What Not To Do With My Remains

[dr_pretentious]

Until I started writing fiction, I didn't know I had an obsession with bizarre funerary customs. Grave goods, mummification, ritual grave robbing, cremation, burning boats, decorative ossuaries--bring it on, there's a place in the Big Book for all of it.

All of it except this.

It's not gross. It's perfectly worksafe. It won't give you nightmares. It might give you a good laugh. The basic premise isn't any weirder than mummification, really. Nonetheless...

I'm with seedmoon on this one. Whatever you do with me, don't do that.

Comments

Re: Crafts with the dead!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

To get the cremation scene in the Bob novella right, I spent about an hour on the phone with Michael, picking his brain about the funeral biz. He was Extremely Helpful.

One of my parents' neighbors had her late husband cremated, and the crematory people didn't grind the bones. Very upsetting for her when she scattered the ashes in her garden. Later, when she was too old to live alone anymore and had to sell the house, the next people to live there dug up the garden and thought they'd found a crime scene. Oops.

In general, I think it's a bad idea to scatter people's ashes on the premises of a private residence. It becomes even more than usually traumatic, then, if it becomes necessary for the family to sell the property. I suppose if one really wanted to lay a heavy geas on one's survivors to hold onto a piece of land, that would be an effective way to do it.