After I’m gone, just cremate my body, I’ll never have use for it again. However, I do have one posthumous wish: to set the record straight regarding my atheism. For very practical reasons living here in the southern US, only 4 people including my wife know that I’m an atheist.

Save for the final niggly details, I have already written my obituary. I have purposely included the following:

“Although Xxxxxx was brought up in the Anglican Church, his faith was tenuous, mainly due to cognitive dissonance in his mind between his scientific knowledge and theism. To resolve these disparities, in late 2014 he began a Journey of Faith. Following an intense period of prayer, allied with biblical and historical study subjected to analytical thought, Xxxxxx concluded that there is no valid evidence to support the claim of the existence of any god and he became an atheist. To his pleasant surprise, acceptance of this conclusion released in him an intense feeling of liberation and all his prior mental conflicts immediately evaporated, resulting in a lasting peace of mind.

Due to antipathy and misunderstanding regarding atheism among family, friends and society, he shared his deconversion with only a very few individuals. However, armed with the realization that we only have one short, precious life, he cherished every second of consciousness, wonder and human interaction, and mindfully lived his life to the fullest. He was living proof that wonderful, loving, moral and ethical people can be atheists.”

Please excuse the self-aggrandizement; consider it written by another person.

After my wife died I was naturally feeling disconnected with the world, the funeral arrangements were made by my fantastic son. Along the way he arranged for the placement of her ashes in a major cemetery in our city where it happens most of our relatives are buried.
My son, bless his heart purchased a double plot, reserving my place alongside my lovely girl. The problem for me is that I really dislike going to that cemetery. Its a morbid dreary place to my mind, despite the landscape of trees and flowering bushes. I simply don't go there.
I pay my respects to her when I see a sunrise over the ocean on the headland where I live, or when I glimpse something surprising in nature in general. I 'talk' to her a lot.
For myself I would rather my ashes be scattered out in the Outback, off that headland I mentioned, or in the wake of an aircraft in flight. I care little for what happens to my body after I am gone and I certainly don't want any sort of monument however small. My family will have to make do with the art objects I made, my pottery and drawings and writings such as they're worth and of course their memory of me..

It has been your body for the years you have been alive. As far as I am concerned it remains my property and I should be allowed to do with it as I wish. I am also opting for a simple cremation. I mean, card board box, no service of any kind, and into the fire. Funerals are for the living.

I want to return to the food web from which the molecules I am made of were derived. Burying 6ft under is too deep. Cremation uses too much energy and sends my usable molecules to atmosphere as smoke. The only easily available method that allows you to be eaten by critters, insects, microbes, is the Body Farm in Knoxville Tennessee. They will send you the donation form or you can print from website. You do have to arrange transportation of your maggot farm, I mean body, to the site. Still cheaper than a funeral.

I am in the: "funerals and related are for the living" crowd.

My wishes are for the people that care about me to do whatever that will help them with the loss of me. If they cannot agree, or want my wishes beyond "whatever helps them", then: donate my body for the sciences, and get on with enjoying their own lives. If I am a vegetable and cannot be saved, but if some of my organs can be saved for use for other people in need. Do that.

I will donate my body to science. That means that medical students will likely practice cutting on it. Good. They need to practice. One of them might just have to perform surgery on someone I love.

As for funerals...the “Speaker for the Dead” notion appeals to me.

I have often thought about moving house, because I have no desire to be buried in the local cemetery.

I have historically been opposed to cremation and donating my body, on the grounds that it would make any attempt to reanimate me more difficult, and because I like the idea of potentially being dug up in thousands of years time.

I think ultimately, I would like whichever would cause my loved ones the least amount of distress - which I think would probably be cremation, because I imagine it would be less likely to cause morbid thoughts.

If I had the money i'd be made into a diamond. Even if I get lost the carbon crystal would remain until the death of our star.

I have always assumed that when I die, my dead corpse will simply break down and become part of the natural elements around it. I will be food for other creatures and the earth itself. I will waste away and parts of what used go be me will become part soil, part tree, part wolf....who knows, even part stardust somehow.

As humanity is finally becoming more deliberately creative and productive with the remains of our species, I would love to have my remains become part of an ecological preserve of some sort. I know what I value and only hope that when the time comes, those who outlive me, whatever contrary values and philosophies they might hold, will honor my true wishes and do as I have asked.