Thursday, 23 October 2008

Death wish

No, I have no desire to die. But having just done an article on burial, cremation and embalming, I would like to make the following things clear:
  1. I don't want to be cremated.
  2. I don't want to be embalmed.
  3. I want to be buried in a shallow grave (one metre deep).
  4. I want to be buried horizontally (so far as I know, there aren't vertical graves available in NZ, but just in case).
  5. I would prefer a pine coffin from the fella in Kimbolton who makes eco-friendly caskets.
  6. If my family want to have my funeral at a church, I don't care. If it makes them feel better, then do it. Just don't try to make out that I believed in God.
  7. I don't want the cost of my funeral, burial etc to run over the cost of what's in my savings account. I don't see why anyone else should have to pay for me dying.
  8. I would like a tree planted at the head of my grave as a memorial (if not a very good memorial, since I know nothing about trees).
At the moment, the only "woodland" cemetery in NZ is in Wellington, and I don't particularly want to be buried in Wellington, as I have no emotional roots to it or reasons I'd want to be buried there. I guess I'd prefer either Dunedin or Palmy. And as there aren't any woodland cemeteries yet in either town, I guess I'll just have to wait a good few long years before dying.

1 comment:

Ange said...

I guess you'd know more about this than me, having just researched it... but I thought it was a legal requirement to be buried deeper than a certain amount that was quite a bit further down than one metre.

And what's the reasoning behind that, anyway?

Actually, I'd be interested if you could expand a bit on points 2, 3.. oh, that's it. Points 2 and 3 :)