“No.”
“Would you like to know?”
“Why yes! Yes I would!”
The gentleman gets a bright light in his eyes as he tries to hide the shocked expression on his face, fumbling for his mostly unopened Bible. His partner in crime shifts nervously on his feet, waiting for an argument and insults to begin pouring from my cracked Minnesota lips.
Ten minutes later, having marched through the highlights of John, Romans, a few verses in Ephesians, along with some scary references from 1 Thessalonians and Revelation, the speaker looks up from his Bible to see my relieved face.
“Thank you so much! I finally have my answer! I’m going to hell. Coffee?”
*splutter…
I turn on my heels to grab a few mugs and the pot as the partner stops shifting, letting a chuckle escape his well practiced smile.
“Sure. Black,” he says, gratefully, as his boss shoots him a murderous look.
I’m going to reincarnate as cyanobacteria, most likely.
I’ll be a worm and slurp you up for breakfast.
I’m going away.
Where the candle flame goes when the candle is blown out. That’s where I’m going.
Once I die I stop going places. That comes with the territory, so to speak.
Medical school, anatomy class. (The students could probably do with a good laugh.)
Already been predetermined. To the nearest crematorium as I personally find the whole burial process to be barbaric. I hate funerals and don’t go to them while Im alive, I will be damned if Im going to have one when Im dead. Burn my body and scatter my ashes near my favorite fishing hole. Done. After that, Ive seen no evidence that I will go anywhere else. Their opinion may be that Im going to hell, but opinions are like…
I’m going into the ground, obviously.
Not so obviously these days.
I’d like a Buddhist / Zoroastrian / many Indigenous First Australian tradition style sky burial – placed up to the sky or / & chopped up for the vultures to enjoy!
Ultimately the molecules of my body will be doing the same as Yorick’s in Hamlet and then as he mused on Alexander’s noble remains turning into bunghole filler* and eventually we’ll all be returned to stardust when Earth itself is melted down by our ballooning redgiant sun and then scattered once more perhaps by our sun’s demise.
* See : http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_290.html
Previous page (right arrow from link) has the musings on the late lamented Jester Yorick’s remains : ” Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. —Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?”
If those left behind are permitted to follow my wishes:
compost
I’ll be dead then so I probably won’t care.
I know where I’m going. Into others. I have left written instructions in my will to transplant any useable parts of me. And to dispose of the rest in the most economical and environmentally friendly manner possible. “Possible” must mean legally possible in this case; composting my remains is not lawful.
I buried my cats in the garden and they are now trees and shrubs (10th life). Sadly, can’t do that with human remains.
Loved Hamlet quote.
I’ve told my husband that I want my ashes scattered in a subduction zone, where oceanic earth crust is sliding under continental earth crust. Some of the water in the wet downgoing tectonic plate percolates up and contributes to melting of crustal magma in the overriding tectonic plate, creating volcanic magma that then erupts… and the water is contaminated with all kinds of lightweight things, maybe even human ash. So, with a little luck, I could come back as a volcano far into the future. 🙂
But that’s expensive, so I’ll settle for my ashes becoming part of the Eastern Sierra ecosystem I love so much.