Friday, January 01, 2016

Grinchiest No; Advance Directives; Also, Wakes

Someone I knew in Cold City is 'crowd funding' her parent's funeral. To the tune of $15,000.

Look, I know funerals are stupid expensive.  However!  If someone's last wish is to be cremated and transported to  [East Asian Religion] monastery in a far flung corner of [Faraway Country], perhaps that person should make those arrangements their own damn self, especially before being dead/ expensively brain dead.

And if someone's only offspring is a broke grad student with a child, maybe that's a good time to put aside sentiment - and expensive funerals.

Maybe I'll feel different about it when I'm older, but I suspect I and my robot feelings will turn out like my mom: "Bury me in the cheapest crate they have.  Or a sheet. I don't care. I'll be somewhere else, or nowhere at all, by then."

Also, if it were my ashes or even my beloved parent's ashes, I would have the crematory send them FedEx.  Live within your means!

(I'm trying to think if there's any kind of 'crowd funding' for donations -as opposed to goods and services- that I don't feel grinchy about.  Maybe 'my house caught fire'.  But only for people I actually know well, because I feel no financial obligation to relative strangers, though we do donate to charities. You?)
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For some reason this brings to mind the time my grandma was filling out a Five Wishes form.  She was going along checking off and crossing out.  "I want my clergy person to be notified if I am hospitalized - yes. I want to be bathed even if I am nonresponsive- yes. I want my congregation to pray for me if I'm ill - maybe.  WAIT.  'I want to be massaged daily with oils?' Fuck,  no."

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I recently went to a memorial service at the local country club.  'I think they'll have wine,' I told Dr. S.  'At a memorial?' he said. 'No!'

Open bar and LAKES of wine and a bluegrass band and five kinds of dessert and only 15 minutes of speeches.  Dear readers, when I go - may it be decades away - raise a glass and float me off on a lake of liquor. But only if everyone can reasonably afford it.

6 comments:

  1. I love it! Grandma Jean's "celebration of life" party had pictures, a keg of beer, an awesome view of the Chippewa Valley she loved, and so, so many people.

    The place where I prune trees is also a natural burial ground. You really can be buried in a sheet there, for not much money. Your family can even dig the grave, if desired. Is there a natural burial ground in your state?

    Yes to all the "live within your means, don't make poor choices."

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    1. At Favorite Nearby Gardens! Clearly it is a theme with Hippie Garden Places. So there. When we redo our wills that's what I'm putting in.

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  2. I contributed recently to a crowd funding effort by the mother of a (not close) friend of mine from high school whose mental illness had gotten bad enough that her mother thought she should go to a residential treatment place that neither she nor Medicare condo afford. I don't have much extra cash around, but I felt good about contributing to the health of someone who had been kind to me (especially since it seems to have helped).

    I'm not quite sure what I think of crowd funding in general. My immediate reaction is often annoyance, envy, etc., but why? It's not as if I'm required to give money. Possibly I am just WASPy on this topic.

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    1. So helping someone you know who's still alive seems admirable. Helping someone do something elaborate for someone else who's DEAD seems wasteful to me. That's clearly the Protestant upbringing speaking.

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    2. Also, I'm super judgmental and I think I'm judging the utility function. Helping someone get better: useful. $9000 in travel expenses: not useful.

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  3. CRAZY PANTS, but yes, I too come from a "dispose of my useless carcass as cheaply and efficiently as possible" tradition. My mother has filed a request to be donated to science at the local med school...hopefully they will take her!

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