Alas, I just finished making a cremation box for Yvonne’s first husband. ( her children’s dad) It will be going to Idaho in a couple of days. Made of Cherry, Walnut, Hackberry, Birch and Pine Heart.
The box I made for my dad. It’s pretty beat up now because it was kept by my dad’s girlfriend for a couple of years and then shipped to my brother and finally wound up with the builder, me. Made of Walnut, Oak, Larch, Cherry, with Mahogany and Ash diamond inlays in the interior.
I have a prepaid creamation policy but not for environmental reasons. It cost less. Many burial sights are just too expensive.
I would have thought you’d want to take advantage of having your ashes scattered into space! https://www.iflscience.com/space/yo...e-as-british-company-launches-space-funerals/
I went through a similar thing. My parents were separated. My father died in '75 and was cremated. We drove his ashes 100 back home and buried them in a cemetery plot with a small service. I was 20 years old at the time and was not involved in any of this: not the planning, not the purchase of the plot (unless it had been previously purchased), etc. Fast forward to 2006 when my mother died, and we had her cremated and buried next to dad (not necessarily her wishes, but that's what ended up happening.) Since it was a full-sized plot, the cemetery allowed us to have a post-hole dug so both of their ashes could be buried in it. I, too, wondered why dad's ashes were buried. But it's either that or a columbarium, or scatter them to the winds, or have someone take custody of them and them worry about the burden on future generations.
I wish to be cremated, but my husband wants a traditional burial. So if I die first, the kids can just sit me on a shelf until he dies, then tuck my urn into his coffin so I can annoy him for eternity.
I gather there are several newer ways to deal with ashes these days, too, in addition to the classic ways you list @John Brunner -- compress into gemstones to wear as jewelry, bury in the back yard where permitted and plant a fruit tree over them, and ashes can be released or buried in a national park if 200 feet away from water. Given the difficult relationships we had with the adopto-parents, neither my brother (also adopted but not genetically related to me) nor I would have wanted to keep ashes on the mantle. It was, actually, a little creepy years ago when my ex's mother died and her ashes were mailed to us to be scattered over Puget Sound at her request. They/she sat on a closet shelf in the den for a couple years until we found out it was okay to release them from a ferry. As dad was a WWII vet and buried in a veterans cemetery in St Louis, mom was eligible to be buried in his grave. The groundskeepers had bored a hole in the soil into which the plastic bag inside a cardboard container was set. Mom had made the arrangements decades ago and didn't see the sense of an urn. Soon after, the back of his gravestone had her details engraved.
It seems we all got stories. My parents had been separated (but not divorced) for maybe 7-8 years when dad died at age 55 from cancer. He, too, was a WWII vet (that's how they met...she was British.) We drove his ashes the 100 miles home in the back seat of my brother's Camaro, with the urn sitting on a velvet cloth. Our mother did not want to let go of the ashes. It took a while (weeks) to get them away from her..the whole thing was surreal. I forget exactly how putting mom in the same plot came about...I likely had something to do with it When we were at the funeral home trying to decide what to do with her remains (since she had not documented her wishes), one sister said that our mother told her "I want to be cremated." The other sister claims mom said "Whatever you do, don't let them cremate me." This was typical behaviour. So I asked the relative costs, and then I made an executive decision...someone had to decide. No one argued. Even though they are buried in the same plot, since he was in there first only his name shows in the on-line directory. She has her own plaque, but each plot has just one record in their database. I'm not sure that anyone else in my family knows this, not that it matters. I happened to discover it when I got curious as to his birth date and I searched online for his marker.
@John Brunner , have you tried adding their /her info to FindaGrave.com ? I was able to do that for mom, with photo, long bio, and a graveside details notation about the cremation and burial with her husband. It's free, but you do have to register as a site user. FindaGrave.com is apparently owned by Ancestry.com and is a favorite resource for those doing genealogical research.
That's interesting. It might be the responsible thing to do for someone in the future who may have need. Thanks!
It was on FindaGrave that I discovered my paternal grandmother had her name on the gravestones of both her first and second husbands. Now I am not certain where she is really buried. LOL!