Learning To Love You More
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Assignment #51
Describe what to do with your body when you die.

Rachel Z.
Salt Lake City, Utah USA

REPORTS:

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Leave No Trace, you know? i backpack a lot and that's what they preach. i try and do it everyday in my life too. i want to do it when i'm dead. so minimum impact is key here. but i also know that ceremonies and ritual and closure and things are important for those i leave behind, and really, all this funeral stuff is as much (more) for them as for me. so what i want is something good for the world, the earth, and good for the people i love.
so you guys go ahead and have whatever fun memorial service you want. hopefully when i die i'll still have people around who know me well enough for me to trust them with this. it doesn't have to be fun, it can be sad, it can even be sappy. whatever you need, just think about me. but absolutely there must be no stupid fancy artificial attempts at removing my body from the natural cycles. as far as i know cremation is the most effective legal way. if there's something even more LNT, go for it. and if you want to do some sort of memorial for me, i'd rather something more practical or part of daily life than a tombstone. not a memorial urinal like jen and i joked about, but maybe scratch my name in some wet sidewalk cement. write me a haiku and paint it somewhere. put a plaque up, but a small one near the ground so people bend over to see it. buy me a seat on a bus like the ones with the little nameplates in concert halls. or maybe on the dc metro.
i'd much prefer my parents not be there. i hope very much that i outlive them. that's what's proper. if they are around, let them be in charge as much as they want, except still i want my body not preserved at all. that part's non-negotiable.