When you die do you want to be buried or cremated?

[sweetpea27]

Personally i would like to be buried,not cremated,just the thought of my body being burned really bothers me,i no you don't feel it but still the thought would always be on my mind.

[Chris OConnor]

Looks like about 75% of you want to be cooked. This is interesting to me as I expected about the exact opposite.

Ophelia, what do you mean by a "concession." When you're buried in France it is only for 50 years? Then they dig you up and move you somewhere else? Last time I checked death was a permanent affair. In the United States your burial plot is for eternity.

[Ophelia]

This is what I meant with some countries having more space than others!
I think there has to be a "rotation" because otherwise there would be no space in cemetaries for people who die, and that's with some towns already having a second cemetary which is further away from the city centre.

[Penelope]

How Macabre!!

I once read an article in The Guardian about a man who observed the Buddhist Monks in Tibet - setting out a dead person on the high cliffs for the birds to eat......

They have plenty of room in the rocky Himalayas but no soil! So this is the only way to dispose of dead bodies.

The journalist said the body was reduced to bones within an hour and it was so very reverently done that he concluded it was rather beautiful.

[Ophelia]

I've quickly checked the facts on the net: in some cemetaries, you buy a 5 year renewable concession, and in others you have the choice of 15 , 30 or 50 years. You can also buy a burial plot that is held in perpetuity, but this is very expensive.

Cemetaries are run like a business. If, at the end of the concession, nobody can be found who is willing to pay for the renewal of the concession, the remains are dug up and the bones are put in an ossuary, and in the end the bones in the ossuary are burnt together.

It's a a mix or a religious/ business concern/ cruel system.
The religious aspect is on its last leg and the business aspect is becoming more important.

So, now that Chris has aked the question, I know that I was right in more ways than I knew when I chose cremation.

[Theomanic]

I think a lot of people who prefer to be buried are religious. To me that seems funny because if you believe in a soul, the body should matter less to you than more! I mean, to us atheists, our body is all we have!

I don't know if any of you have read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius but I am in a similar predicament as the author in that I've sort of lost my father's ashes. I was a teenager when he died and no one seemed to ever decide what to do with his ashes, and now... well. I hope I find them some day, but really, they're just dust.

Burial seems to me to be an expensive and vain ordeal. Leaving a shrine to yourself on earth, so you will not be forgotten. Better to do something worthwhile and be burned, I think.

And I won't lie... the idea of being eaten by worms does give me the heebies.

[Frank 013]

I say throw my body in a wood chipper and spread me out on some farmland, or dump me into the ocean... I certainly won't care!

Just do something that will not be a burden on the family.

Later

[Chris OConnor]

I've already called your wife and arranged to take possession of your body, should you happen to die before me. Your wishes will be honored.

[Frank 013]

Cool!

Are you going to go with the wood chipper or a sea dump?

[Chris OConnor]

I would never dump in the sea. That is disgusting.