Your turn of phrase there is interesting. Are you saying that by being cremated I am illegitimizing the fact that burial is the traditional christian position, or that burial being the traditional Christian tradition is a legitimate reason to not be cremated?

It my be a legitimate reason for hesitancy, but since my grandmother was cremated and my mother plans on being cremated, it is certainly not my family tradition.

Whether or not you think thats legitimate says more about you than it does about its legitimacy.

I suspect it grows out of a “respect for the body” tradition, but I have a hard time seeing any disrespect for the body in cremation–just old Western traditions.

By the way, for those of you planning the backyard cremation, better start gathering firewood. It takes a lot of fire to consume the body. Just ask Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun how five Jerry cans of gasoline did on them. Or Josef Goebbels.

For you young folks who weren’t around 45 years ago when it was published, Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death is a classic expose of the funeral racket. Read that, and you’ll be contacting the crematorium!

Kristen, I totally agree. A big problem with funerals that sadly they are times when we seem to be at our most irrational.

The whole cremation issue can be really tricky, I know that when my family burried a relative there was such a huge argument over cremation that almost 3 years later there are still hurt feelings.

Financially cremation would have been the best option for us but some family members were so against it that they were willing to sacrifice family relationships over it. My family ended up burying the individual and using money that the widow desperately needed.

After that experience I’ve decided that it really should be left up to the individual who will financially have to deal with the funeral expenses and no one else.

Me, I’m highly tempted by this: http://www.lifegem.com/secondary/whatisLG2006.aspx Gives new meaning to “Grandma’s diamond ring!”

I do like the viewing custom though. I wonder if it’s possible to have it minus the formaldehyde and stuff? It meant a lot to me to be able to say “Goodbye” to my grandfather, to see his body and know he was no longer in it. To have him just gone would have been harder.

I want to be laid out on a wooden raft, set on fire, and pushed off down the river, because how cool would that be?

So cool that is has to be illegal.

Green burials are becoming more popular, but, you may need to find a green graveyard that has the permits to bury you that way. It may save some money, but not sure.

But I’m not sure what is done with the bits and pieces as they are removed during the course of the classes that use your cadaver. They might be disposed of as “medical waste” (along with the associated hospital’s tonsils, appendices, amputed limbs, etc) at the end of each dissection session, or saved in jars (sort of ancient Egyptian style) to be kept with the cadaver and cremated all at the same time. I dunno.