After An Atheist Dies

[mordant]

Apart from donation, I never did understand why anyone would care about what happened to their own dead body. I mean, you're gonna be dead anyway... why not allow your loved ones who are still alive to do whatever will give them the most closure/peace?

Funerals are for the living, not the dead. I am not against the idea, but the cost of the average funeral if you are going to be buried is a fucking scam. Once that box goes in the ground nobody will see it, you will rot, and the box itself will not stay pristine in any case.

My mom paid for her own cremation years ago and even though I still payed for the flowers and cards and food at her memorial, that was far cheaper. And that was her choice and she wanted it that way. Very thoughtful and pragmatic on her part. She knew that after she died the money would be better spent by me paying my bills or in a savings account. I am really thankful for her pragmatism. 

Even with weddings, like funerals seems like a waste of money on one day when it can be used for practical things like utility bills, mortgage, rent education. 

Now again, I am not saying don't do either, I am just objecting to the outrageous cost of it. Those things don't have to be expensive one bit. It is not what you spend on those things, but the family time and the connection in those personal events.

In accordance with his wishes I think my son's burial arrangements amounted to all of $800. His body was stripped of donatable skin and bone and tendons and internal organs, the rest incinerated. Arranged entirely online, paid with a credit card. He's literally pushing up daisies (well okay, a magnolia tree given by relatives as a memorial) in my back yard.

By son would have been delighted by all this, but it really doesn't matter if he would have or not, he certainly doesn't care NOW. Mostly, his stepmother and I are pleased ... and his sister and extended family are, at least, not offended.

My next-older brother, though not an atheist, has always felt this way about himself. "When I die, just toss me into a plastic bag and throw me in a hole in the back yard." he has always joked.

I guess it is somewhat cultural what your sensibilities are about dead bodies. There was a time when cremation was considered "disrespectful to the dead" and also of the concept of a physical resurrection (even though eventually god would have to resurrect many righteous dead without using a moldering corpse as a basis -- and should have zero difficulty in doing so).

I have to confess that even I winced when my late prior wife's body was taken away, and the gurney rammed roughly into the ambulance. I knew she was dead, but I didn't like the way they handled her, or the notion of them cutting her open for an autopsy, removing her brain ("deep fibrosis of the menenges"), etc. But it was just because I was still in transition to accepting her dissolution and the fact that the husk she resided in was no longer animated by her particular configuration of biochemical impulses.

It's hard for people to accept the fact of their mortality, and they shrink from having it shoved in their faces by situations like this, but it's better in my experience to deal with it head-on and not avoid it.