@zblaze I totally agree with you the importance of discussing with your loved ones not only your desires but your wishes for them.
I am fascinated by the people who I encounter who have ashes installed in some prominant place in the house or cemetary and go talk with them!
The other source of astonishment are the numbers who fail to give their partners or children the right to die before they do. The concept of ownership of family members is sadly still very prevalent even with professed enlightened people.

Having once been requested to sit for hours and watch my comatose father-in-law wheeze his last breath I can only say "ridiculous". Fortunately his son agreed and so we went off and had something to eat.
I find it even more ridiculous when people (usually religious) ask "will you be attending so and so's funeral?"
My response which happily shocks many is "if I have no desire to spend time with them when they are alive why would I spend time with them when they are dead and wearing a wooden overcoat?"

Personally, I would prefer to just wander off - the way many animals do - into the woods, maybe the last sounds being wind through the trees or birdsong, and lie down and die ...

Of course it is different for everyone. The experience I had when my partner died was the just the opposite for her. She wanted as many people around as possible. She had a brain tumor and nothing was affected accept her speech even up to the final moment. She also was a part of a willed body program so time was critical. If it is a good death I think most would like to have others around. If it is a long agonizing death maybe not.

I have heard some animals, likes cats, sense the time has come and go off to be alone. I know of one woman friend who went out to the woods (she was a hiker) and was never seen again.