Songs

Final Resting Place

38 Comments

Far better than anything coming out of the Super Bowl was Sunday’s news that the Brits have discovered the bones of Richard III under a parking lot.

Lovely.

There were no parking lots when the hunchbacked king died on the battlefield in 1485. He was buried in a church but the church was later razed and the parking lot put over him. So it goes. But having an intact skeleton may help to rehabilitate Richard’s image, tarnished by Tudors, Time and the Theater, most notably that reputation-killer, Shakespeare.

But it does put an exclamation point on the notion that once dead, you are no longer in the driver’s seat. You could be under it. And it’s up to those who follow you to honor your memory – or not.

Ultimately, does it matter where the remains land? Here are three songs making last requests about final arrangements. Short of drawing up legal papers that say essentially the same thing as your lyrics, I don’t think putting your internment instructions in a song brings any hope of success, and certainly no guarantee.

You just don’t get to call the shots after you’re gone.

http://youtu.be/WAbFXffZ7Wc

You can ask for one place NOT to be buried. Maybe we will listen.

38 thoughts on “Final Resting Place”

  1. Good morning. I really don’t have anything to say about what should be done with me once I die. That is entirely up my family and they can do as they wish. The best I can think of for instruction is please keep it simple. No big fancy funeral. No expensive casket. No big grave stone. However, if they really want to put me in an expensive casket or bury me under a large tomb stone, that is up to whoever takes care the burial. The lone prairie or any other place is okay with me.

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    (Well, once I am buried this morning greeting will be moot. What will the greeting be? Stay in bed and moulder, Baboons? Hover and Haunt, Baboons? Gloom and Doom Baboons?) I don’t plan to be buried anywhere, so apparently that is my request–don’t bury me anywhere. I want to be cremated and have the urn taken to the Stratton Family Cemetery (well, OK, the Nevada Iowa municipal cemetery) for disposal and a marker.

    This plan is driven by a wonderful family Memorial Day tradition that has come down to us for generations. We gather at the cemetery to decorate the graves of family and tell family stories. Aunt Genny Hagen and Aunt Gladys Overbaugh Jewell (2 husbands), now residents of this hallowed ground, maintained this tradition that their mother taught them. My sibs and I are now passing this along to the next generation. Because I would like to be remembered once per year with the rest of the bunch, plant my ashes there and tell stories about me someday.

    Just do not bury me.

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    1. Like that trasition. We could do that in thew Lanesboro IA cemetery with several hundred people..Your family has a M editerranian soul, where they do things like that.

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    2. My parents also had a tradition of decorating graves on memorial day. They got together with relatives to do this. That tradition has ended because almost all of the people who were part of it have passed away. A cousin of mine mentioned continuing the tradition, but we only talked about it and didn’t do it.

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      1. However, this tradition is entirely retrievable. You and said cousin can Just show up there with a bunch of sale priced silk flowers from Michaels to plant in front of the markers. You might even be able to get a map of the cemetery from the city.

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        1. I’m sorry to say that I think my relative are spread too far apart across the country to be able to get together like was done during my parents’ generation to do things like decorating graves. Burials do draw a fairly big group of relatives. Grave decorating would probably not bring them together.

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      2. Oh yes, the Memorial Day cemetary visits. We went to Ft. Snelling for my adoptive mother’s brother, who was killed in Europe in 1944, every year, but we switched off between visiting Mom’s family graves (Wisconsin) and Dad’s family graves (South Dakota). Thanks to a lot of elderly relatives and family friends, I spent an inordinate amount of my childhood in hospitals, nursing homes, funeral homes and cemetaries, and in fact one of the stops on our one big family vacation was to view ancestral graves in Illinois (I have a snapshot of me as a little kid standing by a great-great-aunt’s tombstone). I haven’t kept up the grand Victorian tradition of grave decoration either–for one thing, WisCon is Memorial Day weekend, and science fiction trumps dead relatives–but my personal religious tradition has a holiday for honoring the ancestors and beloved dead, so I do my remembering then.

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  3. Bury not my ashes, or body, in the Two Harbors cemetery.Not behind that iron fence across from a cheesy statue of a Voyageur.
    I just had a flash: I am going to have my kids distribute my ashes in four parts–Delaware, Alabama, Oklahoma, Hawaii. The four states to which I have not been.

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    1. I thought this was the final Homer Simpson
      Dope slap doah!!!!!!’

      I was gonna ask how you missed Alabama while you were down there then I remembered I had two to go until a couple years aga Alabama and Mississippi, then I went to Alabama for a weekend and now only Mississippi remains
      Think ill see if I can avoid it just so I can say I did

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      1. I visited half of my states, all of those in the south, by flying in and out for a workshop. So not by a road trip that would take me where I wanted.

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        1. Thanks to my store-opening retail days and now my travel industry days, I have only one state left — Alaska. I was actually scheduled on a trip but at the last minute ended up going to China instead to pick up the Baby (now the Teenager). If I never get to Alaska, it was still a good trade!

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        3. i loved it but it is a cottage industry in the summer. i rented a motor home that served as both transportation and sleep quarters and was surprised that in alaska the best forntage in every town is the rv public lot on the ocean. it was amazing no sunset was cool the beauty of kenai was incredible and alaskans in general were a cool bunch of folks, kind of like montana folks but more so

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  4. As Jim said, I will be dead – let the living decide what to do with my mortal remains. They are the ones who may (or may not) want to know where I am. My only request (with apologies to anyone who likes the tune), please do not play “On Eagles Wings” at any service, gathering, burial, whatever for me. I understand it is a song that brings comfort to many – so I will gladly sing it for others – but I find it overly sentimental and a bit overwrought. if it is played for me, I may well rise from the dead and smite whomsoever made that foolish choice (and then return to my eternal rest).

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      1. If you can get Mr Ashcroft to sing it in a duet with Michelle Bachmann, well, then, okay. I’ll put up with it. Maybe. Only because then I could rise from the dead and smite the duet.

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  5. Oh how fickle is the finger of fate. The land that holds the compound where Osama bin Laden was gunned down is being razed and converted to a theme park. And the authorities apparently do not mean to memorialize the tall dude by calling it Osamaland, as his is a memory they would like to obliterate. Maybe the theme park could include a shooting range where Osama pops his head out of his bedroom and ducks back in, or maybe it could have a WhackaOsama feature.

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  6. Those pictures of Richard’s spinal deformation are fascinating.

    There are quite a few small, isolated cemeteries out here that would provide a really quiet final resting place, but I would worry I would be disinterred for an oil well. I wouldn’t want to be buried in New Orleans, since my casket would be floating half of the time.

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  8. If we haven’t managed to find someone to buy the family property in Wisconsin, then I guess I’d like my ashes spread around the tree where my dad’s ashes were spread (and my mom wants her ashes spread when she goes). But like others, I don’t really mind where I go, as long as I don’t take up ground in a cemetary somewhere.

    I’m fascinated by the Richard III saga – I would love to know what happened to those two princes. The Richard III society says that Richard didn’t need to do away with them because they had already been declared illegitimate; although I wouldn’t bet any of my own money on Richard as the culprint, the “they had already been declared illegitimate” doesn’t hold any water with me. Way too many folks have lost their lives by being too close to a powerful rival, legitimate or not!

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    1. Elizabeth I was technically illegitimate , Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn being absolved, and therefore not inline to the throne.

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  9. I have been involved in helping arrange for burials including the burial of my Aunt Rita who was the last of my Dad’s brothers and sisters to die and died after my Dad had passed away. I was the only one available to take care of burying Aunt Rita who had no children and did not marry. She was buried at the family plot in Wisconsin with only my wife and I present. She had kept herself separated from the rest of the family for many years intentionally because she had some mental health problems that made it hard for her to get along with her brothers and sisters at times.

    I had not trouble getting along with my Aunt when she needed help due to failing health. I wasn’t even sure that she wanted to be buried in the family plot, but she told me she did. As the last among her brothers and sisters to die, there really wasn’t anyone alive that had an interest in coming to her burial. My cousins were thankful to me for taking care of her burial and were glad to hear what I had to say about her. However, I didn’t see any reason to ask them to come to the burial and they didn’t indicate they wanted to be there.

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  10. Molly: “Liam, tomorrow is your third birthday! You get to choose what we eat tomorrow night.”
    Liam: “Cake.”
    Molly: “Oh, I think you can count on cake. But what shall we have for our main meal?”
    Liam: “Cake!”
    Molly: “Hmmm, well I’m sure we will have cake. But do you want tacos, or spaghetti or what for the main meal?”
    Liam: “Cupcakes?”

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    1. thanks pj glad to hear youre on the mend. i loved thsat tune by blood sweat and tears and then by billy holiday when i found out thats where it came form. didnt know peeter paul and mary did it.

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  13. i know where i would like to be buried. or ashes spread but the question as i understand it is where dont you want to be buried. i was thinking on wall street. then i was thinking if you take my ashes and pour them into a batch of concrete there are a whole bunch of places i dont want to be. the dick cheney memorial is the first one to come to mind. w was an idiot but cheney was an evil man and i wouldnt enjoy being part of that . i was thinkinf though that i should pick somewhere that will be ready for me when im dead. dicks memorial shrine may not be in place yet or it may be bulldozed. how about at auschwitz i cant think of a sadder place to be buried where there is more bad karma floating around. i dont want to be buried in a quiet uneventful unnoticed disappearance like some of my relatives . we ased what happed to grandpas brother and the response was he just disappeared back in 1910 or so . he must hve goen out met with an accident or foul play or just wanted to head of to california and no one ever heard of or from him again. how sad. to be remembered means a little something. not to be thought of may be a small loss when you come right down to it. i dont think my great grandfathers wifes mother gets thought of too often these days but never would feel sad. so not at dick cheneys not at the site of the bronze bull on wall street not at auchwitz and come to think of not at george w’s place either. . if you put me in concrete thatere a endless stretches of highway and numerous buildings i woulddnt want to be part of for all eternity. but really even if i am planted in the cornerstone of the lonleyest stretch of road…….

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  15. Any place that is not a landfill will do nicely.

    I was going to suggest Fresh Kills landfill in New York specifically, but a little research revealed that the site is now being transformed into a park. The history of the place, once the largest landfill in the world, probably prevents it from ever becoming a sought-after final destination, but in its rejuvenated form it probably won’t be so bad.

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