I don't and when I have been in cemetaries and seen them I wondered about who the interred were. I checked and you can have a small mausolem built for $8,000. The attached pictures show mausoleums that cos much more. Pretty nice, but I'm still going to be cremated and scattered.
No; most everyone I know is buried or cremated. I will be cremated and my husband wants a traditional burial. It appears I will be shuffling off the mortal coil first, so they can put my ashes in a box and tuck them in with his corpse.
You can also make kimchi in it! And I HATE that word (cremains.) When I was helping make my older brother's arrangements, I had to ask the guy at the funeral home to please stop using that word. It sounds too much like something left in the bottom of your coffee cup. I need to start a thread on making one's own arrangements in advance. I got no one to do it after I'm dead. Lots of questions.
There is a thread like that on the BC forum; it's quite informative but depressing. (Amazon also has coffins and so does Costco.) I don't like the word "cremains" either. Not sure why I used it. I used to tell my kids they could put my ASHES in an old mayonnaise jar.
"Cremains" sounds like a portmanteau of "creepy" and"remains." Of course, the word "remains" is an interesting choice of words as it relates to our after-death discussions...has that "left behind" feel to it. I'd appreciate a link to that forum/topic so I can refine my notes. I really need to do this.
Here's the topic... LINK. It's a difficult-to-navigate forum with the worst search feature I've ever encountered. It annoys me that such a busy forum has such a pathetic interface, but it is what it is. (You can't quote someone so you have to "address" them in a reply and hope they see it because no notifications. )
Yeah, it started in 2011 or something. It makes me sad to look at the posters' "latest activity" dates.
But as you've said, success stories escape and don't look back. Things were easier when Grandpa got The Croup and he made it or he didn't. Putting a name to things may or may not remove fear.
When I did that Club Med in Martinique, there were no in-ground burials in town. It's an odd thing when you're not used to it. Some of them were finished with ceramic bathroom tile (in need of repair) with photographs sitting on top. I think islands have a high water table and perhaps a risk of polluting the ground water. But it all seems so 3rd Worldly. I really like that natural burial place in North Carolina. Regarding me, I would like to have my ashes scattered at the small historic church I attended a while ago, but how do you ask such things?
Many places in the marshlands of the Gulf Coast (New Orleans, most of southern Louisiana, etc.) have above-ground vaults due to the high water table. This is the same reason we don't have basements. So there are a lot of mausoleum burials in those areas. I heard about the natural burial place in NC from the Youtube channel "Phyllis Stokes." I used to enjoy watching her, and when her husband died that is how he was buried. A few months later she also died and was buried in the same place, wrapped in muslin fabric if I remember correctly. I suppose you could inquire at a funeral home about having your ashes spread. I think many times that is just done on the sly by friends/family. My parents are buried in a country church cemetery where the plots are FREE... you just mark off the section you want and notify the caretaker. My brother was also buried there last August; it's a pretty little place, quiet and well kept. Many churches in the deep south still have no-cost burial plots in the churchyard.
My father was cremated in Richmond VA and then we drove his ashes (in the back seat of the Camaro) to a cemetery not far from home and buried the urn. Even though our parents had long been separated (but never divorced), when my mother died we had her cremated and buried her ashes in the same plot as our father. Since it was a full-sized plot with just an urn in it, we somehow got permission to dig another post hole and drop her next to him. The sorta interesting thing about that is it is a single plot with one plot ID#, so the online database only has one First Name field and one Last Name field for the plot. The photo shows two small markers, but you cannot lookup our mother in the database...only our father is listed. When she passed, I recall sitting at the funeral home with the 4 remaining siblings trying to decide what to do with her. One sister said "Mom told me she wanted to be cremated." The other sister said "Mom told me that no matter what, don't let them cremate me." I am certain they were both telling the truth. So I asked what the cost difference was, and decided that cremation what she really wanted. Nobody argued.