<p>Are you going to be cremated (and will that bother anyone in your family)? What music do you want played? Will you be buried in your family cemetery, or your spouse’s family cemetery?</p>
<p>Or do you avoid thinking about your own demise?</p>
<p>No, I don’t avoid thinking about it…I just haven’t done anything about it yet! It should be on my to-do list, along with updating the will that predates our son graduating from college.</p>
<p>I never thought I would still be so busy after our boy left home, but my work schedule is crazy.</p>
<p>I have made it very clear that I want to be cremated. I haven’t come up with a great idea of what to do with my ashes. I once joked that they could use me to draw the first-base line at the fields where my sons grew up playing baseball because I spent so many wonderful hours there, but there is probably some kind of law against it. There’s a trail I ran many a mile on and thought about there. I guess I don’t really care.</p>
<p>I’ve also said no big religious ceremony is necessary, but I’m OK with one. I’d really rather have a celebration with funny speeches and my favorite music, most of it totally inappropriate. The only music I’ve for sure requested is “De Colores,” a Mexican song.</p>
<p>I plan to be cremated. I will pick out some music (have been paying attention to the various music played in our church recently, figuring something might appeal to me) for a service. I’ve told my kids to scatter my ashes somewhere nice they think I would like… don’t want to set them up for some long pilgrimage to sprinkle my ashes. But they know the type of outdoor setting I like.</p>
<p>After planning a funeral from a sibling of mine unexpectedly, I know it would ease the burden on my family if I express some wishes/plans for them to follow. But I have made it clear that they are not at all obligated if it doesn’t make sense… I know I won’t be around to care.</p>
<p>My husband says he wants an old popular song played at his funeral:</p>
<p>If You Don’t Know Me By Now</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>Funny, sunny!</p>
<p>Mu husband says he wants to be buried in a shiny galvanized trash can.
Hmmm.</p>
<p>My will says that I’d like to go to an anatomy lab and/or have my body parts donated. After that people can do what they like with me, but I’d like to think that my dead body will be useful to someone. I assume I’ll ultimately be cremated since that’s generally what we’ve done on both sides of the family, but as far as I am concerned funerals and burials are all about what the family who is left needs spiritually or emotionally.</p>
<p>Parts donated, the rest cremated, ashes scattered in the Adirondacks. My family is free to pick out music and readings that they deem appropriate. I only have one request and that is for this poem by Raymond Carver read, </p>
<p>And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.</p>
<p>Pugmadkate,
I’m headed up to the Adirondacks on Friday…
For all of you planning funerals, make sure someone knows where the plans are. I have had several church members over the years come across plans well after their loved ones’ funerals are over. I have files at my church for some folk.
As for me, I don’t want any kind of service at all. My daughter has already talked all of us into donating our bodies; she is immensely grateful to the woman who gave herself so that my daughter could learn human anatomy this summer.</p>
<p>Not yet, but I’m glad my parents have planned theirs.
I told my husband that I want to be cremated and kept in an urn on the mantle. . .(or on the nightstand if he remarries 
) I don’t like the idea of being inside a coffin–I’m claustrophobic and, when I was young, had nightmares about waking up in a coffin (probably because I slept in the bottom bunk. . .waking up felt like I was still in the coffin!)
H would opt for a burial.</p>
<p>Has anyone seen the Japanese movie “Departures”? I thought it was very moving.</p>
<p>I have some music picked out.</p>
<p>I once heard “I’ll Never Find Another You” (The Seekers) at a funeral–I was surprised/amused–still can’t hear that song without thinking of the deceased.</p>
<p>I have not planned my funeral. I’m too busy living to think very much about dying. I’ll start planning it if and when I hit age 90. If I die in the meantime my relatives can take care of the funeral details. Let them play the music THEY want to hear. I’ll be shut up in the coffin and not paying much attention to the music.</p>
<p>It is very stressful to plan a funeral, IMHO. It is a gift to your family/relatives to do some of this ahead of time for them.</p>
<p>I have asked DH to donate all my usable parts and cremate the rest. The ashes will be spread in a place that’s meaningful to us & our kids. I don’t want a marker anywhere…they’re expensive and not usually in a place you want to visit often. If he or the kids want to plant a tree that would be nice. When I’ve tried to tell DH he gets pretty anxious and just tells me to write it all down. I can’t blame him as I’m the same when my mom has tried to talk with me about her wishes.</p>
<p>My husband wants to be cremated and have his ashes scattered from a boat. I truly hope he outlives me. To me, cremation is unthinkable - it’s what the Nazis did to Jews, knowing it is against the Torah - AND, I get so boatsick that I want to jump overboard when I get on one. </p>
<p>I want to be buried in my family’s plot. I do not want a big service, though shiva should be observed. I do NOT want an obituary and I do not want my death on Facebook, etc.</p>
<p>I hope to have enough money to put funeral money in a joint account with my kids with instructions for its use.</p>
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<p>You don’t have to go out on the boat. You can if you want, but you don’t have to.</p>
<p>There are two types of companies that scatter ashes at sea. One type does not require or allow family members to be present – the company handles everything. There is another type in which family members do go out on the boat and may participate directly in the scattering if they want to. </p>
<p>My mother wanted to be cremated and have her ashes scattered at sea because she had a lifelong aversion to cemeteries. She thought they were ugly and represented poor land use. Her family did as she wished, but no family members went out on the boat.</p>
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<p>My father, who lived his entire life in one community, wanted an obituary in the local newspaper. He wrote it himself because he wanted to make sure that the details about his military service in World War II were correct. When the time came, I was glad that he had gone to the trouble to do this. If I had to do it myself, I would have messed up the details.</p>
<p>I have buried three people in my immediate family and its is not pleasant, but I have not even considered my own. My H and D want to be cremated, I’m not sure if I want to be cremated. I have toyed with the idea, but i find it a little intimidating. I do want a church service, and would love to have the Ave Maria and Where Sheep May Safely Graze played.</p>
<p>Our family doesn’t do funerals. When my father died he was cremated and my mother spent some time thinking about what sort of a memorial event she wanted. It took place about a month after he died.For us the most stressful part was writing the obituary - as the undertaker felt it should be done right away. (It wasn’t, but it was done within a few days, when everyone was still feeling shellshocked.) I can imagine that doing a full funeral within days of the death is also stressful.</p>
<p>When my MIL died, she left a handwritten note directing a four-day extravaganza with the whole thing planned down to the last detail, like donating a vestment (is that the right word?) for a priest and a three-course lunch at the catering hall where her daughter had been married. Of course, since her son had wiped her out before she died, the $20,000 cost of this horror fell to my husband and I along with his sister and brother-in-law. When I die, I want to be cremated immediately and have our pastor speak over the mausoleum as I am interred. No wake, no lunch, nothing. Hubby feels the same way and our kids understand. I was the one to write my MIL’s obituary. It was tasteful, warm and honest. So much so that I mentioned her closeness to her sisters and friends, but never made mention of her kids or grandchildren. I think she would have appreciated that.</p>
<p>I plan to do what I did for my parents: cremation and a memorial service. The urn was not present. Later, we scattered their ashes under a tree and some around a lake. By the way, part of the reason (well, a large part) that I prefer cremation is the cost. Way cheaper than a funeral and since I don’t believe the spirit is in the body by that point, I figure why not save the money for the living. The other part is the embalming procedure gives me the willies.</p>