Just not having to make the decisions and research and stuff. It was very unexpected when my mom died, but my dad had bought himself a ”discount funeral" membership or something several years earlier and it was a help. If you ignored the spinning from inside the coffin.

Having had four family members pass in two years (senior year of HS, freshman year of college), I learned two key things.

• funerals/burials are for the living. And just because you grew up in the same house, doesn't mean you have the same needs.

• it brings out the very best and worst of family members.

I don't know if I mentioned it here, but Matt's father passed in April -- the memorial will be the 17th of this month. Why so long? exactly because it is for living. It is easier for everyone to plan that might want to plan.

And Connie, I so know how yo feel. both the - oh this goning to make all this stuff so hard and the guilt for putting your concerns/needs/plans first.

time for work

This reminds me that I really should let my family know that I am perfectly delighted to go to a medical school. I know lots of people that have gone to medical school and have been in the labs myself and it works for me.

Apparently, the university I work for medical program, takes care of the cremation, and then burial at sea when the research is done. This sounds silly. But that is the one hesitation for me. I have a huge fear of drowning (having nearly died of it as a child). Very irrational. I know. Silly. Stupid. And yet, there it is. My brain. Silly stuff. [link]

As of right now, I'm with Lou Grant, and wouldn't mind being taken out on garbage day...that is, if nobody's around to help me grace the felt, McNulty-style.

I've been immersed in Jewish culture and burial rules enough that, even though I know it's the better thing to do, donating my body to science weirds me out just enough that I wouldn't do it. (Jewish law is a bit iffy on organ donation, but most people nowadays agree that it allows donations of things like the heart that will directly save someone's life, but not things like a cornea that will make someone's life better but not actually save them from death. A lot of Jewish people are still pretty reluctant, though -- the "You don't mess with the body after death" taboo is pretty strong.)

ION, I just spent over two hours driving to campus, doing some work, and driving home. Only about ten minutes of that was actual work. The rest was being stuck in graduation traffic. (I had one student who had to take a conflict exam, and I needed to go to campus to get his exam to grade it.)

She's looking at it from the logical point of view. Funerals and burials cost money. And we have never had money to burn.

A few months after my mom passed, my dad handed me a card with contact info for his newly-purchased, pre-paid cremation plan. I just stared at him, because while it made perfect sense, I was in no way ready for him to do that.

Several years ago, my dad took care of all the paperwork and such to donate his body to the medical school. When the school is done, the body is cremated, and...I can't actually remember if the next of kin are offered the option to collect the ashes or not.

I'm glad he did all that, but it was unsettling, to say the least.

My parents already have burial plots, in the cemetery where my mom's parents and aunt and uncle and cousins are buried. My sister and I have plots there, too. As do our hypothetical future husbands.