I'm Just Saying....

I’ve been an organ donor as far back as I remember...since you could sign your driver’s license to donate. I've told my son, "tell them to take whatever they can use." Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. That is exactly how I feel. And it is, after all, my own personal body. I feel that my body (and all that’s housed inside it) is a shell, a mere residence, the means by which I exercise my soul. My soul journeys on, not my body. You can also imagine, then, that I want no money spent on some over-priced box, only to be put into another box, and have to pay to bury the 2 nested boxes in the ground. Donate my body to science, cremate me, I don't care. Just don't waste money on a coffin and a burial plot. Those are my instructions to my son. I can only hope he follows them. I have no problems with a religious ceremony but I want it to be a memorial service, and not at a funeral home. My gosh, aren't funeral homes the most depressing places ever? Throw some 8x10 glossies on a table with some loose daisies in a couple of vases. No bunches of over-priced flowers. I honestly believe that cemeteries are a waste of good land. Land that could be a park or greenway or just left in its natural state. Again, these are my personal opinions. It’s how I feel. I am who I am. My opinions, the way I think, are totally unique to me. I do recognize, however, that most folks don't feel like I do (including my mother, who will most likely insist on a coffin and proper ground burying for me if I precede her) and most folks need to have some place to continue to mourn and grieve and place fake flowers, etc. I don't want anyone I leave behind to think they need a that. I have visited my father's grave a couple of times but only because I took his second wife there. She was good about making sure he had nice, artificial flowers at his headstone. His life had much meaning to me. His grave site has little meaning to me. My mother thinks I'm awful for feeling this way. That's me. The radical thinker in the family.