WAY TO GO!
You have a choice to make before you die. Do you wish to be buried in the conventional manner or cremated?
You can save relatives and friends a great deal of concern and care, if you, at least, make some reference to the subject and make your choice known before the time of need arrives.
This is not a subject which demands instant attention In fact, most of us would just as soon to forget it and leave the decision up to those who survive us. I don't know of any real complaints about having been put away by the wrong method, but I have found those survivors who, months llater let it be known that the deceased actually had wanted to be put way by the other method. That can cause ill-feeling among family members and needless worry and concern by others.
My rather limited inexperience in the field came about from being an newspaper reporter, though military service during war time, and through post-retirement employment by a funeral home. I have worked as an assistant in both procedures and neither method is pleasant. I have assisted in both embalming and cremation procures and neither one is pleasant. I would not seek employment neither field as a life work. In my limited view, I have “been there and done that” to a sufficient degree.
During World War II a friend of mine offered his mortuary capabilities to a firm in the English city near which were stationed. He was disappointed. He had no inexperienced in cremation, which was the predominant method used in England during those wartime
Take time to discuss the matter with family and friends if you have a preference in mind. Some people have some rather strange ideas about death and dying, and even stranger ones about the process by which the human body is changed in an attempt to make it more durable after death. Religious factor enter the equation with many individuals, and others take a nonchalant attitude which says, in effect,”What difference does it make?” If you have a special aversion to either form, let that fact be knows to those who might be called upon to see to your deathbed wishes and needs.
A.L.M. March 12, 2004 [c387wds]
