My instructions are for any useful organs to be harvested for use or research. When the remains are no longer wanted for any research, they are to be cremated. I do want my ashes to be buried. I have a plot reserved in a rural cemetery where I have family buried since the mid 1800s. I have recently ordered my gravestone to my specifications. Nothing elaborate. It is to be ready for installation by November. I told my wife and daughters to place the ashes in either one of my Dutch ovens or buy a new one, their choice, but that is what I want to be buried in. No need to hire a grave to be dug, just someone with a shovel, it is good sandy loam soil. It is close by my father's and grandparents' gravesites, a very peaceful place five miles from the nearest small town in west central Alabama. As a small boy, I remember various relatives being buried there, behind a country church that dates back to 1835. My father used to take me there and we would walk the cemetery and he would tell me how we were related to many buried there and a few stories about them. Those many years ago I decided that was where I wanted to eventually be as well. It is very likely that I will be the last one of any of my relations to be buried there. I see no practical point to being embalmed. For what? Maybe for someone to dig up 5,000 years from now to study? I don't want to waste my heirs' meager inheritance on that, but I do want a stone. The plot was free as I have family buried there. I liked very much seeing the stones of those that passed long before me and learning a few things about them. In my situation, it is unlikely that anyone will ever visit my grave more than once or so. Most all of my relatives and past friends in that area have either died out or have moved away. My children were not born or raised in that area and would probably have no particular reason to travel through there. My wife was not from there, being a native of Texas. She does have a spot reserved next to mine if she wants it, but may want to be buried in either of the Texas cemeteries where her mother or father is buried. Or, as I tell her, maybe next to her next husband as she is 10 years younger than I. She denies that possibility, but I remind her that she well may outlive me by 15 or 20 years and a lot can happen in that time. She has my blessings after I am gone. Just because my life will have ended, hers should not.
