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.
There’s a book called “Stiff” by Mary Roach where she looks into all the various ways to (legally) dispose of your body.
You can donate it to scientific research (my personal preference) and they will use it as a very accurate crash test dummy (usually).
Things like the glass in car windows and car crumple zones were invented with the help of such donations, and she claims that on average 14 lives are saved by every body donated.
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.
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’
tbh being blown up would be pretty cool
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.
Just so you’re aware, it’s my understanding that during cremation you’re likely getting first only some of the remains back and second likely not only theirs. I don’t think it matters, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the remains of your father was some other ashes entirely. It doesn’t really matter though. It’s just a bunch of carbon at the end of the day.
John Oliver did a story on that one for people in the US. Donating your body to science doesn’t mean it’ll end up as dissected cadaver for medical students.
My son is in his water bottle. Never bought an urn from the crematorium.
I’m sorry for your loss.
I didn’t realize there was a choice not to buy an urn. When my uncle passed we paid for the urn just to immediately empty it and spread his ashes the next week. This is good to know for the future, thank you. I’m sorry for your loss.
The cremains came in a bag inside of a box made of corrugated plastic. His mother and I split the cremains in the parking lot of a seedy motel. My half went into a big gulp or similar cup until I got them into his water bottle (it is a nice metal one, not like a plastic disposable bottle).
Is there a Ralph’s around here?
It is our most modestly priced receptacle.
A big part of your question hinges upon where you call home. Some countries have strickt restrictions.
Pay a local taxidermist to stuff you so your kid/friend/partner can have you hang out in their living room. I told my mom I’m gonna have her stuffed and posed like a bear.
Thinking about this now it makes sense why my mom picked my sister as the executor.
I want to be turned into a drone. I’ll be just like this cat. It will be a much larger version. Used for deliveries or emergency services. And I will be completely naked.
I want my body dumped on the front steps of my least favorite living politician.
When they return my body to my next of kin they will dump it back on the politicians’ doorstep
I didn’t have a funeral plan but now I do.
Quite the game of hot potato
There is a German song with this theme called “Ne Leiche”.
i will donate my body to a necrophilia foundation
Wth
What in the fuck did I just read?
Anyway the disclaimer at the bottom of the page is gold
Oz Magazine (the authors of this) fought very high profile court cases regarding accusations of obscenity. Some of the zine staff went on to have very successful careers: Richard Neville and Geoffrey Robertson in particular.
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But which one would you choose there are so many
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Holy shit, can those even exist anywhere? You got me thinking. It feels like a potential rabbit hole.
Regardless of the final resting place after the funeral - DON’T EMBALM. They’ll pressure your family into embalming to ‘ensure the dead look their best on the day of the funeral’, but refrigeration does the exact same thing. You might think it’s more ‘dignified’, but just do a quick google at what the process entails. It’s ALL smoke and mirrors, and I’d rather have people at my funeral actually understand what my body is doing at that point - not the image of what a ‘body at rest’ looks like from Hollywood.
Open casket funerals are weird.
Don’t die. That’ll teach them.
That’s my plan. So far it’s working out!
It’s been 20 hours so far since you last reported, Still holding up?
You’ll get bored eventually.
Missing at sea could count
You can shop around for crematoriums near you. Most of them in the US pick up the body as part of their fee. $300-800 to cremate a body. They mail you the ashes in a plastic bag. Some will offer urns, but that’s an extra charge you can skip. Most states don’t consider burying ashes the same as burying a body. Different laws. You can prepay, and have a card in your wallet with the company’s info on it in case someone stumbles upon your body.
My wife and I have spoken about what we want done. My plan for her is to cremate her, then go to a local nursery and find a nice hearty, long living, low-maintenance flowering tree she would have liked and plant her and the tree in my back yard.
Please note the larger/heavier you are the more it can cost. Also most medical programs don’t like to take overweight bodies for dissection programs as they are harder to keep/work with.
Only half-jokingly, my suggestion te my wife is to have me cremated, then mix my ashes in with some concrete to make a life-sized statue of me.
Stick me on the front lawn and dress me up for holidays, put a pointy hat on me and make a giant lawn gnome, stick a bowl on my head to use as a bird bath, or dump me at a cemetery and let me be my own headstone, doesn’t really matter to me, I’ll be dead, I won’t care, but I figure she might as well be able to get a chuckle out of it, and maybe ruffle the feathers of some HOA Karen while she’s at it.
She actually really likes the idea. She wants to have my statue posed like Buddy Christ from Dogma.
And maybe go ahead and do the same with the ashes of any dogs I’ve had and stick them right next to me. Better than having them take up space on the mantle forever, and they’re more deserving of a monument than I’ll ever be.
Bonus, she’ll think of you and visit you way more often than if you were shoved in a back corner of a cemetary.
My family has some experience with this
My mom’s cousin was a wonderful person, her husband, however, was an enormous piece of shit in just about every way you could imagine.
She got sick and died, he never had a funeral for her.
Then he up and died maybe a year or so later.
My mom was still listed as the executrix of their wills, so it fell on her to decide what to do with him.
And she decided on nothing. Let the coroner haul his body away and never claimed it.
After a while they cremate the remains, they hold onto them for a while to see if any other next of kin wants to claim them, then after a while they bury or scatter them somewhere if no one does.
I’m sure the exact specifics of how that all works varies a bit from place to place, but in general that’s gonna be an option. They can’t exactly force you to pay for a funeral you don’t want, and the local government has some plan on dealing with bodies no one wants to pony up for a funeral for (otherwise there’d be a lot of corpses of homeless people and such piling up in a freezer somewhere)
They can’t exactly force you to pay for a funeral you don’t want.
Where I’m at that’s exactly how it works. Even if you don’t accept the inheritance, funeral expenses are owed by the next of kin (jointly if there’s more than one in equal lineage).
They might not be able to force you to conduct the funeral, but they will enforce the costs regardless. If there’s an estate left, the next of kin can claim it back from the estate though, if somebody further down the line accepted the inheritance.
interesting. im guessing the parties that op has beef with still get paid in this scenario, though. they get paid with state money
Would the bodies really be at a funeral home though? Maybe like during covid when they were running out of space in some locations but generally I think it only gets sent to a business if the paperwork is done. Would be weird to just start sending random bodies to different funeral homes across the cities every time someone dies. (I have no idea btw)
The cheapest method is to abandon the body. People die without family all the time and the State has a method to dispose of unclaimed corpses. Cost $0
That doesn’t stick it to the industry though. Still gets them paid. It’s not about saving the money from what I can tell
Abandon the body on the doorstep of the funeral company you’re angriest at. If there are several, first disassemble the body into as many pieces as there are doorsteps.
And then the state foots the bill…providing money to the company you are angriest at. That doesn’t work for OP’s scenario
If you really want to stick it to the funeral industry, and you’re including crematoriums and all other aspects in that, I think the only option is burial at sea.
Put it in your will that you want your friends and family to go on a deep-sea fishing cruise. Specify they must bring you along, and once they reach the approved and legal dumping location and have you naked and weighted so you sink, they can raise their glasses, make a toast, and pitch you over the side.
Meant to include this link:
Out of all the options, this one seems like the best to fulfill OPs intentions, although if you dont know someone with a boat, it does not make it cheaper.
Plus. funerals are for the living, not the dead. Some families may want more than GPS coordinates as a headstone (or they will need to put one elsewhere).
I personally would be fine with this disposal method for myself, assuming it was not too inconvienent or costly for others.
My family tends to be less concerned with our remains. My grandfather used to say that when he died we should just “jam a ham bone up my ass and let the dogs drag me away.”
Never quite understood what the purpose of the ham bone up the ass was, but I don’t judge. No kink-shaming.
Edit: I should add, we did not shove anything up his ass and let the dogs drag him away. He was cremated. His instructions were to proceed with the cremation immediately with no time for family to say goodbye. However, my grandmother and my father (only child) decided to ignore that. We met at the funeral home before the cremation and just sat in the room with him.
To this day, he’s still the best looking dead person I’ve ever seen. He was dead, and he looked it, but he looked like himself. Just dead. He looked normal, not some plastic, uncanny-valley version of himself that someone thought he should look like.
That sounds like a good way to stick it to the funeral industry given that deep-sea fishing cruise is probably not cheap 👏
Probably not cheap, but it can be a fun time, and if you do it right, you can save money on chum.
My body is going to a medical school, to be used for student dissection. Once they are finished with it, it will be cremated. My relatives can have the ashes if they want, otherwise it will be disposed of. My name will go up on a plaque in a special memorial garden. It was pretty easy to organise, just a matter of signing consent forms with a witness. Family are ok with it.
There’s a chance my body will be rejected - infectious, too mangled, whatever - and in that case it’s bounced back to family to deal with. I favour forest burial wrapped in an old bedsheet.
Same. I can proudly announce that I finally got accepted into “Harvard Medical School”. 😉
bruh…
Yo how did you get that set up. I’ve been wanting to for years
I searched the university website for “body donation” and got a phone number and email address (dept of biomedical sciences).
There was a lot of info to read about what will happen. I had to let my doctor know so it’s on my medical record, and my best pal is down as the contact person. He has a phone number to ring so they can come and fetch my body asap, and decide if it’s suitable.
What inspired me was a documentary I saw years ago that interviewed a man who’d signed up for donation, then showed the process after he’d died, including dissection (from a distance). They also interviewed the students. It was very moving.
Just as a curious follow-up, did they go into what would happen if your body is rejected or is there already a back-up plan in place?
Well then it’s “as you were” - back to your executor/family/friends to decide what to do. I personally don’t care. I’ll be dead, and I’ve done my best to avoid the fuss and expense.
2 things that piss off the funeral industry
- Aquamation/water cremation/alkaline hydrolysis
- Human composting
Both are legal in my state. You should join the fight if they aren’t legal where you are.
Both are cheaper than burial. With aquamation you get back a bag of cremains just like with cremation. The only difference is instead of fire they boil you in an alkaline solution.
With composting it turns people into literal soil. You can take that back or donate it to a charity that is repairing a forest.
I second the Lemmy user who suggested Caitlin Doughty and the Order of the Good Death.
Edit: spelling
I never expected Caitlin Doughty to be mentioned here. Anyways, if you want book recs read “Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs” by her.
