I have always wanted to be an organ donor or donate my whole body to science. I feel good about it just thinking of it.

My husband, however, doesn't like the idea. I'm sure he'd like a nice Mormon funeral and a burial in a casket underground right next to him.

My question is: Should you do what the living person wants? After all, he is the one living. It won't make any difference to me if I'm dead. Or, should you follow the wishes of the dead person?

If he followed my wishes, then he'd have to forgo the church funeral (because I don't want anything to do with that), and it would be embarrassing for him.

If I followed HIS wishes for his burial, I would have to plan a church funeral which I would hate to do.

Suggestions?

Personally, if a deceased person had made known what they wanted, then I would follow that directive. I absolutely don't want a morgliated funeral with the viewings, speeches about the plan of salvation, white shirts & ties, and the funeral taters & jello that follow it up. I have made that known to my kids. However, they might just follow with what they perceive as "the right thing to do" and do what they have been taught by their upbringing within the gawd almighty morg simply because that is the way it has always been done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-NqKql6t8k

Very similar to this video.

As your first reply said, if the deceased has explicit direction on what THEY want to have happen after their death, then the Executor of the deceased estate should follow them. If your husband wants a church funeral, then that is what you should do. YOU need to be sure that you have a written statement with your will on what YOU want to have done for your funeral and/or burial. Leave nothing to interpretation by anyone.

My dad (Jack-MO) wanted to be cremated and have his ashes buried next to his wife (my stepmom, also cremated), and to have a non-religious service. My mom (very TBM at the end) wished to be buried with her husband (my step-dad) and wanted a more religious style service. I was executor for both, and I abided by what they directed and/or had already set up.

I myself, have a document with my will that states SPECIFICALLY what I want to have done, and my son (who is executor) knows what to do when I do pass away.

I agree with DaveinTX. Whenever possible, follow the deceased's wishes as outlined in his or her will. A husband and a wife may want different things. My dad had a regular burial, but my mom's cremated remains were buried beside him.

I don't think, however, that people need go into debt to pay for the funeral of a relative who did not leave enough money to cover it.

A further note........

My will says that I am to be cremated and that I want my ashes scattered in Albion Basin in Little Cottonwood Canyon. My wife's will says that she is to be scattered wherever my ashes are scattered. If she dies first, then she wants me to wait and have our son scatter hers with mine. Both wills say NO religious service, but to have a celebration of life memorial gathering of some sort.

This is important to know:

At the crematory, before cremated ashes are returned to family members (or whoever is authorized to receive them), a small metal identification tag is added to the ashes (which evidently identifies both the crematory and the deceased individual whose ashes they are).

Before scattering cremated ashes on public properties (forests...rivers...seashore...parks...wherever), that tag needs to be taken out of the ashes and taken away from the area before it is disposed of.

If that tag is found by park rangers, etc. the person or persons who scattered the ashes may be subject to legal process, depending on where the ashes were scattered.

In a very simple method, I've signed up to donate my remains to the University of Utah, for research when I die. I've given all 3 of my adult kids a card with the phone number and the Universtiy will come pick me, use my body as needed (I have a feeling they'll look at me and decide there isn't much to research).

My kids know that I don't care what they do with my cremains (love that word) and I have a feeling they won't want to put out a dime for mortuary services. But that's up to them.

I know they won't want a church service, which is fine with me.

DW and I had a meeting with an estate lawyer today and when we discussed burial/cremation/donation for medical purposes the point of donations was eye opening.

Unless you are very specific about what they can do with your remains, the CSI types might use it to see how it decomposes under various environmental conditions out in rain in the mountains or the heat in a desert.

Just something to think about.

I'm donating my body to the University of Tennessee forensic Body Farm for that exact purpose. I don't really care what they do to me as long as they learn something. I'm a scientist. If I can help forensic scientists with their research, I'm happy to do it.

I've always had a fear of being buried alive. Therefore, I have made it known (in writing), I want to be cremated, and buried in an urn next to my husband (in a casket).

Definitely not sitting on someone's fireplace mantel. (UGH!)
----

When I was a Rel. Soc. President, a woman I visited with was the only member of the church in her family (that I was aware of), and she was completely inactive. Mostly, the only thing she ever said to me was, 'Soooo', (although she seemed to like my visits).

When she passed away, her family asked me to give the service next to her grave. I tried to get an elder to go with me, but no soap. So (no pun intended), I ended up being the only church representative, and having very little I could say about her--except mentioning she seemed to enjoy my visits, and then repeating her usual part of the 'conversation' with me ('So'), and asked the few present if that remark was familiar with them also. No one responded.

(It was a very short grave-side service.)

I am firmly on both sides of this issue...which means: I don't have any real sense of what the optimally "right" thing to do is.

For the last thirty years or so, I have functioned as my family's Director of Final Disposition...

...and I still dunno. :(

Looking back to when I was very little, I was born during a period of deep and fundamental family change, where there were still traditional burials of actual, fully intact, bodies...

...but family perceptions (on all sides and branches of my California-based family, as versus family branches elsewhere) were changing rapidly (as generational change goes).

My Mom always told me (starting when I don't think I was even in school yet) that when she died, she wanted to be cremated and have her ashes scattered (and this was usually as the result of the burial of another relative of my father or hers, relatives from a generation or more older than they were).

So I grew up knowing that, after death, some people's bodies were buried intact (I was not aware of any harvesting of body parts, which I think was about to happen...but had not happened just yet)...while other people's bodies were cremated and the ashes were then scattered.

There was then a transitional time in my family when bodies were buried, but where body parts (my mother's family was very big on contributing eye parts in particular) were harvested first...combined with (very soon afterwards) straight cremation.

When my paternal grandfather died from leukemia, there was no harvesting of body parts, and my Grandpa's body was cremated immediately by, or through, a funeral home across the river in Marysville (Northern California). At some point, my parents arranged for my Grandpa's ashes to be interred at a cemetery nearby to where I grew up in Southern California (right up against the Santa Susana Mountains, adjacent to where Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and their family lived)...and my parents bought the adjoining [small] space at the same time, so that my Grandma's ashes could be interred there after she died.

When Grandma did die (many years later, for which I am grateful because I loved, and still love, both of my paternal grandparents very much), the curtain went up for the adventurous odyssey of Grandma's ashes (which became some of the undoubtedly most well-traveled ashes in the history of American cremation). For some reason unknown to me (and probably to them, too ;) ), Grandma's ashes were placed in their camper truck, for the confusing (to me) reason that my parents could scatter them if they were at a properly scenic place in their travels (never mind that they had already purchased a place to inter them next to my Grandpa's ashes in California). My parents traveled around the country for years, and they never found the "right" place to scatter Grandma's ashes (which were still in their original packaging, and kept in the truck overhead).

When my aunt (Mom's sister) was dying, my parents flew from New Jersey (they had moved there a number of years before because of my father's employment) to Escondido (Southern California), and before they left New Jersey they retrieved Grandma's ashes from the truck overhead and brought the ashes with them to the motel in Escondido they were sort-of "staying" in. Mom told me where the ashes were in the motel room, and asked me to retrieve them so I could, at least eventually, inter them next to Grandpa's ashes in the cemetery, which (in the midst of everything ELSE that was going on right then) I did.

I now possessed the VERY well-worn package which contained my Grandma's ashes, and (several months later, as I remember) I DID take them to the cemetery in Chatsworth and pay to have them interred in the space next to my Grandpa's ashes.

After my Mom died, my sister scattered Mom's ashes into the Colorado River on a trip my sister took to the Grand Canyon.

After my father died, my sister "scattered" his ashes into a campfire in North Carolina where she (and a group of other people she had affiliated with) were incinerating the memorabilia of their prior lives ;) .

My aunt's ashes (along with the ashes of Charlie Brown, the beloved to them dog my maternal grandmother and my aunt had when I was growing up) are, right now, in a file drawer (it is a very NICE file drawer!!!) in a storage unit nearby where I live. (I am still trying to figure out the "right" place to scatter them.)

I am strongly in favor of people donating their own bodies (or any useful parts) to those people or institutions who can best use them for the good of those who are still alive.

I am also in favor of contemporary cremation (but well aware that the resulting ashes can become parts of strange family odysseys that no one anticipated...and that can, for various reasons, be difficult to resolve).

And I am VERY glad that the generations who lived in the 1800s and earlier buried their dead...because some of the places I love and appreciate the most are ("Old West") cemeteries---particularly the cemeteries in Bodie, California...and in Virginia City, Nevada...as well as Abraham Lincoln's tomb (which I have been to).

And thanks to my Aunt Tomi, without whom none of this would have EVER been written (because it would never have been lived). The immensity of what she did FOR ME, long before I was ever born, and long before my parents ever even met each other (or COULD have met each other), can NEVER be fully acknowledged.

Because of her, I am able to type this here.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2018 04:47PM by Tevai.

You should do what is cheapest. Your spouse should understand. Even so-called "pre-paid" burials end up costing thousands more at the time of death. American funerals are obscenely expensive, and obscenely hard on the environment.

1. Have a will appointing a person you are sure will carry out your intentions and provide penalties for anyone who not do so!
2. I will turn over in my grave if anyone puts my body through an LDS service. I do wish to be buried and not cremated.
3. You will prevent any relatives from pushing your spouse if they outlive you to have the LDS service. In my case I would suspect some of our children of such an intention.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2018 09:14PM by rhgc.

My plan is to be cremated abd then have my ashes shipped off to a company that turns them into Diamonds.

I'll hang around for years, set in goldn on my granddaughter's finger.

I am donating my body to the University of Tennessee Forensic Body Farm in Knoxville, TN.

I've always been interested in forensic science. When I die, I want to help out any way I can.

fossilman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am donating my body to the University of
> Tennessee Forensic Body Farm in Knoxville, TN.
>
> I've always been interested in forensic science.
> When I die, I want to help out any way I can.


This is one of the things I have been thinking about too.

You are the only person I "know personally," fossilman, who is thinking about doing this!!!

:)

The only hang up is that there is a delivery fee if you don't live in Tennessee. I'm in Alabama, so I'm sure it won't be too bad. If that's the only funeral expense I incur, I'll be happy. Wait. I'll be dead, so I won't care!

'Should you do what the living person wants? ... Or, should you follow the wishes of the dead person? It won't make any difference to me if [when] I'm dead."

That is just the point, to honor the living while they're living and then respect them (their wishes/ your agreements) still when they're dead, by continuing to honor their wishes (about burial, etc.).

The dead get what they want. The living have to suffer through it... until they do too.

M@t

I plan on being the o.y speaker at my funeral. I video talks every few years where I record things and thoughts about my perceptions on life. The last thing I want is to have some service about me where the folks running it have an agenda, and I am just the side note. Or folks that only know a fraction of you pick some sliver of your personality and make that the whole you. I think about a few funerals where complex people are reduced to ‘they liked to knit and clean the church on saturday’. I don’t want any question to linger on what i valued in life, what I thought of my achievements, etc. I place these videos in a safety deposit box and reference them in my will and let a few close friends and family know about them

I'm planning my [own] funeral (NOW)!

That way, when "it" 'happens', I'll be "ready".

M@t



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2018 01:29PM by moremany.

I love the idea of pre-paying and arranging my own funeral. Problem is how do you pay if you don't have much money? Will life insurance pay for that ahead of your death?