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End of life planning for the agnostic

Has anyone given serious thought as to how your end of life planning might unfold when all of the extended family have a Christian bent?
I will be cremated as will my wife and neither one of us gives a shit what happens to our residue. We want no services or funeral home either. That means her family will have to deal with it in their own way.

tymtravler 6 Feb 15
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12 comments

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I am an organ donor, a carver donation, and if there is any thing left after that well burn it and throw it to the winds. The body is going to rot anyway.

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I have told my family that everything gets donated, even skin, and my ashes get thrown on the family estate where I dug graves for the family pets. I told several people that I will come back and destroy them if anything christian happened to me.

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This would suggest belief in an after life, which I don't have, but I rather like the Klingon ritual of screaming/roaring at the top of your voice, when next to the body, to let the other side know the spirit of a warrior is coming. Then tell someone else they can do what they like with the body as is doesn't matter.

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Burn me to a pile of ashes and sprinkle me somewhere nice, preferrably the Carribean. That's where I had the best times of my life for a number of years. But no one in my family would actually do that. I'll probably end up in the back of someone's closet forever.

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I would prefer to be buried at sea. To do so they will have to cremate me. Family members are not invited aboard the ship when it goes out for this purpose. My other sense is that when I have demised, I am no longer my problem and someone else will have to deal with my remains as they see fit.

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Mine is simple, I am an organ donor, the rest at this stage gets cremated, no service no attendance, no notice in the paper, just gone. My assets have already been transferred into joint ownership with my beneficiaries so even my will is superfluous.

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I'd like either body donation or organ donation. Seems like there are different laws about those things per state, but if anyone can use my spare parts for something good after I'm dead, I'd like that.

If I had a family with a Christian bent when I was dying, I'd want them out of sight and out of earshot. That's the last thing I need to hear at the moment of my death.

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I've made it well known that I'd like to be cremated or donated to science, and if I end up wasting space in a casket in a cemetery there's going to be some exorcist-level haunting going down. Also - no funeral, only a raging party that would put Project X to shame.

Well said WickedNicki. I couldn't agree more! Just one thought...How do you get a body to a crematory without somehow getting a funeral business involved? I am speaking about a situation where my partner may go first so I would be dealing with the details. Living in Kentucky, state law says I can put a family member wherever. I already have a slave graveyard on my property so I could theoretically throw her in back of my pickup and drop her in a hole somewhere ( the hole is optional).

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I told my son if he had a minister at my funeral, I'd haunt him forever.

I don't really care one way or the other, I'll be dead.

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I recommend the book Stiff my Mary Roach.
She is a funny science writer and she explores what happens to your body after death.

I personally want to donate my body or plant a tree over it

Myah Level 6 Feb 16, 2018
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No planning because I will be dead

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The ceremonies are for the living, not the dead. And I checked the organ donor box on my license.

I agree with him, except for the organ donor case, since they prefer young organs.

@birdingnut I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter how old you are for the lens of the eye to still be useful to others. There may be some other good parts left, too. Just because you check the box doesn't mean they will use parts that are unsuitable. I trust them to assess what's still good or not.

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