this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
330 points (97.7% liked)

Ask Lemmy

34281 readers
1014 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

fuck thousands for a coffin. or hundreds for an urn. can i legally be burried in butcher paper?

can i donate my body to science and skip burrial all together?

i want my final action to be a big middle finger to the funeral industry picking on people in their weakest moments.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] garbagebagel@lemmy.world 49 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 6 points 5 days ago

The one idea I have is to be taxidermied; doing an obscene gesture,

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 34 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Don't die. That'll teach them.

[–] 3abas@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago (2 children)

That's my plan. So far it's working out!

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You'll get bored eventually.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 6 days ago (9 children)

i will donate my body to a necrophilia foundation

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] JustARegularNerd@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What in the fuck did I just read?

Anyway the disclaimer at the bottom of the page is gold

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

Oz Magazine (the authors of this) fought very high profile court cases regarding accusations of obscenity. Some of the zine staff went on to have very successful careers: Richard Neville and Geoffrey Robertson in particular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_%28magazine%29

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 13 points 5 days ago

Live with cats. They will take care of it.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 21 points 5 days ago (4 children)

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.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 48 points 6 days ago (3 children)

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

[–] garbagebagel@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago

I didn't have a funeral plan but now I do.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] IzzyScissor@lemmy.world 42 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Open casket funerals are weird.

[–] Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radio 38 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Sometimes you want to be sure the motherfucker is dead.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 28 points 6 days ago (2 children)

the motherfucker

He prefers "Dad".

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 54 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (7 children)

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.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago (4 children)

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

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 35 points 6 days ago (4 children)

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)

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

When I die just throw me in the trash

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 34 points 6 days ago (5 children)

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.

[–] MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 30 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Same. I can proudly announce that I finally got accepted into "Harvard Medical School". 😉

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Godric@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

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

[–] weariedfae@sh.itjust.works 32 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 23 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Left in the woods for dog walkers to find.

[–] drool@lemmy.catsp.it 30 points 6 days ago

Or dropped in a peat bog dressed in medieval knights armor clutching a modded gameboy color.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] NABDad@lemmy.world 28 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

If you really want to stick it to the funeral industry, and you're including crematoriums and all other aspects in that, I think the only option is burial at sea.

Put it in your will that you want your friends and family to go on a deep-sea fishing cruise. Specify they must bring you along, and once they reach the approved and legal dumping location and have you naked and weighted so you sink, they can raise their glasses, make a toast, and pitch you over the side.

Meant to include this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_at_sea

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] glibg@lemmy.ca 8 points 5 days ago

Get eaten by a shark

[–] yaroto98@lemmy.world 30 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

You can shop around for crematoriums near you. Most of them in the US pick up the body as part of their fee. $300-800 to cremate a body. They mail you the ashes in a plastic bag. Some will offer urns, but that's an extra charge you can skip. Most states don't consider burying ashes the same as burying a body. Different laws. You can prepay, and have a card in your wallet with the company's info on it in case someone stumbles upon your body.

My wife and I have spoken about what we want done. My plan for her is to cremate her, then go to a local nursery and find a nice hearty, long living, low-maintenance flowering tree she would have liked and plant her and the tree in my back yard.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] yesman@lemmy.world 28 points 6 days ago (3 children)

The cheapest method is to abandon the body. People die without family all the time and the State has a method to dispose of unclaimed corpses. Cost $0

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Bamboodpanda@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago (3 children)

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

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] thedruid@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago

I'm getting planted as a tree

[–] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 18 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Donate your body for medical students to dissect

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 20 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Donation to a hydraulic press and/or hispeed cam YouTube channel

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] 58008@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I agree with this sentiment. It's insane to me that people need to cough up thousands of dollars to see their loved one off. It's so wrong, although I do accept that funeral providers can't simply give away their services for free. I would support a taxation that had a provision for funerary needs for all citizens. Universal death care. I mean, we're all gonna die. It's not like you can say "oh boo hoo I'm paying all this tax just for some other cunt to die on my dime??" because your day will come soon enough and you don't want your family having to blow their savings on putting you in a hole.

I wanna be harvested for organs like a Chinese dissident, and whatever is left can be mulched and used to grow trees or something.

But if we're talking "cheapest", in the UK and Ireland there's a pauper's grave thing where the state will put you in a very basic grave and with a very basic marker. Not sure if you need to be poor to qualify, or if they'll just do it when asked.

load more comments (1 replies)

Donate to science?

load more comments
view more: next ›