Burials

Hello everyone! I'm currently a Grade 11 student in a Canadian Catholic high school. I myself was Catholic until the end of Grade 9, but I'm not anymore, so some of my classes are... interesting... Anyway, we have to take a religion course every year. Grades 9 and 10 are JESUSLOVESYOU courses, and Grade 11 is World Religions, aka This-is-why-our-religion-is-best course. So my teacher was asking us a bunch of questions about our world view, and as expected, the class went ballistic on myself and the few other atheists. When we got to the question about what happens when we die, however, I seem to have said something that people weren't really expecting (I don't know why they weren't expecting it).I said the usual atheist response (you rot in the ground) plus I explained how our remains will eventually contribute to new life and new stars, but the thing that set everyone off was when I said that plonking our corpses in graves is wasting space. I went on to state that the massive amount of land used for cemeteries could be used for something useful like hospitals, school, (public) housing, etc.I don't really understand the point of proper graves. They allegedly help to remember the deceased, but I can't comprehend how looking at a rock in the ground helps to remember someone. I can think about my dead family members just fine without standing in the middle of a glorified park (another more useful use for cemeteries). I advocate cremation for everyone, and pretty much dumping their remains in some sort of mass grave. If you wanted, obviously you could keep the ashes. And just to be clear, I don't want to force this on anyone, I'm just trying to convince people of the general silliness of graves.What do you people think? Do you want to keep cemeteries, do away with them, give people badass Viking funerals? I'd like to hear what you have to say, because you may convince me that I'm wrong, and if you don't, I'll know some new arguments to use against my classmates.Thanks!

Personally, I've left instructions in my will to be cremated and have my ashes put into the head of a rocket (firework) and fired off over the sea.Cemetaries are indeed silly.

Interesting. I have never visited my own father's grave, which is in another city from the one in which I live. On the other hand, my wife and kids visit the grave of my wife's father on occasion.I cannot come up with any reason to find their visits silly. It seems a natural thing for them to share their feelings near grandpa's resting place. If in fact such a thing is silly, one might also consider things like birthdays and anniversary's equally silly as each is only one day in what we hope is a long life or long relationship.I'm perfectly satisfied with being cremated, but if I found the idea horrified the people I left behind, I'd leave the choice in their hands.

I said cemetries are silly, I didn't say places of rememberance were. My dad's ashes are scattered on a hill that I regularly walk.

Two of my grandparents and all four of my great-grandparents are buried in the same cemetery. I've been there for two of the funerals but I've never seen the other four graves.My parents are buried in another cemetery a few miles from my house. I've never been there except for their funerals. My mother was buried wearing her wedding ring, which was never of much intrinsic value.An elderly couple I knew had a little dog; they had it cremated when it died and when the husband died, the urn was buried with him according to his wishes - I have no idea where. I last saw him shortly before he died and he seemed glad to see me - which means more to me than any thought that he's still out there somewhere being spooky.I've heard that in China they bury you and then farm right over you. That's what I'd like:

quote:

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We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

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-- Joni Mitchell

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Cremation is increasingly popular now, but just think of the impact on the archaeologists of the future!What are those poor folks going to do????

What makes a grave silly and an ash scattering place non-silly? Is it the waste of space associated with the former?

Landfills and videos.

Beta and floppies?

Well, it has their name on. Saving you the embarrassment of saying "I really miss ... whatshisname."

Why not? And some may specialize in selfies and sexting.Or printed text from the Archaic Age.

I want a vast monument built out of the piled-up skulls of my enemies.What? It's not like they were using them for anything.

Different cultures have different customs and laws. For example the HOA rules here preclude my body being placed on a platform in front of my house until all that is left are the bones which should be gathered and placed on display next to the Nespresso machine at the community center.

My plan in my youth was to be processed into fertilizer for someone's marijuana patch.I find cemeteries very interesting for the history they contain, like the fifteen or so toddlers and infants buried, all in 1892, in Duncan, Oklahoma. Measles, apparently. But yes, cemeteries are a pretty big waste of space in areas that have too little space. Cremation with scattered ashes or with closely-spaced urns would be way more practical, and I, at least, would be less icked out by ancestors' ashes than by formerly formaldehyde-soaked bodies.The whole subject of remembering/memorializing the dead is pretty odd, too - humans are the only critter that seems to do it beyond a few days.

Welcome.I give thought occasionally to my future remains. I am in my 20s, yet my innevitable death frightens me. Occasionally I come to terms with the idea of being dead, but it is the act of dying that I cannot accept: to know that I will know; one moment I will be toward the end and just waiting; the next moment I will be at the end and feel the exactness of demise. What's more, I cannot be sure that I will be dead when I am dead. Maybe my brain will keep working for a while; maybe I will be "alive" when I am killed by the examiners. And that scares me most: to be dead but still alive. To sense my loved ones gathering round me and being helpless. To wake underground! It is paralysis. I fear paralysis.That said, I want my body not to be embalmed; I want a above-ground tomb that locks from the inside; I want non-perishable food left with me and an active phoneline running to the site.Given who I am, though, I will probably get drained, preserved, and boxed. But it doesn't hurt to ask...Jon