What do you wish for your body after death?

[Riqo]

Rest in a graveyard? Perhaps a burial In a more Specific location? Cremation? Ashes to the ocean? Turned into A tree? Some other Thing I have not mentioned here?

Personally I am on Board with the Ocean idea, I like To view it as a Return to origin

[Dan Q]

For the last decade or two my Will has stated, and I quote:

14. I EXPRESS the wish that any part of my body may be used for transplant purposes.

15. I EXPRESS the wish that my body be disposed of in an economical and environmentally-conscious manner.

16. I EXPRESS that no permanent nor semi-permanent non-living physical marker should be erected to mark my passing. If a marker is desired, the planting of a tree at any suitable location would be an acceptable substitute for a more-traditional grave marker.

(Obviously a Will is in some ways a suboptimal place to keep this information, and I'm aware that there's nothing legally-binding in these expressed wishes, unlike the directions and requirements I make in the more-important bits of the Will! But it makes sure that it's easily-accessible to my executor in the event of my death, which seems like an acceptable convenience. And it won't "surprise" anybody: I'm very open and transparent about my wishes.)

Of course, I'll be dead and it'll be up to whoever survives me whether or not they fulfil these wishes. What do I care? I'll be dead! But the tl;dr of it is:

1. If I've got organs that are of any use to anybody else, they can have them.
2. Don't spend too much or destroy the planet getting rid of me.
3. Don't leave a permanent (nonliving) marker.

The only thing that's "spicy" there is the last one: that's me saying:

I don't want a headstone, I don't want a plaque, I don't want a bench; if you really want some "memorial" you can plant a tree.

That's the only thing I'm really picky about. And again, I'll be dead, so it's not like I really deserve a say in it anyway. But if my next of kin wants to know what I "would have" wanted, they're equipped to know.

[John]

I'm on the opposite end of the headstone spectrum. I mean, a tree I don't mind ... as part of a Memorial Garden, at the centre of which I'd like my family Mausoleum to stand. : P Well, that might be slightly exaggerated, but I REALLY like conserving stuff and researching the lives of people of the past, so I'd like there to be some monument to my own existence, that can survive at least for a few centuries. Ideally, of a size that would make it more expensive for the cemetery to remove it than to just leave it there. : P Realistically, I'll be buried in the family grave at the local cemetery with a regularly sized but beautifully designed headstone.

[BlazingCobaltX]

There's things you can't really choose once you're dead (e.g. whether your relatives will respect your wish to not have any keepsake), so I don't want to fill in too many blanks. I think that, should the situation end up like that, I would be open to give my organs away for donation. But in general I would prefer to be buried as 'whole' as possible.

As a kid I wanted a cremation because the potential idea of being buried alive terrified me. Now I am really partial to the idea of what's called a 'nature funeral' here. Aka having my body buried directly in a forest, without casket, so my body can be eaten whole. Throughout life one takes so much from nature that it only feels right (to me) to give back to it in the same way. Both a casket burial and cremation seem so wasteful in that sense. As for a headstone, plaque, etc, I will leave that up to my relatives.

[knifex]

I actually already have my spot reserved in my family columbarium. I'll have to be cremated to fit in there, but I was already planning on doing that.

It's a beautiful work of stone, at the top of a hill overseeing the river, and right next to the church* my grandma got made into an official historical monument, and where I worked for a summer being a touristic guide. It's the only cemetery that matters to me, so that's where I plan to go :)

*One of the oldest rural churches in North America, opened in 1774.
*I am not religious in the slightest, I have been in maybe 3 masses in my entire life, and all of them were at that church lol

[memento]

i want a green burial because i want to decompose back into the earth. if my loved ones want there to be a headstone or memorial for me that's up to them, but it's not something that matters much to me. i think i'd rather them use that money for a charity or for something nice for themselves. the funny thing is even though i don't personally want anything like that i really like taking walks in cemeteries and looking at all the headstones. i like when cemeteries embrace that they can also function as public parks and encourage people to walk around the grounds and enjoy the peace, i think it's good for our relationship with death

[fablefound]

i read a book recently about the various death rituals around the world, and i do have to agree with @memento that a lot of contemporary "modern" socieities distance themselves way too much from their dead. it's a shame, because, y'know, it's just a matter of time until you're part of that category.

i'm mixed on what i want done with my body. i mean, first and foremost, if any of it can be used to save anyone else's lives, that'd be great. not like i'll need all my organs anymore anyway but from there... it's a little foggy. generally, i go between straight-up green burials and, like, creative uses of cremains lol. i've seen peoples' ashes be put in trees, in jewelry, and even just very creative urns.

the main thing i hope for is that i leave behind more than my literal body. a body of work, for example. but hey, hopefully i don't have to lock anything in anytime soon. so i can just see what new options emerge with time!

[sloth_army1]

[MrsMoe]

Tbh, it's not something I personally care about. Like....I'm DEAD. I'm not gonna care what you do with my body or what you do with it either way. Makes no difference whether you cremate me or bury me in a garden. I'm not gonna be present to have an opinion on it.

...With that said, if somebody could press my aches into a vinyl record when I die, that'd be awesome. That's a REAL thing you can do.

[squidlifecrisis]

Melonland's resident organ harvester is delighted with your responses         

though actually seeing what a body looks like after a harvest. it's a little sad. there's no doubt what happened to it. everyone's all bustling and excited about the organs. then they just leave. and it's you and two coworkers in a room with a corpse. :|

I think I read the book fablefound mentioned, or a similar one. THAT actually turned me off from cremation... I liked the sound of the open-air ones, but conventional ones sound cartoonishly evil. conveyor belt into the furnace. :x 

guess that's what they did with my boobs after the mastectomy. trashed like a nasty old sharps box!

I have a great deal more respect for my body since that. and since discovering I'm plural. I haven't asked the party about this particular topic yet. wonder if they still want to be injected with plastic and put in specimen jars...

[Còbra!]

If I ever accumulate any amount of wealth, I'd actually want me and my partner (with her consent of course) to be cryogenically frozen to potentially be revived later on. I get that everything and everyone I know will most likely be gone, but the alternative is nothing, and I can always choose it later if I want.

In the likely event I can't get that done, I'd want my organs to be donated to those who need them (because I won't), and what's left of me to be cremated and put into the soil to grow into a tree, that way I'll still be part of something living.

Regardless I want to leave my mark on the world so I won't be forgotten and still alive in the sense that I'll be on people's minds.

[schlime9k]

I hope for my body to be comfortable, that's all.

Comfort, in either a physical, metaphorical, philosophical, any other "ical" you can think of, is what we all wish for in life at one point in time or another. So after death, whether I go to hell for not believing in God, heaven for God thinking I'm chill even though I don't believe in him, or Limbo for past crimes including but not limited to manslaughter (/s) I would want my journey to happen with the safe knowledge that my physical being is resting in literal peace and comfort... maybe with a nice fluffy pillow.! 

[Grimmgall]

Here are a few options I'd prefer, some after reading through this thread:

• Cryogenically frozen. If I ever have the funding for it, or if the price for it ever decreases enough for the average person to be able to afford it, I'd love to be cryogenically frozen so there's a chance I can be revived and able to see how the future is. However, I'd request that I would only be revived if the future is utopian or neutral... if it's dystopian, I'd prefer to be frozen until a utopia comes or all life on Earth vanishes.
• Organ donation. I would love to donate my organs and/or donate myself to science in some other form so I can contribute to the living and have myself live on in them.
• Put my encephalon in a robotic, twinned, or bioidentical (or enhanced to be my dream form) body if possible. In other words, clone me.
• Fed to vultures, foxes, wolves, or other land wildlife. This is currently illegal for good reasons, but I'd love to be fed to wildlife like those. It would be a real dream of mine if I were to ever have the opportunity to have that happen to me, or something similar. Perhaps I could arrange for my body to be thrown into a forest to be ingested?
• Human composting.
• Have a relative of mine take pieces of my hair as a keepsake before any of the above occurs.

[TheFrugalGamer]

What an interesting question! I've thought about this myself quite a bit.

Firstly, I'm an organ donor, so I'd like the living to benefit from my death in whatever way they can. That just seems like an obvious choice for me. There used to be a lot of fear around being taken "early" by various people who don't trust the medical system--that you'd be taken off life support too quickly because someone wanted to harvest organs, but I've seen so many people's lives prolonged past any sort of reasonable point that I'm not really worried about that.

For a lot of reasons, I'm uncomfortable with cremation for myself personally. It seems...unnatural? And it's very important to me that I be allowed to decay. I've been considering pre-paying for a green burial, so that I can be buried in a canvas and then be allowed to return to the Earth. I don't want any sort of fancy coffin or box, embalming fluids or anything else that would hinder decomposing naturally. That part is very important to me.

Other than that, I just hope my survivors don't feel any sort of obligation to spend a lot of money on whatever I leave behind!

[kringle]

oh i have a good one for this, i read when i was younger that they can get your ashes and use it to make a glass sculpture, so thats what i want after they harvest my organs! 

i don't really care who gets the sculpture though, but i find it really funny if people are like, overly careful with it so they don't get haunted. i want to be a slightly esoteric and a potentially malicious presence in someone elses life. i want my chaotic-neutral reputation to live on LMAO.