• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

How I Would Like My Own Funeral

I delude myself that my death will be something like Enya's video for Caribbean Blue:


In fact, it'll probably take place in a blood- and piss-stained NHS A&E unit, as a fourteen-year-old Ghanaian trainee doctor pounds my chest until my ribs splinter under fluorescent lights at 0330 on a wet February morning.

To make up for this I want a blub-inducing music selection during the ceremony. My current faves are Loreena McKennitt's live version of The Parting Glass:


...
followed by Annie Lennox singing Into the West:


Then, after having dissolved the assembled two or three people impatiently waiting for the next cremation, I'll subvert the proceeding with my PSU's old marching song:


Leave 'em laughing!

maximus otter



I will arrange a firing party for your funeral: three volleys into the coffin to be on the safe side.
 
Then, after having dissolved the assembled two or three people impatiently waiting for the next cremation, I'll subvert the proceeding with my PSU's old marching song:


Leave 'em laughing!
Ha! You and me both! That's what I intend to do.
Just need to write a will...
 
been at my sisters funeral today ... she did some theatre directing over the years and had time in last couple months to plan pretty much the whole thing ... some music, poems, a shakespeare piece ... i helped carry the coffin, which was non-traditional ... kept my cool until a short letter from her was read out ...
 
been at my sisters funeral today ... she did some theatre directing over the years and had time in last couple months to plan pretty much the whole thing ... some music, poems, a shakespeare piece ... i helped carry the coffin, which was non-traditional ... kept my cool until a short letter from her was read out ...

My condolences. Sounds as if you gave her a good send off.
 
Just aiming to get planted with the missus - will leave sufficient money for an enormous piss-up. Son has been briefed with appropriate music ending with Freebird.

In our pub when I was a rambunctious teenager / twenty+ you never played ANYTHING after Freebird, tradition owing to the fact that our DJ (Pete the Disco) who used that as his closing music had been murdered.
 
Last edited:
If they're Irish, be sure to bring spare ammo.

;)

maximus otter
FB_IMG_1518817977031.jpg

I don't think that will be necessary
 
Won't really matter. I won't be there.

It will be a cremation. Secular, no hymns or prayers. (I'm atheist).

But the music is already decided. 'cause your not here' from War of the Worlds' and 'Papa, can you hear me?' Barbra Streisand.

It is said that suicides miss out because they don't get to see what the others have to say about them. Which was the whole point in the exercise.

INT21
 
Last edited:
Probably not all. But many.

Some have just had enough and want out or are in terminal pain.

INT21
 
I’m undecided what should happen to my remains when I finally pop my clogs...... I don’t really care to be honest seeing as I’ll be dead! That said, I quite fancy the idea of my bones being stripped of all flesh or fatty tissue, being reassembled into a complete skeleton and then soaked in a super saturated solution of copper sulphate.....the resulting crystal encrusted skeleton should be quite an impressive sight should any future archaeologists disturb my slumbers and give them a definite WTF moment! Not too sure what I’d want as grave goods......maybe a laminated copy of Big Jugs Monthly.....that would give the buggers something to think about!
 
I’m undecided what should happen to my remains when I finally pop my clogs...... I don’t really care to be honest seeing as I’ll be dead! That said, I quite fancy the idea of my bones being stripped of all flesh or fatty tissue, being reassembled into a complete skeleton and then soaked in a super saturated solution of copper sulphate.....the resulting crystal encrusted skeleton should be quite an impressive sight should any future archaeologists disturb my slumbers and give them a definite WTF moment! Not too sure what I’d want as grave goods......maybe a laminated copy of Big Jugs Monthly.....that would give the buggers something to think about!

We have threads on interments/burials/funerals.

Have you thought of plastination? I went to an exhibition of it a few years ago, awesome.

Can think of worse ways for my remains to spend eternity than being gawped at in horrified fascination. It'd be just like being alive.
 
Ah, it’s been done before though......now being a bright blue, crystal encrusted skeleton....that’s got to be a first!
 
Funerals have gotten so expensive in the U.S. that you can not afford to die, so you must live forever.

I am now looking at cremation which seems to be more affordable.

I do not know the trend in other countries.
 
Funerals have gotten so expensive in the U.S. that you can not afford to die, so you must live forever.
I am now looking at cremation which seems to be more affordable. ...

Cremation is a lot less expensive than burial. It usually costs less than even a modest casket, and it avoids having to pay for all the other funeral home services (e.g., family visitation session; funeral service; graveside services).

On the other hand, it all depends on the broader situation. Funerals are as much for the sake of those who survive as for the deceased.

Increasingly cemeteries are allowing for burial of ashes (the current trendy term is 'inurnment' for the cemetery service). This means you can bypass some or all the more expensive casket / services costs and still inter the remains in a family cemetery plot if that's important to you and yours.

Naturally, you can also go for scattering of ashes or simply a filled urn given to one or more designated persons* rather than burial in a fixed location.

* In a couple of recent death situations in which I was involved the decision was made (or already prescribed) to divide the ashes among X number of urns and to give the urns to the X number of designated recipients.
 
I would like mine to involve Blue Tits and a hanging mesh coffin.
I hadn't thought about a gibbet cage... would need it to hang from a really tall post so folks would see it from miles away.
As for an epitaph, I saw a headstone last year with a simple "Dancing with Jesus" that stayed in the mind.
 
I would like my skull to be preserved somewhere. Like in an ossuary but on a shelf in a fancy library could work too.
 
I would like my skull to be preserved somewhere. Like in an ossuary but on a shelf in a fancy library could work too.
A friend of mine said I could have his head when he died and I always assumed he was joking. Went round his once and he had to admit he had spoken to his family about it and they had objected, so he had been serious. He has since died and he bequeathed a tooth which sits in a box in my living room most of the time. It’s brought along to Edinburgh Fortean Society Christmas meals so he can continue to be in attendance.
 
A friend of mine said I could have his head when he died and I always assumed he was joking. Went round his once and he had to admit he had spoken to his family about it and they had objected, so he had been serious. He has since died and he bequeathed a tooth which sits in a box in my living room most of the time. It’s brought along to Edinburgh Fortean Society Christmas meals so he can continue to be in attendance.

Like Jeremy Bentham? :D

The instinct to value human body parts goes deep. Not only can we revere a late friend's tooth, we can venerate sundry small bones and shrivelled scraps of flesh as relics of holy men and women.
Or of secular heroes, if that's what we believe them to be.
 
Ive always fancied, if i were rich to follow @titch to valhalla in a traditional viking send off, full sized viking longship, armour, weapons, the works, sent off into a fjord and ignited by a flaming arrow to the sound of Wagners 'ride of the Valkeries'


in reality i want a cardboard coffin, cremation to the sound of R.E.M's 'its the end of the word as we know it (and i feel fine)


If i were to have a headstone/marker, my epitaph would read simply,

'quoth the raven-nevermore'
 
Back
Top