I knew back when I was in my 60's no casket in the ground for this gal. So back in 2004 I signed up with a mortuary and cost back then for simple cremation was $600something, Today their rate is $995 and another company I found is $850, Neptune is High, about 2700... Last casket buriel was my dad and no frills, plain simple casket and cemetary and headstone was close to $10K.... Talking to him, he didn't care where he was laid. My sister did the footwork.....Of course we didn't ask him what he wanted..... All those graves that no one visits them .... big business and I think so much is changing. Good idea to set some plans.
I have visited relatives graves that died in the 1700s, so many graves are visited. If you are cremated, you are gone when those who knew you are dead unless your ashes are buried with a marker in one place. If they are scattered, you will be forgotten in one generation, plus it is very energy intensive and pollutes the air. If you can manage a wooden box in an unembalmed state as the Jews and Muslims do, you would return much of what you took from the earth back to the earth. If you remember the story of my friend who out her husband in an unheated building until the ground thawed enough that she could bury him on her property. Funeral homes here have large freezers for that purpose too. One of my wife's friends died in February, but she has been frozen since then. When her family can get up here next month. she will be interred at a local cemetery, probably still frozen.
I don’t much care what happens to me, no need for a grave or marker. I understand some medical schools will provide no charge cremation if you donate your body. I’d probably go that route, if true, if the cost for a regular cremation seemed unreasonable.
I want to return to the lowest level of humanity, a tiny atom that floats around above ground and has eternal light and fresh air. I do not want to be in a casket and have several layers on top of me filled with strangers. The cost is highway robbery and I was also thinking I should get my plan drawn up and paid for. I will get 250 dollars burial expense being a veteran so that will pay for the cardboard box. I'm hoping to find something really cheap and I will ask either of my two sisters to spread me near the spot they spread my younger brother. He is outside Las Vegas someplace in high desert off the highway. He liked it out there when he was young and did a lot of exploring. The sister spreading his ashes also took part of the ashes and spread them on Pacific Beach San Diego, crab food I suppose but I do know my Brother was not happy with the changes in San Diego and all the out of towner's moving in and taking over. My sister thought she was doing the right thing but he did not like San Diego or what it had turned into. I'm sure he did like the beach but it is so crowded now you would not like it. When I see him again I'll ask him about living on the Beach for eternity.
My daughter when she was very young used to tell me, "mom I will keep you in my bedroom in a pretty box", I believe she forgot she said that. My neighbor had her brother in a box in a cabinet but I wonder who took care of things when she died recently. So so funny from the Fockers Movie
I've already prepaid for my own cremation. $1,100 or so. My son or a grandson will be responsible for the cremains. What I have asked they do is to take them, and the cremains of my second wife and our two fur kids, and put them in the Pacific Ocean at the Black Sand Beach in Punalu'u (Big Island of Hawaii). We lived close to there for a couple of years. A good place to spend eternity. If that is not possible, plan B is to put us next to my first wife in the cemetery in Ohio. She was cremated, and her cremains are buried there. Monument is already there, including my name, and two burial plots. My second wife would not be memorialized with a monument, though, and I don't like that. Plan C would be to put us next to my daughter, who died about 40 years ago, in a different Ohio cemetery. She had a traditional burial, and I bought 3 burial plots at the time. So plenty of room. But in the end, it is out of my hands.
I don't want to be buried at all. I want to be cremated, and it would be nice if someone would sprinkle me around our backyard. (This is not a joke.) I'd rather just hang around here with my little ghost dog, Harry.
Timely reminder for me to get off of my butt and make these arrangements. I want my ashes scattered down by my creek. I have no one to visit my grave. It's interesting, I've been to a number of funerals, and the only cremations have been in my immediate family (mother, father, older brother.) Everyone else had an open casket viewing. I've asked around to find someone I can trust to do the job after I'm no longer around to provide oversight. I don't want to freak out someone who's merely doing a little dumpster diving.
When my ex wife died a couple years ago her husband wasn't even going to have a service of any kind. Her Mother is in her 90s and she pretty much demanded there be a gathering. So she was cremated and no big fan fare. It was a small place off I-10 in Katy Tx. I guess there are a lot of those small crematoriums all over and we just don't know where they are.
My father passed away in Richmond VA (I was living with him at the time.) We had a service there, it was mainly folks from his job. He had been cremated. We put a black cloth on the back seat of my brother's Camaro, put the urn on it, whoever was in the back kept it from turning over, and we drove it 100 miles north where my mother kept it for a while and then we buried him. When she died no one knew for sure what she wanted done. She told one sister she wanted to be cremated. She told the other sister "For God's sake, don't let them cremate me." That was pretty much how she operated. So when the funeral parlor told us the price difference, I made an executive decision. She got cremated, and the place that we buried my father's urn allowed us to put our mother's urn next to him in the same plot. I've not checked out costs of a spot on the columbarium here. I really don't see the point. I think it was Mitch Hedberg who wanted his friends to carry handfuls of his ashes around, throw them in the faces of people he disliked, saying "Mitch says 'Hi!'"
Well my Grandmother loved her Father very much and he is buried in a little Baptist Church cemetery about 50 miles from here where I live. Everything is above ground in tombs, so when she died and was cremated she specifically ask that her urn be set on top of his tomb. That was done and some years ago another family member visited the little cemetery and saw that Grandmother's urn had been moved to his feet. It was moved back to the head and she left a note so that when someone might move it again they would have some answering to do. We found out it was one of her snooty nieces who lived not far from the cemetery. People I have not seen for 69 years.
My preference would be to be buried since that's the traditional thing. However, it's not a strong preference, and I don't know that it would warrant the extra cost, as compared to cremation. Buried or cremated, I would like to have a marker at the cemetery in Wallace, Michigan. When you're buried in a hometown cemetery, where generations of your family are buried, people do visit.
You were up late last night. I could just tap out and say bury me in the national cemetery costing me nothing but I don't want that. I want the sisters to spread me out in the air and that's the end of it. No one will ever visit the national cemetery to see the generations I am a part of. I am not real proud of my City anyway allowing it to turn into what it has become. You live in a war zone no matter where you live, if you don't carry a weapon you stand a very good chance of some thug killing you. In 82 when I left for good it was just beginning to start and most of it was that new craze of drug peddlers watching too much TV and movies. I moved out north for a short time and it wasn't enough so I moved as far west possible without getting my feet wet. It was a pleasant change to live in San Diego again, it had not changed that much and the local law enforcement did a good job keeping it pretty clean. Hard to believe I have no family living there any longer. The one holdout was the oldest of two sisters and she and her husband finally got enough of LA and moved to Arizona last year. Youngest sister is slowly getting over the sudden loss of her husband and is thinking seriously about also moving to Arizona to be near the other sister. Me I ain't moving, I like the peace and quiet here where I live and there is not much chance it will ever get any worse here than it is. The drug peddlers are living here also and our courts are so weak they are afraid to put them away, probably due to not having the money to feed all these worthless people. I guess we already see they are going to allow them to completely take over the nation. They do what they do because they want to do it and I have no sympathy for them.