Diamonds are Forever

If I don't donate my body to science, I will turn my ashes into a tree.

Bios Urn | Biodegradable Urn with Seed

 

There is a company that will handle the science donation and follow up with cremation and disposal at sea or into a biodegradable container with seeds that can grow into a tree. I have worked with a lot of families that wear their child's ashes in necklaces or keep them in China statues. I'll do whatever my husband wants me to do with his. I want to go with that aforementioned company. Not sure a diamond is the direction I would go. I just don't like them anyway.

 

I'm more of a recycle, toast, and toss kind of guy.

Different strokes and all; but this seems a bit creepy to me.

Donate what you can, fry the rest, and toss me somewhere pretty. I'm fond of alpine lakes; but the Mrs is free to suprise me.

 

Fortunately, I am bound by some rules as to what can be done with my body once I'm finished using it. Cremation skeeves me out, so I'm just as happy that Judaism prohibits it. Definitely don't like the idea of turning my body into diamonds or beads or whatnot. I suppose if (God forbid) I died of something rare and interesting, I wouldn't mind my body being donated to science. But if it's just another natural causes death (hopefully of heart failure due to massive sexual overexertion in extreme old age), then I think science can get by without my carcass. I like the idea of traditional burial.

I'd actually like a very Green funeral: no casket if possible (some states will allow religious exemptions), just my body on a board, wrapped in a tallit (prayer shawl), the way Jewish tradition prefers-- or at worst, in the flimsiest possible cheap untreated thin wooden box; buried as quickly as possible, without embalming, without a concrete or metal burial vault or any of that bullshit. Just the body and the ground: let the stuff of earth go back to being earth without hindrance of any kind. That seems right and fitting to me.

I have heard of a process that is just starting to be used-- I think it got invented in Scandinavia or something-- where they take the body, put it into a tube of organic compounds at high pressure, and it basically mimics natural decomposition, except instead of taking a couple of years, it takes a day or two. Everything except the bones dissolves into an organic sludge, which is then collected, purified, and used as a non-chemical natural fertilizer around the cemetary park. The bones are washed and collected, and laid to rest in an ossuary (box or vault for containing bones) in a mausoleum. I could see using that process, if it were available and affordable.

 

Cremation for me. My wife can keep my cremains in an urn if she wants, or spread them somewhere in the Hill Country.

My ongoing joke is bury my body whole (what's left of it after science is through with it, which isn't a joke), no fancy coffin, maybe just a decent cardboard box, and plant an apple tree where I'm buried. She could then serve folks apple pie and tell them the story. I don't believe that the soul exists after death, but if it does, I'd be LMAO.

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I met a sculptor/potter who included her mothers ashes in her pieces.

 

I should definitely add, BTW, that I am 100% in favor of organ donation, and if I die in such a way that any of my organs can be taken for use, I strongly think they should be. Saving lives is a gigantic moral priority in my tradition, and I can see no justifiable defense for refusing to donate organs and potentially save lives or giving someone some other new lease on life-- vision to the blind, hearing to the deaf, skin grafts for burn victims, etc.

 

I wish to be cryogenically frozen to the best of our abilities and then reanimated in some distant future where the cell damage done by the ice crystals can be reversed.

And I'm being serious.

Since that isn't likely to happen, and I don't have Disney money, I'll have to stick with hoping to be remembered fondly.

 

Throw me in a wood casket straight out of a western so it will decay along with my body. I see no need for a fancy box that will last for centuries and features a soft cushioned surface on the interior.

 

Is there an issue with burial in a Jewish cemetery after organ donation?

 

Nope. The commandment to save lives easily sets aside the law not to disrespect the body by messing with its integrity.

 

Hard to say, there is no real ceremony where your body doesn't get messed with. I want to be cremated but I'm worried someone (family or not) might just dump me out and sell the urn. I want to go through with the bio urn the most, but I don't want someone cutting me down.