Ever Discovered Many Old Friends Are Dead?

[flowrie]

Cremation is 'the way' to get one's carcass disposed of.

Should it be expensive or should it be inexpensive?

The cost for an average funeral with all it's attendant folderal (unless your wealthy and you don't mind) is in the cost neighborhood of buying a car, sometimes a compact and sometimes a Lamborghini.

That shouldn't be.

I've a few friends in the funeral industry. Believe me they want you to spend a bundle...

Don't spend a bundle on funeral cost.

When it's my turn to be a corpse, just let the buzzards eat me or cremate me. Sounds grim, but that's what some cultures do. Good for them. Spending a ton of moola on dead loved ones is just feeling guilty and easily being taken advantage of...

Be cremated.

If you spend over $1500.00 for doing so, you're being taken advantage of...

Consider this: Do you think anything will matter (concerning your death or for that matter much of anything else..., but I digress) in a million years?

No, it won't.

In the long run (actually in the short run relatively speaking...) no one's death is important.

Why?

Because we all die without leaving a lasting legacy beyond a few thousand years (that's assuming you're in the minority of the eminently rememorable, like Shakespeare. In the long run if humanity is still kicking, few will remember us as our recorded history at this point is a paltry 10,000 years.

None of us is important.

When time passes we will naturally be forgotten and why shouldn't we be...?

We like to think we're important...

We're not, and that's not morbid, just the truth...

I agree, in part, very few people in this world are remembered after 2 or 3 generations, many less than that.
For example,
I remember my grandparents, but not my great grandparents. I wasn't alive to be able to remember them. No one bothered to tell me about them either.
Of course, with my faith, I know everything in this world is temporary. Better to focus on the eternal and who will remember you in the next eternal life, that person being Christ Jesus. You want to make sure He remembers you ( knows you ).

So I actually believe we are important today in this world, our actions today have consequences for those that follow just as Christ's actions on the cross have consequences for us.

[bblhd672]

Mrs Oldgringo and I are giving our bodies to science. There is no point in having a funeral. The folk who won't come to see us when we're alive probably wouldn't show up for a funeral and if they did, we wouldn't know it. So there, funerals are for the living anyway.

That is another option I'm considering. Both of my wife's parents donated their bodies to medical schools. The cremated remains were returned when the med school was through with them.

[RPBrown]

The real problem with all of this is that it makes you want to not buy any more guns because you know that it will be a pain for the wife to get rid of after you are gone. Both brothers live in Commiefornia so they are not getting them.
So what! I am still buying.

I have 5 kids and 6 grandkids that will get mine. I can't let my wife sell them. She would sell them for what she thinks I paid for them

[RPBrown]

Cremation is 'the way' to get one's carcass disposed of.

Should it be expensive or should it be inexpensive?

The cost for an average funeral with all it's attendant folderal (unless your wealthy and you don't mind) is in the cost neighborhood of buying a car, sometimes a compact and sometimes a Lamborghini.

That shouldn't be.

I've a few friends in the funeral industry. Believe me they want you to spend a bundle...

Don't spend a bundle on funeral cost.

When it's my turn to be a corpse, just let the buzzards eat me or cremate me. Sounds grim, but that's what some cultures do. Good for them. Spending a ton of moola on dead loved ones is just feeling guilty and easily being taken advantage of...

Be cremated.

If you spend over $1500.00 for doing so, you're being taken advantage of...

Consider this: Do you think anything will matter (concerning your death or for that matter much of anything else..., but I digress) in a million years?

No, it won't.

In the long run (actually in the short run relatively speaking...) no one's death is important.

Why?

Because we all die without leaving a lasting legacy beyond a few thousand years (that's assuming you're in the minority of the eminently rememorable, like Shakespeare. In the long run if humanity is still kicking, few will remember us as our recorded history at this point is a paltry 10,000 years.

None of us is important.

When time passes we will naturally be forgotten and why shouldn't we be...?

We like to think we're important...

We're not, and that's not morbid, just the truth...

When my mother died, my brother who was her care giver, had let her life insurance lapse so funeral expenses would come out of we three kids pockets and since neither him nor my sister had any pockets to pull from, it came from my pockets. As soon as I said I would take care of it my brother started going in and trying to pick out the most expensive casket they had on site ($24,000.00) and I put a very quick stop to that. Stepped back and got a nice steel casket for about $1500.00. Of course he tried to play the we want the best for her card but I followed with we will only see it for a day and I'm paying for it card.

[Oldgringo]

Mrs Oldgringo and I are giving our bodies to science. There is no point in having a funeral. The folk who won't come to see us when we're alive probably wouldn't show up for a funeral and if they did, we wouldn't know it. So there, funerals are for the living anyway.

That is another option I'm considering. Both of my wife's parents donated their bodies to medical schools. The cremated remains were returned when the med school was through with them.

That's the plan we've signed up for. One of us, in all likelihood, will know whether it works or not.

[Abraham]

That's my wife's plan. Donate her cadaver to medical science.

As we've many friends who're are MD's, she thought it would be a good idea.

They always need cadavers to whittle on.

That said, cremation, at least to me, just seems the way I want to go.

I rather like the old vehicle that carried me around all these decades and thinking of surgical students doing what they have to do in their anatomical dissecting/learning just strikes me as ghastly and my old pal (my body) in a way students carving it up causes me distress. Am I right in my opinion? No, of course not. I don't think there is a right or wrong. However, one of my buds (a surgeon) told me of cadaver carving experiences in med. school that made me more than a little sad.

So, just reduce me to bone salts, sprinkle me over some good kayaking water and forget me.

And don't fool yourself you'll be remembered. Oh you will for a scant while, but given mountains rising and falling and seas drying up and filling up your time on earth doesn't even come under the heading of brief...

We humans have a tendency to think geology and the passing of millions/billions/googles of time passage is something that doesn't really enter into your world view...wrong, it's going on and on and on and you'll eventually we all go back to star dust...

[Oldgringo]

That's my wife's plan. Donate her cadaver to medical science.

As we've many friends who're are MD's, she thought it would be a good idea.

They always need cadavers to whittle on.

That said, cremation, at least to me, just seems the way I want to go.

I rather like the old vehicle that carried me around all these decades and thinking of surgical students doing what they have to do in their anatomical dissecting/learning just strikes me as ghastly and my old pal (my body) in a way students carving it up causes me distress. Am I right in my opinion? No, of course not. I don't think there is a right or wrong. However, one of my buds (a surgeon) told me of cadaver carving experiences in med. school that made me more than a little sad.

So, just reduce me to bone salts, sprinkle me over some good kayaking water and forget me.

And don't fool yourself you'll be remembered. Oh you will for a scant while, but given mountains rising and falling and seas drying up and filling up your time on earth doesn't even come under the heading of brief...

We humans have a tendency to think geology and the passing of millions/billions/googles of time passage is something that doesn't really enter into your world view...wrong, it's going on and on and on and you'll eventually we all go back to star dust...

, one can't get a whole lot deader than dead. Heckfire, our agreement says that our cadavers may even be used for target practice. How cool is that?

[JustSomeOldGuy]

To some extent, it balances out. I've also discovered that some folks I knew in high school that I would have bet real money on having Darwin'ed themselves out of existence somewhere in their 20's are not only still alive 4 decades later but are even 1) not in prison and 2) are actually earning a living, in socially acceptable ways........