This past week I’ve been fighting
off a gross head cold/ fever which is certainly not a great state to be in when
trying to be imaginative; therefore, I’ve decided to blog about something that
I don’t have to put too much thought into.
I’m going to discuss my thoughts on
how I would like to be ‘disposed’ of once I kick the bucket. This class has certainly
brought this topic into my mind at least once or twice this past month. My family doesn’t seem to have any sort of
tradition when it comes to this. Thankfully, the only person close to me that I
have lost has been my grandfather; he was cremated and given to my grandmother
in a plastic cylindrical container (human ashes, I discovered, are shockingly
heavy for the amount of space they take up). We didn’t have a funeral, just a small family
gathering and he was never buried. He remains on a shelf in my grandmother’s
house next to a picture of him. One of my uncles died unexpectedly before I was
born and he was also cremated; he too remains in my grandmother’s house, fondly
referred to as “the boy in the box”. It seems fairly obvious to me now that my
family has, what I would call, a casual attitude towards the deceased.
When I was
young, I had always thought that I too would like to be cremated. Rather than being
stuck inside a house, I wanted to have my ashes scattered somewhere nice. As I grew older I started to give it a little
more thought and decided it would be nice to have my friends and family plant
trees in my honour as trees are in are very special to me (easily in my top 5
favourite things). Today, I would like to
just be buried under a tree sans-casket but I know there are pretty strict
regulations about that type of thing, so I guess that’s out of the question. In
all honesty, I’m not too concerned about what happens to my body after I die,
as long as it’s treated with an appropriate level of respect and isn’t a burden
on my loved ones. After all, I don’t want to be remembered as a corpse.
