Certainly, one aspect of estate planning that often receives less attention than many other areas is body disposal.
Ideally, a will maker’s wishes in relation to body disposal should be communicated to immediate family members or the executor of the estate.
A memorandum of directions, letter of wishes or similar style document is often the best mechanism in this regard.
At least in western culture, the three most traditional body disposal approaches are:
- burial;
- cremation;
- burial at sea.
- Diamonds
- Mummification
- Cryogenically frozen
- Coral reefs
- Composting
- Deluxe cardboard box
- Vinyl records
- Firecrackers
- Snorting (ie the Keith Richards play; note - the mixing of ashes with illicit substances is generally regarded as optional)
- Smoking – as a variation on the snorting idea, friends of rap singer Tupac allegedly mixed his ashes with marijuana and smoked them
- An hour glass
- Glass orb
- Snow Globes
- Space flight (as made famous by James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty in Star Trek, whose ashes were sent into space on a Elon Musk SpaceX rocket launch)
- Shot out of a cannon – Hunter S. Thompson style, perhaps helping deliver on his famous comment that:
‘Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”’
** For the trainspotters, the title of today's post is riffed from the Rolling Stones song 'Respectable'.
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