Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anyone else weirded out by cremation?

You seem to know what you're talking about, so I'm glad to be enlightened. Apparently, I've been misled.

Thanks!

yup cremation is cheaper but not environment friendly....you can use body liquefaction .....better way of memorial urns ....

Cremate me and load me in to 12ga shells. I want to go out with a BANG!

THE CREMATION OF SAM McGEE


There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd �sooner live in hell.�

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson Trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a frozen nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and �Cap,� says he, �I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
If I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request.�

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
�It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead - - it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains.�

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half-hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: �You must tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate these last remains.�

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows - - O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavier and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and there a derelict lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the �Alice May.�
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then �Here,� said I, with a sudden cry, �is my cre-ma-tor-eum.�

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared - - such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
I was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said, �I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked;� ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: �Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm - -
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm.�

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Some other passages that may help:

From 1 Thess. 4. Note especially verse 14:



I can tell you what I picture in my mind based on the passages I have studied. The dead are already in the spiritual realm (see the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16). At the resurrection we know that the dead will be raised first. Will the spirit have to return to the location of its former body? I don't believe so. Since we will be given a spiritual body in the resurrection it would server no purpose. The dead will be given their spiritual bodies and will appear in the heavens with the Lord when He returns on the last day.

My mom had an old Robert Service book, that was one of my favorites as a kid, I used to read it to people.

There was another one I liked too and I can't remember the name of it, I think it had a Dan McGrew or something like that in it.

He expressed a hard life and hard times in Alaska.

I prefer the idea of cremation. Actually, I'd love to have a Viking funeral ship and be set adrift with the appropriate rituals, but I don't think the Coast Guard would agree with that.

Rather have them burn my bones than have them dug up in the far distant future.

Don't want to be burned or buried just prop me up against a tree in the woods and let nature take it's course