To not want collecting from the Crem (after Ive died)?

[ThinkIveBeenHacked]

In a chat with a friend about death, burial, cremation etc, I feel strongly that I dont want to be put anywhere. Somewhere my familyand friends might feel obligated to visit or not move far from.

Being an Atheist, I feel, for me that when I die, and my life ceases to exist, that my body is simply the shell that once held my life. That it wont be me.

If I had it my way can I simply be cremated and the ashes not collected? I currently have nowhere that is so special to me that I want my ashes scattered, and again, it would just be the remnants of my outer casing, plus prpbably a large portion of coffin.

She thinks I am.abnormal, and I suppose it isnt a commom view, I just dont want anyone to have any sort of obligation to me once im gone.

I agree with the idea that your funeral is for your family - if you're gone, and your body is just a shell, why does it matter what they do with your remains?

My funeral request (I hopefully have a long way to go!) is that my family do with me what they see fit - I only have one specific request, and that is that my coffin doesn't turn up at the crem/church/wherever until half an hour after the time they tell everyone the funeral is due to start. Everyone used to tell me I'd be late to my own funeral and I'm determined to prove them right

I am half crying and half laughing at the urn wearing the party hat. How lovely.

We had natural coffins for my parents- wicker for Dad and bamboo for Mum. My aunt decorated them with wild/meadow type flowers and they looked beautiful. Their ashes were interred together in a woodland burial ground. There are no big headstones there, just lots of saplings and little wooden plaques. Mum and Dad have a silver birch on their plot. It's a lovely place to visit as the view from there is similar to the view from my parents' house. And there is lots of open space where the children can run around, and a big pond and lots of wildlife to see. From my perspective as an atheist, a woodland burial ground is a nice place to visit, because I can see and feel that the trees benefit from the ashes of those that are interred there. It's a very tangible/physical way to see your loved one 'living on' in some way, since I don't believe they live on in a spiritual sense.

It was my mum's request that they be interred there together, and we were happy to honour that. Luckily, I don't foresee ever needing/wanting to move away from where we live now, so I will always be able to visit.

Re diamonds etc. I think you can also have your ashes made into pencils.

Here: www.oddee.com/item_96994.aspx

Well the thing is OP, that you'll be dead, and what happens to your ashes is important for those who are grieving for you.

So, I would say, let them do with your 'burnt up shell' as they see fit.

It's not going to affect you after all and it seems churlish to deny them a process that may help them get over your death.

If you have specific ideas about what you want done at your funeral write it into your will or leave written instructions behind.
My FIL wanted a specific Elvis song and certain crematorium so had that written into his will.

Collection of ashes varies crematorium to crematorium and the funeral director
Most crematoria have a "garden of remembrance " where ashes will be scattered, usually amongst trees or flowers. Whether family wish to visit the place is up to them.

FIL was cremated and ashes left at Crem. No priest or minister at funeral his sons did a wee speech each then Elvis was played.

My dad was cremated, I collected his ashes from funeral director . His friends did readings from Dylan Thomas and a couple of reminiscences. Again no religious celebrants. I eventually gave the urn to his lady friend. Never felt comfortable keeping in the same house as Mum's ashes.

My mum we collected personally from crem, the funeral director had asked the staff to give us a certificate that these were lawful human remains so we could take her abroad.
Mum has now traveled with my sister or myself on holiday all over the world

Btw my dad wanted to leave his body to the medical school, had filled in all the forms years ago but due to his last illness he didn't fit the criteria.

And mum comes on holiday ( bit by bit) in her own tiny wee urn which lies on a teeny deck chair.

I think it gets incredibly complicated the older you get. My dad is on the sideboard and will come with me because I was all he had left in the world and that was his wish. He reached thed sideboard by degrees - he started on my dressing table, then went in the wardrobe, then I put him under the sideboard so he could join in with things like Christmas and then I put him on top and indeed bung a party hat on the urn every year now. DH's dad is in the shed with the old mowers.

But more seriously DH wants to be buried; I want to be cremated. DH wants us to be together and feels very strongly about it so my ashes will go with him or be kept depending which way round we go.

DS2 is buried at our local cemetary and I visit still too often, 17 years later. We didn't think about what would happen later on and leaving him there in the cemetary all on his own when we are gone plays on my mind now. DH's compromise is that he should be named on the family headstone when there is one.

I find it very upsetting.

It was the 10th anniversary of my dad's death a few days ago, I was only 14 when he died. He was buried and always said that nobody was to throw dirt on him but people could throw flowers. He said people didn't throw dirt on him whilst he was alive so they certainly weren't going to when he was dead!

I always imagine scattering ashes of a cliff but knowing my luck there will be no wind and I'll just end up dumping a pile of dead person on somebody!

When I die I think what happens to my ashes is up to my relatives (unless I decide to make a pedantic specific sort of will specifying that sort of stuff)
Funerals and body/ ash dispersal are to help the bereaved. They aren't for me, i won't be there.
I would want those I loved to have as easy a time as possible so would prefer them to do what made them least upset.
I don't get graves and cemetries and stuff dumped where someone died as a way of remembering people. I remember my mum most when I'm at my dad's house as that's where I saw her most.

The only thing is if you don't say what you want doing with your ashes, your relatives may have trouble deciding what to do. Asking 'well what would they have wanted?' and feeling all torn as to what to do, getting all stressed about doing the right thing.

At least tell them in advance if you have a specific requirement or not.

Would hate to cause a family row with some thinking I wanted them in an urn, some scattered, some made into a necklace and some fired up in a rocket.

Neither do I and I don't want a funeral either. I hate funerals. Can you get out of that?

Everything That made me laugh. But the opposite can also be a bit of an issue. When we scattered my Grandad's ashes at the top of his favourite hill, it was rather blustery and we had to sort of stand back a bit to avoid having them blown in our faces

hagar I don't think there's any law that you have to have a formal funeral, or any sort of funeral at all. But the chances are that whoever you leave behind will want to mark the occasion in some way- even if it is just a small, informal gathering without any sort of ritual or ceremony. Loved ones do tend to want to find ways to say goodbye, and to make some sort of declaration (public or otherwise) about how important that person was.

I'd hate it if someone I loved didn't want a funeral. The funeral isn't for them, it's for us. If you don't like funerals the time to avoid them is when you are living. You could specify an informal funeral or nonchurch funeral but I think the mourning and saying goodbye is important to many people rather than pretending nothing has happened.

The cream will have a garden for this. It is exactly what we did with my grandparents for the same reason.

*crem

I quite like the idea of being disposed of in the food waste. Hate the "business" of death. And no, i dont want a funeral either!

OP, the crematorium will give your ashes to whoever arranged the cremation (usually the undertaker). They will usually offer them over to family or offer to scatter on their behalf. If your family aren't (on your advance directive) permitted to take the ashes and you don't want them sitting on a dusty shelf in the undertakers for goodness knows how long then you must make sure that at least some arrangement is made for their disposal before you 'go'.
There was a big story in the news a couple of years ago about an Undertaker in (iirc) Scotland who had a mass scattering for uncollected ashes left with them, some going back to the 1940's!
Undertakers are under no obligation to keep uncollected ashes but some hang onto them for years and years out of professional consideration.

YANBU - I wouldn't really want a funeral or service of any kind really but I understand that it's not for me and that I shouldn't care because I'll be dead.

I'd be happy to be burnt as bio waste at the hospital furnace but I think there is probably a law against that.

My dad doesn't want a funeral so we might not have one. I think we would all get together for a meal and have an 'event' of sorts but not have anything to do with the body or crematorium.

I think YABU. Whatever happens to your afterwards won't affect you but it will affect those left behind. Let them decide what they'd prefer. It WNBU to let them know how you feel about things before you cark it though.

at the urn with the party that on.

My friend has her husbands ashes in an urn. She also has a life size cardboard cut out of him standing next to his urn. I always say hi to the cut out when I visit, however I say bye to the urn.

Op, each to their own, if that is what you want then your friend and family should respect that.

DFIL never told us what he would like done as he died so quickly. His ashes were scattered in the garden of remembrance. DH only visited once, the day after his funeral and never again as he said it didn't feel like his dad was there.

You can buy cardboard coffins in some supermarkets in South Africa. Mainly in the areas with high incidences of HIV.

I don't understand why coffins are so expensive in the UK. It seem a bit mean. I have had a google and the cheapest cardboard coffins are a good few hundred quid

I also looked on some cardboard box suppliers and you can get normal - very large cardboard boxes a LOT cheaper.

Some useful points here - including the answer to a pp about the cost of coffins - legally, you don't have to have one...
www.naturaldeath.org.uk/index.php?page=keeping-funeral-costs-down

Its about these left behind I think. When my mum died we felt really strongly about giving her a good send of. It was a sense of pride that we wanted to do right by her. She specified that she wanted her ashes split, half buried with her family and half scattered. Sadly though they are five hours away from where we live. I get so upset that I don't have anywhere to go on anniversaries and birthdays to lay some flowers because I can't get up to my mum's grave whever I want to She lived on her own and we couldn't afford to keep her house so there is nowhere local for us to go.

On another note, and this will out me if the above hasn't. When we scattered her ashes we all took it in turns to take a handful, stand off to one side and take a moment before letting her go. I opened my hand and it actually was beautiful, the strong wind just took her. Sadly my sister didn't wait for me to finish my moment and wildly scattered a handful with no warning. Straight in my face there was a split second of silence where no one was sure what to do before we laughed. It was one of those laugh or you'll cry situations but I think my mum would have laughed and it did lighten the situation