Ask Lemmy

Live with cats. They will take care of it.

Don't die. That'll teach them.

When I die just throw me in the trash

Pay a local taxidermist to stuff you so your kid/friend/partner can have you hang out in their living room. I told my mom I'm gonna have her stuffed and posed like a bear.

Thinking about this now it makes sense why my mom picked my sister as the executor.

i will donate my body to a necrophilia foundation

There are burial grounds that are basically natural parks, where you have to be buried in something biodegradable, like a shroud or pine needle basket, and no grave markers are allowed besides something like a tree or uncut rock. (Burial locations are recorded by gps.) I'd like to be buried in one of these places. Not sure what the cost is, though.

Become entirely homeless and cut off all contacts and remove all identification so no one will be around to care when you die.

To praphrase Diogenes and Frank: Just throw me in the trash!

Donate your body to science. My mother did that. She used to joke that they would put her body in a car trunk in the desert, or some other location, and see what time and decay did so they could measure the process. For all I know, that's literally where her body is right now. They also do other experiments. Then, after a few years, they return cremated remains to you.

Try to find an institution that will take your body. I've looked into it. There's a place in a neighboring state that will take mine, but if I die more than 100 miles from them, someone will need to arrange to transport the body to them. There's not much more to it for me.

Edit to alter link to a better site

Regardless of the final resting place after the funeral - DON'T EMBALM. They'll pressure your family into embalming to 'ensure the dead look their best on the day of the funeral', but refrigeration does the exact same thing. You might think it's more 'dignified', but just do a quick google at what the process entails. It's ALL smoke and mirrors, and I'd rather have people at my funeral actually understand what my body is doing at that point - not the image of what a 'body at rest' looks like from Hollywood.

I want my body dumped on the front steps of my least favorite living politician.

When they return my body to my next of kin they will dump it back on the politicians' doorstep

Do a viking funeral. You know, that ceremony where you are sent out in a boat and a fire arrow is fired into the boat so it burns down while floating into the sunset.

But skip the boat. Have someone chuck you into the ocean and shoot arrows at you until you sink.

Direct cremation is the absolute chespest way to handle it. They'll try to sell you a fancy urn, and may even say it's illegal to use another type of container, but you could literally do what they did in The Big Lebowski and use a coffee can if you wanted. The guy who invented Pringles had his ashes put into a Pringles can. The ashes themselves come in a sealed plastic bag, anyway.

My mom's are just in a wooden box I made for her when I was in highschool woodshop.

My family has some experience with this

My mom's cousin was a wonderful person, her husband, however, was an enormous piece of shit in just about every way you could imagine.

She got sick and died, he never had a funeral for her.

Then he up and died maybe a year or so later.

My mom was still listed as the executrix of their wills, so it fell on her to decide what to do with him.

And she decided on nothing. Let the coroner haul his body away and never claimed it.

After a while they cremate the remains, they hold onto them for a while to see if any other next of kin wants to claim them, then after a while they bury or scatter them somewhere if no one does.

I'm sure the exact specifics of how that all works varies a bit from place to place, but in general that's gonna be an option. They can't exactly force you to pay for a funeral you don't want, and the local government has some plan on dealing with bodies no one wants to pony up for a funeral for (otherwise there'd be a lot of corpses of homeless people and such piling up in a freezer somewhere)

Get eaten by a shark

My body is going to a medical school, to be used for student dissection. Once they are finished with it, it will be cremated. My relatives can have the ashes if they want, otherwise it will be disposed of. My name will go up on a plaque in a special memorial garden. It was pretty easy to organise, just a matter of signing consent forms with a witness. Family are ok with it.

There's a chance my body will be rejected - infectious, too mangled, whatever - and in that case it's bounced back to family to deal with. I favour forest burial wrapped in an old bedsheet.

My son is in his water bottle. Never bought an urn from the crematorium.

2 things that piss off the funeral industry

1. Aquamation/water cremation/alkaline hydrolysis
2. Human composting

Both are legal in my state. You should join the fight if they aren't legal where you are.

Both are cheaper than burial. With aquamation you get back a bag of cremains just like with cremation. The only difference is instead of fire they boil you in an alkaline solution.

With composting it turns people into literal soil. You can take that back or donate it to a charity that is repairing a forest.

I second the Lemmy user who suggested Caitlin Doughty and the Order of the Good Death.

Edit: spelling

Science Vs. did a great episode on Human Composting a few years back. It's really touching and highlights a fantastic way to convert your death into life.

Here is a link to the episode. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6reXXkhnvGxpSvnCz8wP2c

No lie, i want a sky burial. Your body is split open and left on a mountainside populated by vultures, after a few days the villagers return and collect your bones, the only thing left. They grind your bones and mix them into crackers, which are then spread around the fields for birds to eat. Your entire body goes back to the birds, i love it. My wife isn’t taking it seriously but I mean it, i want one of those

A big part of your question hinges upon where you call home. Some countries have strickt restrictions.

There's a book called "Stiff" by Mary Roach where she looks into all the various ways to (legally) dispose of your body.

You can donate it to scientific research (my personal preference) and they will use it as a very accurate crash test dummy (usually).

Things like the glass in car windows and car crumple zones were invented with the help of such donations, and she claims that on average 14 lives are saved by every body donated.