Scatter Your Ashes - Where?

Subject: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Dunc
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 05:19 AM

I have a colleague who, when he dies, wants to have his ashes stuffed in a sugar bag and fired out of the One O'Clock Gun from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle.
I also have a colleague who is the messiest smoker in the world - several of us are thinking about having our ashes scattered down the front of his jacket.

Any other novel locations for bodily remains?

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Mr Red
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 05:45 AM

Dunc
Going out with a bang I guess!
Me? Laid on the Malvern Hills. Yes please! Just before I go I hope. Going out with a........ BANG.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 06:42 AM

Top of Mt Monadnock here in so-western NH, USA.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 06:58 AM

ON AN ISLAND WHERE EAGLES NEST IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CHIPPEWA FLOWAGE.
- (EXCUSE CAPS AS I AM STUCK IN CAPS LOCK TILL I GET A NEW KEYBOARD.) JER'

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Katcina
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:01 AM

I DIDN'T REALIXE MY COOKIE NEEDED RENEWAL. THAT'S ME SHOUTING ABOVE. JER'

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Midchuck
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:05 AM

When I was a little kid I assumed they'd have workable commercial space travel by the time I was this age. I knew quite a lot about technology but not much about economics. I had hoped to die someplace more interesting and less crowded than this planet.

I want my ashes kept in a jar in back of a closet until space travel becomes a commercial reality, then dumped on the moon or orbited free in the asteroid belt, or something.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Amergin
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:10 AM

Well, like I have stated in other threads....I want to be stuffed and stowed by the fireplace for eternity...I have always thought I'd make a damn fine family heirlooom....

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: gnu
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:14 AM

On my ex-wife's new living room carpet, mixed with a bottle of black rum.

gnu

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Cobble
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 08:06 AM

By Loch Greshornish, Isle of Skye when there is a wonderful deep red sunset.

Mrs C

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Sarah the flute
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 08:09 AM

Gnu Surely your ex-wife's new carpet will expire before you - you'll have to think again for true revenge!

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: gnu
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 08:45 AM

Sarah... I have buddies who, having known me and my ex during our thirteen years of bliss, would gladly keep an eye out for the carpet layers for as long as it takes.

Seriously, I wish her no such harm. Just a joke.

Actually, my spot is picked out. None of you would know it, much less care, but I named it Top of The Trailer Road in place I named Partridge Flats. It's between the Alagash and Mountain heaths in Kent County, New Brunswick and it's as far back as you can walk without snowshoes on a hot summer day. It's the highest point of land in relatively flat country - relief less than 100m - that's trimmed with a mix of soft and hardwood that supports as much wildlife as it does beauty and serenity.

It MY happy place. It's where I have my connection with nature and myself.

gnu

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: John Routledge
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 09:11 AM

On the summit of Great Gable in the English Lake District.

There is already a very small brass War Memorial there to climbers who died in the two World Wars.

A bequest to the local mountin Rescue Team will ensure my transportation upwards even if my behaviour doesn't.

Yours in the present GB

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Paul G.
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 10:32 AM

Dump me into the water near the source of the St. John's River, just north of the Everglades, from where I'll be carried through the heartland of Florida, 300 miles north to Jacksonville and out to the Atlantic. From there to England, my mother's country that I've never seen...

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 12:11 PM

Place my ashes in the soil among the roots of an apple tree. May as well do something useful!!!

A

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Amergin
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 12:21 PM

Uselessness in life, usefulness in death, Amos?:-)

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Mooh
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 12:57 PM

I have some favourite places on the Bruce Peninsula (Ontario Canada) where I have spent some of the most spiritual times of my life. There, where there's still a hint of what the world was like before we polluted it so much, and where there are signs of Hope. Probably not far from where I deposited my Dad's ashes last year.

Peace. Mooh.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Allan C.
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 01:02 PM

Well, FIRST I'd like to get 'em hauled quite a few more times!

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Dave Swan
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 01:04 PM

Plow 'em under just before the barley is planted.

Dave

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 01:33 PM

There's a lighthouse just off the coast of Tillamook, Oregon (click). It's now a columbarium. That might be a nice place to end up, but I'd rather that my kids scatter me somewhere or do whatever they want - it makes no nevermind to me.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: SINSULL
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 03:34 PM

I have a friend safely tucked away in the curtain hem of the metroploitan Opera House. I will be happy to be scattered on a NYC street after the first snow storm of the year.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 04:15 PM

I think ashes are a cheat. Burial means there's a place for people to have in mind, somewhere where they've stood around and said goodbye, and it's somewhere where other people have done the same. And I think composting waste is better than burning it.

I like the idea of orchard burials myself, with good apple trees.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 04:25 PM

I would like to mix my ashes with Geoff's and be sent up in a glorious explosion of colour in a firework over Whitby! But there's no hurry!

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Lanfranc
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 05:58 PM

Round buoy 6 on Holyfield Lake, Waltham Abbey, Essex, UK.

In memory of the number of times I have run my boat aground there and in the hope that every time a passing sailboat hit its centreboard on the newly augmented shoal, the crew would think of me!

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Morticia
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 06:10 PM

I couldn't care less.....you can stuff me in a bin bag and shove me on a corporation tip....why would it matter to me, I won't be there.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: okthen
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:08 PM

I have left instructions that I shall be buried upright in a biodegradable (cardboard (cheap)) container, with a tree planted over me. I'm not sure what kind of tree though, either fruit so others can enjoy me when I'm gone, or Oak for permanence.(A combination of the two would be representative as I've been called soft and thick, however I digress)

Just so long as I'm facing east, and not cremated (just to keep me from blowing away)

It ain't gonna matter much (in the long run) gosh that's 2 musical quotes.

cheers

bill

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: kendall
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:29 PM

Yeah...what Allen said, and then,

Send me to glory in a glad bag
Dont waste no fancy coffin on my bones,
Just put me out beside the curb on Tuesday
Let that Sanitation Local bear me home.

Sell all my worldly possessions
And buy yourself a case or two of Pabst
Let the empties be my memorial tombstone
Engrave them with this epitaph

repeat chorus

If I should die on the eve of Christmas
Just place me in a "baggy" by the tree
And when the children open all their presents
Their big surprise will be the death of me

rep. ch.

But, maybe I'm not bound for glory
Tho' to that other place I wouldn't choose
If it seems that I'm headed in that direction
Then an Oven bag would be the thing to use.

rep ch.

I'll be lying with a twist tie in each nostril
In a plastic coat for all eternity
When you see the seagulls hover o're the landfill
Take off your hat my friend and think of me.

rep. chorus

that last verse was written by a mudcatter. If he wants to own up to it, fine. I wont blow his cover!

Actually, I'd like to have my ashes strewn about on Penobscot Bay here in Maine.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: kendall
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:50 PM

After they have been "hauled" from South Portland to Camden!

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:55 PM

Its gotta be Whitby.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: catspaw49
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 08:16 PM

Allan, that is one of the funniest lines I have read on the 'Cat this year!!! I totally lost it!!!!

Spaw

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 10:40 PM

My kids are going to mix my ashes with those of all the critters who've gone before me and been cremated. They will take them up here to be laid in the ground at the foot of my Grandmother and Grandfather Hudson's gravestone, which is also right next to those of my greatgrandparents. My mom is a couple of rows over, among her mom and pop and siblings.

The photographer doesn't have all of the graves up there on this website, yet. It was always a very special place to me, as a child. We went up there on Memorial Day to tend the gravesites and I always got to line them with little pebbles. New Castle is where my mom and dad's ancestors homesteaded in Colorado. Up at the cemetary, there are always ravens or black crows, sometimes eagles, and much other wildlife and wonderful, pungent and tall sagebrush! It's simply "home" to me.

kat

PS: Spaw, maybe Allan has been listening to Roy Bookbinder singing this!**BG**

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 11:53 PM

Thread Drift Alert- a little

Dunc, I have to thank you for starting this thread. For years my dad has told us that we have Gordons in our ancestors in Nova Scotia. For years I have researched and not found the link. Well, tonight when I made the link from the old cemetery, in my post above, it prompted me to do a little more research and there, in my greatgrandfather's obit, online, was his mother's name, Hannah Gordon! I had his mom listed as someone else altogether in family stories and notes! So, another puzzle piece found! Thank you very much!

katlaughing

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 01:31 AM

When I'm finally made into ashes, I would like to be spread into Heal's Eddy, a little bay at the mouth of the Kennebec River, where my Uncle Ted Stewart's ashes were dispersed. He was the family patriarch for many years and we all really respected him. Still do. On his day of consecretion, his ashes seemed to glow in the middle of the bay and six seals circled him and welcomed him to their world while a piper played tunes on the shore. That was the most heartwarming scene I have ever witnessed in my life. I hope I have seals at my consecretion.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Dunc
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 03:00 AM

Well done Kat, I have spent many an hour / day / week / month searching through my family tree.
Its a great buzz when you find someone you've been looking for.

I have a srtange job which involves several times a year taking funeral parties out to sea for commital of ashes ceremonies (someone has to do it!!)
I was short of a crewman one day and press-ganged someone to make up the numbers at the last minute. Out at sea at the moment when the ashes were scattered over the stern, and the Chaplain was saying all the appropriate words, a strong updraft blew the ash back up into the air with a large proportion of it landing in the hair of my new recruit...
He never volunteered for a second tour of duty.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 03:05 AM

What a bad first day on the job Dunc. Sounds like a new thread a brewin'.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 03:07 AM

Or a song?

wdyat12

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: GUEST,SusanGoo
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 03:45 AM

My beloved husband loves everything about Las Vegas, most specifically Caesar's palace. I'll scatter his ashes around the gardens, or, if they're doing constructions, I'll dump his ashes into the excavations, preferably into cement so he can be part of CP forever. As for me, our 8 year old daughter and I have discussed it - I told her she can do anything that makes her feel better - but if she cremated me and scattered my ashes, she could think I was hugging her everytime the wind blows. She like that, so I expect that's what'll happen. BTW, I've heard of a company that takes cremains and fires them into glass beads. Guess you could order a set and have them passed around to the family...

Subject: Scatter Your ORGANS first!!!
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 03:53 AM

I'm 100% in favour of manditory organ donation, (there should be laws against buring healthy organs!) so once I finally kick off this mortal shell, hack it up and help anyone ya can with what ever I've got!

If there's much left... I've heard that donated cadavers sometimes get used as crash dummies, so sign me up!

The goo that's left... hell... feed it to the cat or the birds or the bears or whatever!

As was said above, I don't care... I won't be there!

;-)

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 04:01 AM

That's Right CH. What a noble thought. Sign me up for med school. Whatever they don't use I want made into ashes and spread upon Heal's Eddy.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: kendall
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 09:07 AM

Please dont bury me down in the cold cold ground
I'd rather have them cut me up and spread me all around...

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: lady penelope
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 09:59 AM

I like the Robert Heinlein angle of 'Stranger in a Stange Land'. So donate the organs ( if there are any in a useful state ) and fry up the rest and have Penelope sandwiches, to be eaten preferably first thing in the morning after a heavy night at Towersy or some such event. At least you'll know why you feel awful and every one can make Micca eat the most in revenge for his hip flask!!!

Subject: And Kiss My Ass GOODBYE!
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 11:19 AM

Good song Kendal!!!

;-)

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Grab
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 07:50 AM

On the West Highland Way at the Rannoch Moor pass. Not found a church anywhere that feels as holy as that view does.

Alternatively, somewhere on the heath above West Kirby, overlooking the Dee and looking out towards Hilbre island, for the sheer peacefulness of it.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Gervase
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 08:06 AM

My nearest and dearest have threatened to put mine in an egg-timer.
That way, they reckon, I'll be breaking the habits of a lifetime and doing a proper job of work!

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Jenny the T
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 08:09 AM

Put me in an iron canister,then fly me to a great height ...

and drop me on Jesse Helms.

If Jesse goes before me (not likely--evil never dies), put me in the garden or under the orchard, please.

Jenny

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: chip a
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 09:35 AM

Off the Lucien Rousseau Memorial Float in Scituate (Mass.) Harbor. The float wasn't there 40 yrs. ago, but Lucien was. And my dory was. And my moss rake was. First, though, I want any useful parts of me shared with anyone who needs them.

Chip

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: GUEST,bbc at work
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 11:44 AM

Donate anything usable, cremate me cheaply, hold a memorial service, & put my ashes under a pink dogwood tree. Suits me.

bbc

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 11:49 AM

I've also left my body for transplants, dissection etc (well, medical students need a laugh as much as anyone!) and I don't really care where the ashes of what's left go: on the compost heap in the garden would suit me but I suspect Herself will make her own mind up.
RtS

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: GUEST,Ced2
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 12:07 PM

"In all the States of the Union except Utah".. 'cos he would not be seen dead with a bunch of Mormons...Joe Hill; "Sprinkle just a bit over each banana split"..Tom Lehrer ..."My Home Town"! Seriously though.. here in the UK there will have to be a "National Ashes Scattering Day" when we are allowed back into the countryside afer the F&M is over and the threats of £5k fines are removed on the opening of footpaths etc. By the way ever seen the amount of debris some farmers routinely leave lying around in the countryside?

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Paul G.
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 12:11 PM

And when I die, don't bury me, In a lonsome grave, beneath a tree. Just scatter my ashes, in the flow Where the Withlacoochie waters go.

Don't weep for me when I'm gone at last, Just grab a pole, catch a big ol' bass, Catch a large mouth bass, then set him free. When you set him free, then think of me.

--Jim Ballew

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Ferrara
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 03:42 PM

Gervase,... LOL ...

Well, I don't know where I'd like to be. But when my younger sister Jan died of heart failure (it runs in the family), Rod Kennedy, owner of Quiet Valley Ranch, offered to let us scatter her ashes on the grounds of the Kerrville Folk Festival, which she had often said was Heaven to her! Rod suggested scattering them in the chapel area, but I knew Jan better than that, and scattered most of them right down in front of the stage.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 03:58 PM

Geez, Paul, it sounds great, but people have to drink that stuff...

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Amergin
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 04:12 PM

IN DEAD EARNEST
(Lee Hays, 1979)

If I should die before i wake,
All my bone and sinew take
Put me in the compost pile
To decompose me for a while
Worms, water, sun, will have their way,
Returning me to common clay
All that I am will feed the trees
And little fishies in the seas.
When radishes and corn you munch,
You may be having me for lunch
And then excrete me with a grin,
Chortling, "There goes Lee again."
'Twill be my happiest destiny
To die and live eternally.

Subject: RE: Scatter Your Ashes - Where?
From: Stewart
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 05:16 PM

Woody Guthrie was cremated and his ashes scattered (well, sort of) in the ocean at Coney Island - see Utah Phillip's beautiful song, "Ashes on the Sea". In Joe Klein's bio "Woody Guthrie: A Life", Marjorie (his wife) and Joady, Arlo and Nora took his ashes (sealed in a can) to the jetty between Coney Island and Sea Gate. "There were several logistical problems... like figuring out how to open the can... Marjorie located a beer-can opener and pried several holes in the top, but... the ashes just wouldn't pour out... so [Arlo] just heaved the can out into the ocean, where it bobbed insistently and, for a moment, seemed to be heading back toward the jetty rocks... before finally it submitted and went under. Marjorie and the kids stood there not knowing what to do next... 'Well,' Marjorie said, trying to imagine what Woody might suggest under the circumstances, 'Why don't we go to Nathan's and have a hot dog?'"

S. in Seattle