Writer's Block: Left Behind

[dolari]

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My body and I have been at odds since Day One. It should be cremated and scattered to the winds.

Comments

[pazi-ashfeather.livejournal.com]

When I die -- if I have to die, which I'm fairly well resigned to despite my transhumanist leanings -- I want to be buried. With a minimum of preservation and only a simple coffin; I don't want to be protected from the elements. I want my remains to cycle back into the biosphere, from whence the stuff that was me came.

For billions of years, I was stardust.
For millions of years, I was bits and pieces of innumerable other organisms.
For a few decades, I'll be this human thing, in all its ephemeral, transitory complexity.

A few decades after I die, I'll be worms, trees, insects, fungus and soil.
A few centuries later, I'll be parts of hundreds of other things and people.
Millions of years from when I die, I'll be parts of the new forms of life that have come into existence -- still playing a part in evolution and life on Earth, albeit not from an observer's role.
In six billion years, I'll be a whisp of carbon on the gases of a nova shell, flimsy gossamer plasma spreading languidly throughout the universe.

That is what I want done with my remains, when I die. None of this protecting me from decay and the elements. I want to participate.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

That's beautiful - and totally unworthy of this body. I want it cremated and the ashes spread because I don't want it honored like that. It's a hateful prison, that has fought every step I've taken to make it more comfortable. So, yeah, burn that baby.

[madrona.livejournal.com]

There is the temptation of having my carbon turned into lab diamonds (there's a company that will do it) and having my descendants say, "Yes, this ring is my grandmother." "You mean it belonged to your grandmother?" "No, it is my grandmother."

Just for the Addams family factor, you see.

But actually? I don't care. Because I won't be using it anymore, and I'll have better things to think about. Slingshot it off a roof or leave it in a hefty sack or reuse it for parts or wheel it around in a chair pretending it's an invalid so you can get good parking...it won't be mine anymore.

[skipperofarc.livejournal.com]

I'm totally with you on this one.