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I have the "remains" of my husband and older son with me. (They sit side-by-side.)...Most of the time I forget that their "remains" are here. I view them as "spirits" now and don't fuss over their "remains."...All the rest of my family is buried in a Catholic cemetary in So CA. I've never been fond of going to cemetaries but I have gone once in awhile because my younger son likes to put flowers on the graves of our loved ones every so often...I want to be cremated myself and just added to the family collection here at home I guess...I wouldn't want to be buried in a grave. Funerals and caskets are way too expensive these days!...I believe that we "live on" after death and this gives me peace of mind.
I do not want to be buried because you dont decay and go back to the earth. With the embalming and casket and vault you kind of just stay like a dried up shriveled body like you see fall out of the walls in horror films. Plus its way too expensive and you take up space being buried. Cemetaries waste alot of land. The whole funeral thing and looking at your dead body and all is a no no for me too. Remember me alive and have my picture sitting by the urn with my cremated remains. Spend the money that would have been spent on all the shyt associated with burial and have drinks, tokes and a feast for the memorial attendees.
No state requires routine embalming and some don't require it at all. It is not required for cremation if performed immediately.
There are only few reasons for embalming: Waiting Period: If more than 24/48, in some cases 72 hours, then a corpse must be embalmed or refrigerated. Refrigeration is not an acceptable alternative to embalming in Texas and Minnesota. Disease: Embalming may be required for certain communicable or contagious diseases. When the patient has died of infectious illness, a doctor must be consulted to determine whether the corpse should be embalmed or not. (Embalming may actually further the spread of some diseases. Hawaii has laws against embalming under certain circumstances.) Which diseases are covered by these laws varies from state to state. Check with your local public health department for specifics if you live in one of these states. Interstate Transport. Some states require that embalming be performed on bodies being shipped out of state. Common Carrier. Some states require that embalming be performed before a body can be shipped on a common carrier such as an airline, a trucking line, or a ship.
In Kansas: Embalming is required for mausoleum interments.
In Minnesota: Embalming required for public viewing.
Not only is embalming not required here in NH, but you can legally bury your relatives in the back yard (you have to let the town know and put it on the deed, and disclose it when you sell the house/land). No casket is even necessary.
I've told my children to cremate me and that caskets and cemetery plots are a waste of money. I also let them know that I do not care what they do with my ashes. Frankly, if they feel fine with abandoning them at the crematorium, I'm okay with that.
I won't be keeping my father's ashes here inside my house. Once you're dead, I believe your soul, your spirit go to heaven (if you have faith) so it's just a shell. Why pay $8000 to bury a shell in a pretty, satin lined box, put that box in a concrete box and pay for a large stone to sit on top of it? Pointless, IMO.
My dad keeps his wife's ashes (and those of his pets) in urns at his house. Frankly, I think it's creepy. Lucky me will 'inherit' all of that... what do you do with ashes if you don't want to keep them? And having watched a couple 'scatterings' (where most of the ash ends up back in the face of the dumpers), I know I don't want to do that!
PS I just 'googled' it - the ashes can be turned into 'memory glass' or diamonds? Cool! OMIGOD! Hourglass urns! Too cool!
Because if you've been cremated you can't come back from the dead and eat people's brains. Cremation is just a preemptive strike against Zombies
Seriously though, I think graveyards are a waste of real estate. Even if you believe in some sort of afterlife, do you really think you have to come back to the dead body to communicate with them in some way? Do you really need a hole in the ground with a name tag above it to remember someone?
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, cremation just streamlines the process
I would like green burial-half the cost of a regular burial, (around $2600 here in Indiana) can be buried in wood, wicker or burial cloth--and no emblaming. Also stones have to be natural rocks and can be engraved.
Sounds like the way to go for me.
The origin of life and humans is unknown.That is to say that humans do not know how they came into being and why humans come to this world.
We only know that life and humanity is the product of natural process.Humans should therefore be in a humble attitude towards nature and the product of natural process: the human body.
Death and giving birth both are parts of natural process.Death is human body lose its functions and stops working.In nature,animals after death are decomposed by microbes and become the nutrients of microbes and plants,thus participate in the circulation of the organic matter in biosphere. This course has already lasted hundreds of millions of years since life appeared on earth,and our bodies are the products of this circulation.
After death,as long as not to burn the body as garbage by cremation,the body would still be in the original natural process.The remains would be eaten by microbes and plants,thus turned into other life forms and still in the biosystem and participate in the eternal circulation and evolvement of life in nature.
Nature never produces garbage.Its every process is reasonable,otherwise it is unlikely to create life and humans.
Death is a normal natural process,but cremation is the artificial destruction of the human body.and is the artificial destruction of things and processes that we don't really know.
Burial is to return the human body to nature.let it be handled by nature,even coffins are redundant.The dead thus blend naturally and be in one with nature and live forever with nature.By that we pay reverence to nature and things that we don't really know and also the greatest respect for the dead.
So why cremation?
Your theory has some valid points but is missing other points. In nature, fire is natural . . .forest fires are integral to clearing out dead wood in forests and animals and other life burns during this time. Nothing ever goes away, so I would assume the ashes of burned "whatever" goes back into the Earth and nourishes it in some way.
Burial is very space consuming, cremation is not.
I guess if we had no laws about such things, you could just dump grandpa out in the back yard and let nature do it's thing . . .
In Bali, I understand the death ritual is to leave the body in the house for awhile, then take it out and put it on a spit and have a party and then take the skull to a sacred place (please forgive me for not having the exact ritual - I have a lot of respect for this practice and don't mean to sound glib).
Last edited by TheViking85; 12-09-2011 at 05:00 PM..
Reason: Please refrain from the use of colored fonts in the Great Debates section.
I just finished reading an article in the New York Times ["In Tough Times, a Boom in Cremations as a Way to Save Money," by Kevin Sack http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/us...nted=1&_r=1&hp] about cremation. Very informative. And as others on this thread have said already, the primary reason for people making this choice is to save money, especially after being subjected to the economic downturn. And then there's the cost incurred by paying for expensive treatments that kept a deceased loved one alive for a long time.
According to the article, cremations are up -- from 15 percent of American deaths in 1985 to 41 percent now. And no wonder. With a typical funeral and burial costing from $10,000 to $16,000, many are opting for cremation. The cremation cost of a deceased person mentioned in the article (including death notice, death certificate and urn) came up to $1,600.
Last year, the Funeral and Memorial Information Council conducted a telephone survey of 858 people. Of those choosing cremation, one third did it primarily because it was cheaper (up from 19 percent in 1990).
My feelings? Whatever is the cheapest option wins out. I don't want to leave a big mess for anyone. And as I don't follow antiquated superstitions involving the body remaining intact, it doesn't bother me one whit to not be buried. I won't be alive to see it, so whichever option is cheapest is fine with me. I don't expect (or demand) some big funeral. In fact -- much like Frank Zappa said prior to his death -- I don't think it's important to even be remembered.
On a somewhat related note (since this thread involves one method of dealing with the dead), I can't help but feel disgusted about the thoughtless and cruel disposal of over 274 American troops into a Virginia landfill, a practice which was stopped three years ago. While we participate in a much needed debate, it has been discovered that the aforementioned military practice was kept secret from families who understandably wanted something better than that for their loved ones, the men who swore to defend the Constitution.
So, it absolutely ties into this conversation about dealing with the deceased. Again, it all comes down to expenses. However, considering the military spends exorbitant amounts of money on the wars to begin with, you would think they could show some respect rather than doing what they did. What a shame. Unforgivable.
Objections to cremation notwithstanding, I've now turned my attention to something that all of us should agree was wrong.
Last edited by grindlemeister; 12-09-2011 at 09:56 AM..
A body, without embalming, will eventually return to it's basic mineral components. That's called oxidation. Cremation merely hastens this process. The heat drives off the water content, leaving only that which takes much much longer to decay. Minerals like calcium.
So, it's much closer to nature than any embalming, casket, vault, etc, that we see in cemeteries today.
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