August 16, 2002

3:06 AM

When I Die I Want...The whole world to dance? Stop in its tracks? No one to notice? Everyone else to die too? Or will a simple deleted MetaFilter thread do? It's not only control freaks who have an idea of how they'd like their own funeral to go. Matthew Parris, for instance, wants a trial with a counsel for the prosecution, as well as the obligatory one for his defense... [Cultural attitudes to death vary wildly and convey different images which may or may not exactly reflect the predominant attitude towards life. Well, for making your own very particular arrangements, despite the gruesome sideshows, The Sepulcher and The Dark Side Of The Web are two resources to die for.]
posted by MiguelCardoso (7 comments total)

When I die, I want it to be as messy as possible. I want the whole world to spew!!
posted by zombieman at 3:55 AM on August 16, 2002

From an intrinsic standpoint, most people would want to die quietly and peacefully, with as little discomfort (for themselves & others affected by the loss) as possible.

Apart from that, Miguel, if you were to use this forum as a way of offering solice to those who may later give in to mortality, you're in for a difficult (and not to mention costly) time. For as we all should know, the first thing a lot of MeFis would request would be a pony.
posted by Smart Dalek at 3:56 AM on August 16, 2002

This is a pretty neat site linked off of The Dark Side of the Web

But to answer Miguel's question, I would like my funeral to be one of those New Orleans jazz processions, and my coffin would be like one of these.
posted by thewittyname at 5:31 AM on August 16, 2002

Toss me in the bonfire and break out the marshmellows! Paaaaartyyy!
posted by five fresh fish at 9:30 AM on August 16, 2002

When I die? Don't you mean if?

I'll play along though, just for fun.

If I die, I want people to say "Damn, he owed me a lot of money."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:47 AM on August 16, 2002

That beloved desert anarchist Ed Abbey requested that at death his body be "transported in the bed of a pickup truck and buried as soon as possible after death. No undertakers wanted, no embalming (for godsake!), no coffin. Just an old sleeping bag....I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus, or cliffrose, or sagebrush, or tree."

Ed also arranged his own wake, calling for bagpipes, bonfire, gunfire, and "a flood of beer and booze! Lots of singing, dancing, talking, hollering, laughing and love-making. No formal speeches desired, though if someone feels the urge, the deceased will not interfere."

Sounds pretty good to me.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:59 PM on August 16, 2002

Aldous Huxley died on 22 November of the same year, on the same day President Kennedy was assassinated. From Laura Huxley I obtained a copy of her letter to Julian and Juliette Huxley, in which she reported to her brother- and sister-in-law about her husband's last day. The doctors had prepared her for a dramatic end, because the terminal phase of cancer of the throat, from which Aldous Huxley suffered, is usually accompanied by convulsions and choking fits. He died serenely and peacefully, however.

In the morning, when he was already so weak that he could no longer speak, he had written on a sheet of paper: "LSD--try it--intramuscular--100 mmg." Mrs. Huxley understood what was meant by this, and ignoring the misgivings of the attending physician, she gave him, with her own hand, the desired injection--she let him have the moksha medicine.

--Albert Hoffman

um...why can't I do a "div align=right"?
posted by goethean at 8:50 AM on August 18, 2002