a cardboard or wicker box and have a tree planted on top.

Yes - but what about the use of energy to carry out the cremation and the emissions resulting from burning the body and its receptacle?

It would be interesting to see each option dissected and compared.

At least there are fewer mercury amalgam dental restorations being placed in mouths these days - so mercury vapour will become less of a problem.

Am I getting a bit obsessed

Nah, that's not obsessive - says one who got the oddest looks from RL friends when she asked out aloud as they drove past a graveyard in winter: 'How do they dig the graves when the ground is frozen?'

I think the answer is with difficulty Titania.

I think they use JCB's to dig graves these days , a couple of inches of frost would not slow one of those down much . Not sure how they managed before the invention of the mechanical digger . Particularly where there is a permafrost . Still if its that cold the is hardly going to go off .
I would like to be cremated and my ashes thrown into the river Beult .

best fshes......tod

I'm with Phil - by which I mean that I want to be buried in some flimsy box with a tree planted on top, not in the *same* box as Phil. (Don't take it personally, Phil, I just think it would be impractical especially if one of us is still alive at the time of burial ) I kind of like the idea of being embraced by the roots, absorbed as nutrients and eventually released into the sky.

Before backhoes, the coffins were stacked in sheds at the cemetery. Honest. They weren't going to rot in the cold.

I can't attribute this, but I read somewhere that certain scenic areas in the US have had to put a moratorium on ash scattering. It was something I had thought about, cremation and scattering, but I'm not sure. As I have no heirs, I'm sure I'll settle on whatever is cheapest.

What I will NOT do is join my parents and grandparents in the family crypt, even though there's a deluxe horizontal slot waiting for me there. The family bought the slots in 1925, when the mausoleum was brand new. Now, inevitably, the town has grown to engulf the cemetery in which the little granite building sits. It's a nice little cemetery with great big chestnut trees, but it has no church to protect it, so I give it another century at most.

It's illegal (or, at the very least, "strongly discouraged") to scatter human cremains in our National Forests, Lil. And I'm pretty sure you have to get a permit from the National Park of your choice if you want to be scattered there--and you can't be along any popular trails or near any popular sites where others would be disturbed by your ashes' presence.

I don't know, d'E. I'm kinda comforted by the thought of you and Phil spending eternity together with your tree.

I'd have thought the undertakers would be noticing the slower decomposition before the embalming, no? As in 40 years ago it took three days for the body to start to niff a bit and now they can last up to a week, or something like that.

I was reading sometime when I was Abroad that the UK is going to be forced to ban body buriels at some point because of the lack of space. Of course, that's mainly because of the each body/ family needing its own plot so I assume Phil (and d'E if he fancies the trip over the water at that stage of 'life') with the random tree in the middle of nowhere would be ok. Although that's probably illegal too...

Cremation for me. Give me a good old purifying flame over worms and maggots any day. I have always found it odd that people who purport to genuinely believe that we are spirits temporarily inhabiting a physical body then go to such extremes to preserve their bodies after death. The act of cremation gives us (ok, gives me) the opportunity to make a final statement concerning spirituality and the release of the soul back into the cosmos from which it came.

Well be interesting to see, Solnushka since be a violation of your human rights,(bring back the fiery burial(even if its the caravan ablaze floating down the loch)

for example..
should you decide you want to be buried de-brided bones(ashes included) in a ancient Celtic site for instance. most of those burial grounds closed a couple of thousand years ago,..still plenty of chalk cliffs and that designated as public ground for recreation and pleasure...that could b re-used in this way..

Don't think its that much trouble to have your remains inturred in your back garden of family home, Not that bothered what happens to mine either, chop me up and make vol au vents and sarnies for the wake as far as I care, or feed me to the Zoo animals....

... or donate yourself to a body farm?

[GDZ]

The law in NM allows people to be buried on private property. In fact the law seems to be stricter about where you bury horses.

[]

[RNick - well smoked and pickled, prime grade ash material]

But even when you donate your body to medical science, they still give it back to your relatives when they've finished with it...

Me just back from a work conference, visiting deepest darkest Portadown, synonymous (sp?) with some of the Troubles worst secrteriansims and bigotry. Visiting inspring community projects demonstrating how things have changed in recent years (for the better)

One of the presentations started with some video footage of TV images from the not too distant past, where I had to wipe away copious tears. These images of grief and hate and carnage used to be on our TV screens day and daily, but I think we became inured to their awfulness when viewed with numbing regularity. Maybe there is hope after all.

I would totally donate my body to a body farm!

In brief, what-ever of me there is belongs to donor systems. The rest is off to the cookery, and my ashes have a place already secured under the headstone seen on my Fotki site. (Linked from my PS) Ideally, I'd love to be scattered over the piece of land that my family first settled in this country, but as it is considered unethical in Canada, and it IS currently a corn-field, that may prove a problem.

So, a collectible and lacquered "Tim Horton" tin for me. He was my 2nd fave hockey player, after all ...